Here, as elsewhere in this part of Italy, most of the streets are arcaded on either side, affording pleasant shelter from the hot sun, but every twenty yards we come upon one of an unpleasant class of shops, in which cheese, oil, and the like comestibles are sold, with most objectionable effects on all people blessed with noses.
In the evening we found an Italian performance going on at the theatre, and so thither we went, anxious to see how far Italian comedy might be amusing. I fear our inquiry was not much to our edification, for the favourite performers were mainly remarkable for the prodigious rapidity with which they uttered their facetious sayings, and so we lost more than half the dialogue. The theatre was almost entirely filled with Austrians, but still there was a sprinkling of Italians among them, which did away with the absurdly martial appearance of the only other theatre we had been into—that at Verona.
The next day was Sunday, but we were obliged to push on; and so, resigning ourselves to the diligence which left Mantua at about nine, we booked ourselves for Cremona, under the promise that we should be delivered there punctually by five o’clock.
We lost sight of Mantua almost immediately, for, travelling along a dead flat and by roads whose sides are lined with high hedges of acacia or orchards thickly planted, you never see any place or building until you have absolutely arrived at it. There was not much to interest me on the road, and the weather, at first cloudy only and sultry, gradually became worse, and, before we had gone far, settled into a steady pouring rain; so we read, wrote, and occupied the many hours in the rumbling diligence as best we might.
At Montenara, which we passed on our road, the church has a brick campanile, with pilasters at the angles, and in the belfry two-light windows, with marble central shafts and round arches. It has one of the usual brick conical spires, with small angle-pinnacles—a finish to these campanili which certainly does not improve upon acquaintance. They are constructed of bricks with semicircular ends laid side by side, the joints being broken in each course, and so making a very jagged kind of cone.
The only noticeable point about the church at Montenara is that it has been lately rebuilt in the very worst taste, and at an angle of forty-five degrees with the old steeple!
At Campitello there are several remains of interest.
There is a small domestic building, with four pointed windows of two lights at the side; the windows have central shafts of stone, but are otherwise entirely of rough brickwork. The church has a kind of double belfry-stage, arcaded similarly in each stage with round arches. There are also here the remains of a castle by the river, with a fine tower of the same type as the angle-towers of the Castello di Corte at Mantua, and covered with a very flat-pitched roof.
