ight clank, if you
jarred the stereoscope. Tread with us the streets of Pompeii for a
moment: there are the ruts made by the chariots of eighteen hundred
years ago,--it is the same thing as stooping down and looking at the
pavement itself. And here is the amphitheatre out of which the Pompeians
trooped when the ashes began to fall round them from Vesuvius. Behold
the famous gates of the Baptistery at Florence,--but do not overlook the
exquisite iron gates of the railing outside; think of them as you enter
our own Common in Boston from West Street, through those portals which
are fit for the gates of--not paradise. Look at this sugar-temple,--no,
it is of marble, and is the monument of one of the Scalas at Verona.
What a place for ghosts that vast _palazzo_ behind it! Shall we stand in
Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, and then take this stereoscopic gondola
and go through it from St. Mark's to the Arsenal? Not now. We will only
look at the Cathedral,--all the pictures under the arches show in our
glass stereograph,--at the Bronze Horses, the Campanile, the Rialto,
and that glorious old statue of Bartholomew Colleoni,--the very image of
what a partisan leader should be, the broad-shouldered, slender-waisted,
stern-featured old soldier who used to leap into his saddle in full
armor, and whose men would never follow another leader when he died.
Well, but there have been soldiers in Italy since his day. Here are
the encampments of Napoleon's army in the recent campaign. This is the
battle-field of Magenta with its trampled grass and splintered trees,
and the fragments of soldiers' accoutrements lying about.

And here (leaving our own collection for our friend's before-mentioned)
here is the great trench in the cemetery of Melegnano, and the heap of
dead lying unburied at its edge. Look away, young maiden and tender
child, for this is what war leaves after it. Flung together, like sacks
of grain, some terribly mutilated, some without mark of injury, all
or almost all with a still, calm look on their faces. The two youths,
before referred to, lie in the foreground, so simple-looking, so like
boys who had been overworked and were lying down to sleep, that one can
hardly see the picture for the tears these two fair striplings bring
into the eyes.

The Pope must bless us before we leave Italy. See, there he stands on
the balcony of St. Peter's, and a vast crowd before him with uncovered
heads as he stretches his arms and pronounce