Brescia, June 21st, 1830
This is a particularly nice town, airy, spacious, and clean, and in my life I never saw so many good-looking women. There is a drive and walk on the ramparts, where I found all the beauty and fashion of Brescia, a string of carriages not quite so numerous as in Hyde Park, but a very decent display. The women are excessively dressed, and almost all wear black lace veils, thrown over the back of the head, which are very becoming. The BRESCIA AND MILAN walks on the ramparts are shaded by double rows of trees, and command a very pretty view of the mountains and country round. This inn is execrable. I stopped at Verona to see the Amphitheatre, which is only perfect in the inside, and has been kept so by repeated repairs. It is hardly worth seeing after the Flavian and the Pompeiian. There is a wooden theatre in it, where they act, and the spectators occupy the ancient seats. The tombs of the Scaligeri are admirable, the most beautiful and graceful Gothic; their castle (now the Castle Vecchio) a gloomy old building in a moat, but with a very curious bridge over the Po. The Church of St. Zeno is remarkable from its Gothic antiquity and the profusion of ornament about it of a strange sort. Here is the tomb of Pepin, erected by Charlemagne, but empty; for the French, in one of their invasions, carried the body to France. In the Cathedral is a fine picture of the ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ by Titian. I saw many Veronese beauties in their balconies, but none quite like Juliet. Her tomb (or, as they would say at Rome, ‘sepolcro detto di Giulietta’) I did not see, for it was too far off. I was in a hurry to be off, and there was nobody to detain me with a tender ‘Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near’ night. The road, which is excellent, runs in sight of the Alps all the way, and the Lago di Garda is excessively pretty.