ontecchi e Capelletti.

[Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATRE.]

There is a colossal statue of him by a modern Veronese sculptor, not
unworthy of the subject or place, standing in the quiet Piazza dei Signori
amid the deserted homes of the Della Scale, looking toward the palace of
Can Grande, whose generous hospitality could not sweeten the bread of
charity nor ease the steps of a patron's court to the proud exile. Dante
could not have been easy to live with upon any terms. "Eh, puir fellow! he
looks like a verra ill-tempered mon," quoth Carlyle once after a long
contemplation of the poet's portrait. He played the part of Mentor, and a
very morose one, to the splendid, gallant, good-natured prince and his gay
court, and Can Grande seems to have derived the same sort of diversion
from his diatribes as from the quips and cranks of his jesters. At last
Dante wore out his welcome, as he did everywhere until the patient earth
gave him an abiding-place at Ravenna. His whole life of disappointed
ambition, unrecognized patriotism, unspoken love, baffled hatred, lonely
rangings in awful spheres, banishment, poverty, mortification, unrest,
inspiration, conscious immortality, passes before one in this spot, which
he must have crossed and recrossed innumerable times, and his presence
even in the marble makes it all his own. Yet if the statue could wake to
life, the man would not know the familiar place, which has been wholly
transformed since his days. The principal ornament of the square is the
Palazzo del Consiglio, a beautiful example of _cinque-cento_ architecture,
its exuberant decoration still subordinate to the harmony and proportion
of the general design. This has been converted into a pantheon for the
celebrated men of Verona, whose statues surmount the building, and among
whom we recognize many old acquaintances--Cornelius Nepos, Catullus, Pliny
the Younger and others of later date and less renown.

[Illustration: JULIET'S HOUSE.]

The palaces of the Scaligeri, now assigned to the drowsy courts of law,
have been altered so often that an inalienable dignity of front is all
that marks them for having once been princely habitations. We must look a
few steps farther for the pomp of the Scaligers, where a small graveyard
before the church of Santa Maria l'Antica contains the tombs of the
dynasty. The whole space, as well as each separate grave, is enclosed by
an iron trellis of the rarest delicacy: it is, in fact, a flexible netwo