forest, that which Dante and Boccacio, and Dryden and Byron, have made so famous through the world. The pine is the weed of the country, and wherever there is a bit of dry ground there a pine is sure to grow. The forest is a narrow belt, varying from one to three miles in breadth, extending along the shore from the mouths of the Po to where the Apennines approach the Adriatic, intersected here and there by lagunes and marshes and sand-hills. Many an evening I walked there with Dante or Boccacio in hand, and sat on the dry grass, in spite of the warnings I received from my Ra venna friends to beware of the vipers, whose bite was death to any man unprovided with the balsam of Orvieto an infallible remedy which I was told men always took with them when out shooting, to apply to themselves or their dogs. I never saw a viper, only once or twice a large harmless snake; but I confess to an uncomfortable sensation when close by me virides rubum dimovere lacerta. I was somewhat disappointed in the size of the pines; they are, it seems, cut down periodically, and none spared for the sake of their picturesque beauty, so that you might seek the forest through' and find not a single tree to match those in the gardens about Rome. In the most ancient forest of Italy there are no old trees. However, a pine is not like beech or plane; it never looks young, and I found many a single tree and many a group which would be fine subjects for an artist. The ground is plentifully covered with an undergrowth of pyracanthus, and clematis, and juniper, and wild vine, not to mention the familiar and ubiquitous blackberry. There were many flowers with strong aromatic odours, which I had never seen before, and also many which we constantly see in our own fields and lanes at home, looking up in our faces, quite old friends, though we never think of asking their names.

immemorial wood

The Campo Santo, where many generations of Ravenna's citizens sleep, is on the borders of the forest, amid fitting solitude and silence. One Sunday I extended my walk as far as the modern Porto, eight miles away. The road, after crossing the

195

forest, traverses an unlovely swamp. On each side tamarisks have been planted to prevent the sand of which it consists being blown away by the wind. The Porto is a miserable place, consisting of a dogana, a wretched public-house, and two or three cottages for the custom collectors and their families. Add to this it is very malarious, as the complexions of the inhabitants sufficiently testified. During the siege of Venice, in 1849, the port was crowded with craft of all shapes and sizes, which were employed in victualling the city from the rich granaries of Romagna, but since that exceptional period its trade has become as stagnant as its waters. On the day in question, however, the place was the scene of unwonted festivity, being some saint's day or other. There was a crowd of thirty or forty assembled by the canal side, and the landlord of the public-house was playing cards with his elder guests. The scene which attracted the crowd was il giuoco dell' oca- the game of the goose'-which I will briefly describe. A rope running over a pulley at either side is stretched across the canal; to the centre a goose is hung dangling by the legs, with its head downwards. The feathers have been previously plucked from the poor bird's neck. One after another the boys who are competitors for the prize jump into the water, and get hold of the goose's neck and hold on as tight as they can. The men on the bank who have charge of the rope pull it up and down, so that the goose and boy are now swinging high in air, and now dipped below the surface of the water. This is continued till the goose's head is fairly pulled off, and the boy who has held on longest is declared victor. A truly humane and Christian way of celebrating the feast of Saint What's-his-name. There was also a sack-race, which I before supposed to be a peculiarly British sport. I forewent the pleasure of witnessing it for the sake of a bath in the Adriatic. As I was preparing for a walk back, I met two gentlemen with whom I had formed an acquaintance at the Café in Ravenna, and they politely offered me a seat in their carrozza. It was,

they told me, of the forma Inglese. This carriage of the English form,' resembled a dog-cart, inasmuch as. it would accommodate four persons sitting back to back, but it had no springs or cushions, and you had to set your feet upon something like the cording of a bed. The harness, too, was of ropes. Nevertheless the horse stepped out well, and brought us in an hour's time to the city gates. By ingeniously dovetailing our elbows we contrived to escape being jolted out.

The Café degli Specchi in the principal piazza, kept by a Neapolitan, is the place of resort for all the better sort of Ravennese. The term better sort' has in Italy a wider signification than in our free and exclusive land. It comprised at Ravenna the Capitano dei Finanzieri, or principal exciseman of the place, who used to sip his coffee and smoke his cigar with the longestdescended noble quite familiarly. The last evening of my stay this poor fellow had been sitting with the rest of us, and had not gone twenty yards from the door, when, as he crossed the end of a dark lampless street, an unknown assassin rushed out and stabbed him in the side, The weapon, which was left in the wound, was a peasant's knife lashed to a bit of heavy wood, that the blow might reach home. I learnt afterwards that he had died from the effects of the wound, the mur derer remaining undiscovered and unguessed at. I had brought letters of introduction to a few of the residents, and they, compassionating my loneliness, introduced me of an evening at the café to almost every body. A stranger who pays more than a flying visit is sufficiently rare to be an object of some curiosity. So I got to know nearly all I cared to know in Ravenna. There are a few of the old provincial noblesse still left, their vast palaces, as I fancy, a world too wide for their shrunk fortunes; of these the Rasponi family is chief. One of them married a daughter of Murat; his two sons were among the habitués of the Café degli Specchi.

There are also the Gambas, whose name Byron has familiarized us with. My chief friends were the

Count Alessandro C-, whose kindness in lionizing me over his native town, which he had rarely quitted, and of which he knew every stone, was unbounded; the artist, Signor M-, whose sketch of the pineta is before me as I write; the Dr. F, who bore the troubles of the time with such philosophic calm; Don Paolo, the librarian, a kind and courteous priest. But I am forgetting my readers; what to me are pleasant memories are but names to you.

There was one acquaintance of a humbler class, assistant in the library, who was very useful and obliging. He took great pride in his connexion with Lord Byron; he had been an apprentice to his lordship's tailor. Whether it was the indirect services thus rendered to literature which obtained him his post in the library, I know not. He insisted upon introducing me to the tailor himself, now an octogenarian, who has many anecdotes of the poet, Among others he said that the first order his lordship gave him was for forty pairs of trousers, all of which, I was glad to hear, he paid for. While Byron stayed at Ravenna he used nine hundred braccie of gold lace for his liveries. I met many other persons who were eager to tell me anecdotes of my great countryman. He seems by his eccentricities and bounties to have made an indelible impression upon both rich and poor, and will henceforth divide with Dante the hero-worship of the city. When he first went to Ravenna he took up his abode in a house, then an inn, close to Dante's tomb and the church of San Francesco; afterwards he removed to the Palazzo Guiccioli, now Rasponi, not far from the Church of San Vitale. The house of Dante, let the handbooks say what they please, exists no longer, nor is there any memory of it. The house of the Polentani may very likely have been in the site assigned, but no one can read attentively the account of Dante's funeral by Boccacio without seeing that he had a separate house of his own. The narrow house he has now is, as Byron describes it, more neat than solemn,' but what architect could build a monument commensurate with the