Good-by, Venice!
* * * * *
Verona began by seeming dull to me; but it improves and unfolds beautiful
corners of itself to be looked at: only I am given so little time. The
Tombs of the Della Scalas and the Renaissance facade of the Consiglio are
what chiefly delight me. I had some quiet hours in the Museo, where I fell
in love with a little picture by an unknown painter, of Orpheus charming
the beasts in a wandering green landscape, with a dance of fauns in the
distance, and here and there Eurydice running;--and Orpheus in Hades, and
the Thracian women killing him, and a crocodile fishing out his head, and
mermaids and ducks sitting above their reflections reflecting.
Also there is one beautiful Tobias and the Angel there by a painter
whose name I most ungratefully forget. I saw a man yesterday carrying
fishes in the market, each strung through the gills on a twig of myrtle:
that is how Tobias ought to carry his fish: when a native custom
suggests old paintings, how charming it always is!
Riva.
We have just got here from Verona. In the matter of the garden at least
it is a Paradise of a place. A great sill of honeysuckle leans out from
my window: beyond is a court grown round with creepers, and beyond that
the garden--such a garden! The first thing one sees is an arcade of
vines upon stone pillars, between which peep stacks of roses, going off
a little from their glory now, and right away stretches an alley of
green, that shows at the end, a furlong off, the blue glitter of water.
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