Men, pil'd on men, with active leaps arise,
And build the breathing fabric to the skies;
A sprightly youth, above the topmost row,
Points the tall pyramid and crowns the show.

Though we meet with the Veneti in the old poets, the city of Venice is too modern to find a place among them. Sannazarius's epigram is too well known to be inserted. The same poet has celebrated this city in two other places of his poems: Quis Veneta miracula proferat urbis?

Una instar magni quæ simul orbis habet.
Salve Italúm regina, alta pulcherrima Romæ
Emula, quæ terris, quæ dominaris aquis.
Tu tibi vel reges cives facis; O decus, O lux
Ausonia, per quam libera turba sumus:
Per quam barbaries nobis non imperat, et sol
Exoriens nostro clarius orbe nitet!

Lib. 3. el. 1.

Venetia stands with endless beauties crown'd,
And as a world within herself is found.
Hail, queen of Italy! for years to come
The mighty rival of immortal Rome!
Nations and seas are in thy states enroll'd,
And kings among thy citizens are told.
Ausonia's brightest ornament! by thee
She sits a sov'reign, unenslav'd and free;
By thee, the rude barbarian chas'd away,
The rising sun cheers with a purer ray
Our western world, and doubly gilds the day.

Nec tu semper eris, quæ septem amplecteris arces,
Ne tu, quæ mediis æmula surgis aquis.

Lib. 2. el. 1.

Thou too shalt fall by time or barb'rous foes,
Whose circling walls the sev'n fam'd hills enclose;
And thou, whose rival tow'rs invade the skies,
And, from amidst the waves, with equal glory rise.

FERRARA, RAVENNA, RIMINI.

AT Venice I took a bark for Ferrara, and in my way thither saw several mouths of the Po, by which it empties itself into the Adriatic.

-Quo non alius per pinguia culta

In mare purpureum violentior effluit amnis.

VIRG. Georg. 4.

which is true, if understood only of the rivers of Italy.

Lucan's description of the Po would have been very beautiful, had he known when to have given

over:

Quoque magis nullum tellus se solvit in amnem
Eridanus, fractasque evolvit in æquora sylvas,
Hesperiamque exhaurit aquis: hunc fabula primum
Populeá fluvium ripas umbrasse corona:
Cumque diem pronum transverso limite ducens
Succendit Phaeton flagrantibus æthera loris;
Gurgitibus raptis penitus tellure perustâ,
Hunc habuisse pares Phabeis ignibus undas.

The Po that, rushing with uncommon force,
O'ersets whole woods in its tumultuous course,
And rising from Hesperia's wat'ry veins,
Th' exhausted land of all its moisture drains.
The Po, as sings the fable, first convey'd
Its wond'ring current through a poplar shade :
For when young Phaeton mistook his way,
Lost and confounded in the blaze of day,
This river, with surviving streams supplied,
When all the rest of the whole earth were dried,
And nature's self lay ready to expire,

Lib. 2.

Quench'd the dire flame that set the world on fire.

The poet's reflections follow.

Non minor hic Nilo, si non per plana jacentis
Egypti Libycas Nilus stagnaret arenas.

Non minor hic Istro, nisi quod, dum permeat orbem
Ister, casuros in quælibet æquora fontes
Accipit, et Scythicas exit non solus in undas.

Nor would the Nile more wat'ry stores contain,
But that he stagnates on his Libyan plain :
Nor would the Danube run with greater force,
But that he gathers in his tedious course

Ten thousand streams, and swelling as he flows,
In Scythian seas the glut of rivers throws.

That is, says Scaliger, the Eridanus would be bigger than the Nile and Danube, if the Nile and Danube were not bigger than the Eridanus. What makes the poet's remark the more improper, the very reason why the Danube is greater than the Po, as he assigns it, is that which really makes the Po as great as it is; for before its fall into the gulf, it receives into its channel the most considerable rivers of Piedmont, Milan, and the rest of Lombardy.

From Venice to Ancona the tide comes in very sensibly at its stated periods, but rises more or less in proportion as it advances nearer the head of the gulf. Lucan has run out of his way to describe the phenomenon, which is indeed very extraordinary to those who lie out of the neighbourhood of the great ocean; and, according to his usual custom, lets his poem stand still that he may give way to his own reflections.

Quáque jacet littus dubium, quod terra, fretumque
Vindicat alternis vicibus, cum funditur ingens
Oceanus, vel cum refugis se fluctibus aufert.
Ventus ab extremo pelagus sic axe volutet,
Destituatque ferens: an sidere mota secundo

Tethyos unda vagæ lunaribus æstuet horis :
Flammiger an Titan, ut alentes hauriat undas,
Erigat oceanum fluctusque ad sidera tollat,
Quærite, quos agitat mundi labor: at mihi semper
Tu, quæcunque moves tam crebros causa meatus,
Ut superi voluere, late.-

Lib. 1.

Wash'd with successive seas, the doubtful strand
By turns is ocean, and by turns is land:
Whether the winds in distant regions blow,
Moving the world of waters to and fro :
Or waning moons their settled periods keep
To swell the billows and ferment the deep;
Or the tir'd sun, his vigour to supply,
Raises the floating mountains to the sky,
And slakes his thirst within the mighty tide,
Do you who study nature's works decide:
Whilst I the dark mysterious cause admire,

as any

Nor into what the gods conceal presumptuously inquire.

At Ferrara I met with nothing extraordinary. The town is very large, but extremely thin of people. It has a citadel, and something like a fortification running round it, but so large that it requires more soldiers to defend it than the pope has in his whole dominions. The streets are as beautiful I have seen, in their length, breadth, and regularity. The Benedictines have the finest convent of the place. They showed us in the church Ariosto's monument: his epitaph says, he was Nobilitate generis atque animi clarus, in rebus publicis administrandis, in regendis populis, in gravissimis et summis Pontificis legationibus prudentia consilio, eloquentia præstantissimus.

I came down a branch of the Po, as far as Alberto, within ten miles of Ravenna. All this space lies miserably uncultivated till you come near Ravenna, where the soil is made extremely fruitful, and shows what much of the rest might be, were

there hands enough to manage it to the best advantage. It is now on both sides the road very marshy, and generally overgrown with rushes, which made me fancy it was once floated by the sea, that lies within four miles of it. Nor could I in the least doubt it when I saw Ravenna, that is now almost at the same distance from the Adriatic, though it was formerly the most famous of all the Roman ports. One may guess at its ancient situation from Martial's

Meliùsque rana garriant Ravennates.

Ravenna's frogs in better music croak.

Lib. 3.

and the description that Silius Italicus has given us of it:

Quique gravi remo limosis segniter undis
Lenta paludosæ proscindunt stagna Ravenna,
Encumber'd in the mud, their oars divide
With heavy strokes the thick unwieldy tide.

Lib. 8.

Accordingly the old geographers represent it as situated among marshes and shallows. The place which is shown for the haven is on a level with the town, and has probably been stopped up by the great heaps of dirt that the sea has thrown into it; for all the soil on that side of Ravenna has been left there insensibly by the sea's discharging itself upon it for so many ages. The ground must have been formerly much lower, for otherwise the town would have lain under water. The remains of the Pharos, that stand about three miles from the sea, and two from the town, have their foundations covered with earth for some yards, as they told me, which notwithstanding are upon a level with the fields that lie about them, though it is probable they took the advantage of a