hat Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry
struck any root, should have had S. George for patron, is at any rate
significant.

The best preserved relic of princely feudal life in Italy is
this Castello of the Este family, with its sombre moat, chained
drawbridges, doleful dungeons, and unnumbered tragedies, each one of
which may be compared with Parisina's history. I do not want to dwell
on these things now. It is enough to remember the Castello, built of
ruddiest brick, time-mellowed with how many centuries of sun and soft
sea-air, as it appeared upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just
before evening the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across
the misty Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral
pyre, and round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the warm
blue air. On the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers of sunset,
tossed from pinnacle and gable. Then the sky changed. A roof of
thunder-cloud spread overhead with the rapidity of tempest. The dying
sun gathered his last strength against it, fretting those steel-blue
arches with crimson; and all the fierce light, thrown from vault to
vault of cloud, was reflected back as from a shield, and cast in
blots and patches on the buildings. The Castle towered up rosy-red
and shadowy sombre, enshrined, embosomed in those purple clouds; and
momently ran lightning forks like rapiers through the growing mass.
Everything around, meanwhile, was quiet in the grass-grown streets.
The only sound was a high, clear boy's voice chanting an opera tune.

PETRARCH'S TOMB AT ARQUA

The drive from Este along the skirts of the Euganean Hills to Arqua
takes one through a country which is tenderly beautiful, because of
its contrast between little peaked mountains and the plain. It is
not a grand landscape. It lacks all that makes the skirts of Alps
and Apennines sublime. Its charm is a certain mystery and
repose--an undefined sense of the neighbouring Adriatic, a pervading
consciousness of Venice unseen, but felt from far away. From the
terraces of Arqua the eye ranges across olive-trees, laurels, and
pomegranates on the southern slopes, to the misty level land that
melts into the sea, with churches and tall campanili like gigantic
galleys setting sail for fairyland over 'the foam of perilous seas
forlorn.' Let a blue-black shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast
upon this plain, and let one ray of sunlight strike a solitary
bell-tower;--it burns with