After Waterloo: Reminiscences Of European Travel 1815-1819, By Major W. E Frye













































































































 -  The theatre is by Palladio, is exquisitely
beautiful, and very tastefully fitted up. I assisted at the representation
of La - Page 240
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The Theatre Is By Palladio, Is Exquisitely Beautiful, And Very Tastefully Fitted Up.

I assisted at the representation of La Gazza Ladra, one of Rossini's best operas.

I should think Verona would be a very delightful sejour; everything is very cheap; a fine country highly cultivated; a remarkably healthy climate; a society which unites much urbanity and a love of amusement with a taste for the fine arts and for the graver sciences, and a general appearance of opulence and comfort. The shops in Verona appear very splendid, and the Bra, when lighted up in the evening, is a very lively and animating scene.

MANTUA, 15 June.

I could not go to Milan without stepping a little out of my road to visit this ancient and redoubtable fortress, so celebrated in the early campaigns of Buonaparte, besides the other claims it has on the traveller's attention as the birth place of Virgil. This place is of immense strength, as a military post; being situated on a small isthmus of land, separating two lakes, and communicating with the rest of the country by an exceeding narrow causeway. This position, added to the strength of the fortifications, render the fortress impregnable, if well garrisoned and provisioned. The city is, however, unhealthy from the lake and marshy land about it, and there is but a scanty population. Grass grows in the streets and it is the dullest and indeed the only dull town in all Italy. Everything in this city announces decay and melancholy, and I met with several men looking full as halfstarved and deplorable as Shakespeare's Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. Yet the city is by no means an ugly one. The buildings are imposing, the streets broad and well paved, and there is a fine circular promenade in the centre of which is a Monument erected in honor of Virgil by the French general Miollis, who had a great veneration for all poets. The Palazzo pubblico and the Cathedral are the most striking buildings. The latter contains the tombs and monuments of the Gonzaga family, the whilom Sovereigns of Mantua. There are also several monuments in honor of some French officers, who were killed in the campaigns of Italy under Buonaparte and erected to their memory by his direction.

Outside the town, at a short distance from the causeway and tete de pont, is the celebrated palace called the T, from its being in the form of that letter, which was the usual residence of the Dukes of Mantua. It is a noble edifice and its gardens are well laid out. These gardens have this peculiarity, that at the entrance of each of the grand avenues is a figure of a man on horseback caparizoned in armour, like the Knights of old. This is all I have to say about Mantua. The Mincio beset with "osiers dank" flows into the lake.

CREMONA, 16th June.

From Mantua I directed my course to this city, which is large and fortified, situated on the Po which forms many little islands in the environs.

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