admirably does the description tally with the scene here laid before us.
“There is, first, this blue Lombardic plain, wide as the sea, and in the very centre of it, at about twelve miles away from you, a little cluster of domes and towers, with a gleam of white water round them. That is Mantua. Look beyond its fretted outline, and you will see that in that direction the plain, elsewhere boundless, is ended by undulations of soft hills. Those are the Apennines above Padua. Then look to the left, and just beyond the roots of the Alps, you will see the cluster of the cones of the Euganean hills, at the space at their feet in which rests Padua, and the gleam of the horizon beyond them in which rests Venice. Look then, north-eastward, and touched into a crown of strange rubies as the sun descends, there is the snowy cluster of the Alps of Friuli. Then turn to the north-west, and under the sunset itself you will see the Adige flow from its enchanted porch of marble, and in one strong and almost straight stream, blanched always bright by its swiftness, reflecting on its eddies neither bank nor cloud, but only light, stretch itself along the vines, to the Verona lying at your feet; there first it passes the garden wall of the church of S. Zeno, then under the battlements of the great bridge of the Scaligers, then passes away out of sight behind the hill on which, though among ghastly modern buildings, here and there you may still trace a grey fragment of tower and wall—the remnants of the palace of Theodoric of Verona—Dietrich of Bern.
“Now I do not think that there is any other rock in all the world, from which the places and monuments of so complex and deep a fragment of the history of its ages can be visible, as from this piece of crag, with its blue and prickly weeds. For you have thus beneath you at once, the birthplaces of Virgil and of Livy; the homes of Dante and Petrarch; and the source of the most sweet and pathetic inspiration of your own Shakespeare; the spot where the civilization of the Gothic kingdoms was founded on the throne of Theodoric, and where whatever was strongest in the Italian race redeemed itself into life by its league against Barbarossa. You have the cradle of natural science and medicine in the schools of Padua; the central light of Italian chivalry in the power of the Scaligers; the chief stain of Italian cruelty in that of Ezzelin; and, lastly, the birthplace of the highest art; for among these hills, or by this very Adige bank, were born Mantegna, Titian, Coreggio, and Veronese.”[53]
Beyond the Garden Street of the Giusti lies the tract of the “Acqua Morte,” formed by the branch or canal of the Adige, which once flowed here but was filled in in 1895 when the great works of the “muraglioni” were executed which have confined the river into bounds which it cannot pass, nor break the limits now imposed upon it. In this quarter is the church of Sta. Maria in Organo, another of the Veronese churches of special interest and individuality. The date of the church is uncertain, but of its antiquity there can be no doubt, some writers placing it even as far back as the sixth century. The foundation of the monastery of Sta. Maria in Organo is ascribed to the piety of the Lombard Duke Lupone and his wife Ermelinda in the year A.D. 615. The actual building was erected on the site of an older one in 1131. It was committed to the monks of Monte Oliveto in 1444; shortly after that date the campanile was added, and San Micheli began the façade which for some unknown reason was never completed. The interior of the church is rich in paintings and frescoes, every chapel having its picture over the altar, and the