the convent itself are delightful. The collections are
mediocre. But here we may see all that is to be seen of the Ravenna of
Augustus and of the great years of the empire, fragments and
inscriptions and reliefs now and then of real interest, as in the
relief representing the Apotheosis of Augustus, in the eastern walk of
the cloisters, and in the remains of that suit of gold armour thought
to be Theodoric's in the old sacristy. But for the most part the
collection is without much attraction, yet certainly not to remain
unvisited.

[Illustration: THE PINETA]

XX

THE PINETA

Ravenna has so much that is rare and precious to show us that few
among the many who spend a day or two within her walls have the
inclination to explore the melancholy marshes in which she stands. No
doubt most of us drive out to S. Apollinare in Classe, but the road
thither does not encourage a further journey, for it is rude and rough
and the country over which it passes is among the most featureless in
Italy. Nevertheless he does himself a wrong who leaves Ravenna for
good without having spent one day at any rate in the Pineta which,
ruined though it now be, is still one of the loveliest and most
mysterious places in the Romagna.

But lovely though it is, and full of memories, what can be said of
this vast ruined forest of stone pines with its mystery of mere and
fen, its coolness and shadow, its astonishing silence? Only this I
think, that if once you find it, nothing else in Ravenna will seem
half so precious as this green wood. You will love it always and for
its own sake more than anything else in Ravenna, and in this you will
not be alone; every one who has come to it these thousand years has
felt the same, Dante, Boccaccio, Byron, Carducci, the Pineta knows the
footsteps of them all and they seem to haunt it still.

Dante would seem to have loved it best in the morning; out of it he
conjures his _Paradiso Terrestre_ in the twenty-eighth canto of the
_Purgatorio_:

"Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
With lively greenness the new-springing day
Attemper'd, eager now to roam, and search
Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;
Along the champain leisurely my way
Pursuing, o'er the ground, that on all sides
Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air
That intermitted never, never veer'd,
Smote on my temples, gently as a wind
Of softest influence, at which the sprays,
Obedient all, lean'