This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 Excerpt: ...my close inspection of the paintings. In taking a survey from the bridge of the hill opposite, the old citadel, the floating mills upon the river, and the antique buildings of the city, Shakespeare was ever present to me. My valet de place directed me to the Amphitheatre, and with a kind of moody pleasure I entered ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 Excerpt: ...my close inspection of the paintings. In taking a survey from the bridge of the hill opposite, the old citadel, the floating mills upon the river, and the antique buildings of the city, Shakespeare was ever present to me. My valet de place directed me to the Amphitheatre, and with a kind of moody pleasure I entered through the porches, where Romans had been of old, to see their degenerate successors occupying its seats to laugh at the buffoonery of some Italian players who were exhibiting in a temporary theatre by daylight. I lingered here until the deepening shadows warned me of the lateness of the hour, and the solitude of the place: for all were gone but my guide and myself. I examined the vomitories and the imperial entrance; I looked at the canal for the naumachia and sauntered slowly away, wrapped in meditation on the capacity of man and his abuse of it. Napoleon had been in triumph there: but the thought of him was a small item among the throng of imaginations that such a scene would evoke. Leaving it in the twilight, I saw the tombs of the Scaligeri; the hall of council, with the statues of Maffei, Vitruvius, and other Veronese worthies; the marketplace, with the antique statue in the fountain, and the intended palace of the republic from the designs of Michael Angelo. But no place was free from the intrusion of visions of the Capuletti and Montecchi, and the beautiful story that grew out of their disturbance of "the quiet of the streets." It was night, when I desired the guide to take me direct to Juliet's tomb. Our long walk had disinclined him for the visit, and he would have dissuaded me from going, insisting that it was nothing to see; to me it was all, it gave an interest to every step I took and every house I passed. My enthusiasm m...
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