namental--the doubly-doubtful tomb of Juliet. It is so
acknowledged a lion that the street-boys of the quarter beset you with
offers to show you the way. This is no new celebrity: Murray assures us
that in the last century, before readers of Shakespeare, native or
foreign, were common in Italy, a sarcophagus was regularly exhibited as
this sentimental relic. That no longer exists: the present one, which was
formerly used as a washing-trough, looks so much like that or a
horse-trough of the commonest sort that, even without knowing its claims
to be apocryphal, the most credulous sentimental tourist would suspect
that it had come up rather than gone down in the world. No matter: we were
not dupes, but perhaps the full sweetness and sadness of the story never
came home to us with such enfolding charm as on the gray autumn afternoon
when we stood beside the pseudo relic in the forlorn little garden of the
orphan asylum on the bank of the turbid Adige. The house which is pointed
out as Juliet's is less palatial than we expected, though it is a lofty
old brick edifice with rounded windows, a stone balcony and a large
courtyard: on the keystone of the arched entrance, on the inner side of
the court, is the cap (_cappello_) which gives its name to the street, and
is supposed to be the heraldic badge of the family, _armoiries parlantes_,
or punning devices, being a favorite fashion in old times all over Europe.
If the balcony which remains was Juliet's, Romeo must have had a long
ladder and a cooler head than he showed under other circumstances. There
is a stone projection at the window of a lower story which once may have
supported a small balcony. The Casa de' Cappelletti is now a livery-stable
and inn, the Osteria del Cappello.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DELLE ERBE.]

The street leads straight to the Piazza delle Erbe, the vegetable-market
(literally, "grass-market"), the forum in ancient times, the most
picturesque spot in all Verona, which seems to collect and concentrate in
itself all the reminiscences and characteristics of the town. It
communicates on one side with the Piazza dei Signori; and the imposing
campanile, or bell-tower, of the latter, a shaft of brickwork nearly three
hundred feet high, springing above the intervening palace-roofs, makes a
companion to the tall, slender clock-tower at the farther end of the
Piazza delle Erbe, one of the many munificent gifts of the Della Scala
princes. In the centre of the square