of
chronology: the relics of various ages are thrown together, sandwiched and
dovetailed, on every side, and it is the impression, the collective
impression, of the entire place which is pleasantest to get, and worth
most: the rest can be learned from books. There is a sort of epic chain
which runs through the associations of Verona, and binds them together in
heroic series by all sorts of strange, unexpected suggestions and hints.
After the ancient epic, represented by the fragments from Roman history,
itself one long epic, come the vestiges of Theodoric, one of the heroes of
the _Niebelungen Lied_, in which he is known as Dietrich of Bern
(otherwise Verona). His palace, adopted and used for centuries as the
device of the municipal seal, survived the violent vicissitudes of the
city's history, and remained, after repeated alterations and additions
which made it a sort of architectural chronicle, until the present
century. This magnificent memorial of earlier times, which had been
respected in turn by the mad fury of Gian Galeazzo of Milan and the
implacable rivalry of Venice, was blown up by the French in 1801: large
barracks now stand upon its site, so that the stones of its warlike
builder are not subverted to purposes unbefitting his memory. Then follows
Charlemagne--putative founder, more probably first restorer, of the
cathedral--in his most mythic and heroic aspect, fresh out of the _Chanson
de Roland_, while Roland and Oliver keep guard on each side of the porch,
the latter bearing a mace with a ball and chain, the former his famous
sword Durindal, the stone counterpart of the weapon preserved for nearly a
thousand years in the monastery of Roncesvalles. The great heroic satire
of the twelfth century, _Reineke Fuchs_, is suggested by figures and
groups such as are to be found in all old Gothic churches north of the
Alps, but seldom south of them--a hog, dressed as a monk, standing on his
hind legs and holding a breviary, on the portal of the cathedral, and in
the church of San Zenone two cocks marching off with a fox dangling from
a pole. All the associations of the place centre in and radiate from Dante
and his unearthly poem, so much of which was written here or hereabouts.
It is extraordinary how he has appropriated the memories of the place,
even down to Romeo and Juliet--who by virtue of their immortalized loves
belong as much to our times as to their own--by the single well-known
line:

Vieni a veder M