3–9 June 1833

To Verona 30 miles. The chief object of in- terest is the amphitheatre built in Trajan's time, a smaller coliseum, but in excellent preservation and still used as a theatre. A play was getting up in the arena when we came away. Then to what is called Juliet's tomb, a very apocryphal sepulchre; then to the Duomo to see an As- sumption of the Madonna, by Titian ; to San Giorgio to see pictures of Paul Veronese. This is his own town, and of MafFei also. Saw the Ro- man bridge built by Vitruvius over the Adige.

To-day crossed the Mela. In all this Lom- bard region they write on a signpost the name of each town thus: — and a similar threefold inscription in every vil- lage. We begin to see goitres on both men and women. The Vettura stopped at noon at Calcio.

This cathedral is the only church in Italy that can pretend to compare with St. Peter's. It is a most impressive and glorious place, without and within. And its exterior altogether as remarkable and deserving minute attention as its interior. It was begun by Andrea Commodia in 1386 and is not yet finished, though always being built. When completed, it will have 7000 statues, great and small, upon the outside ; there are now 5000. It IS all built, to the minutest part, of white marble, and, as the showman asserted, would have cost a mountain of gold, but that the founder had left to it a quarry of marble. Forty-two artists are perpetually employed upon it. The walk upon the top of the church is delightful from the novelty and richness of the scene. Neighbored by this army of marble saints and martyrs, with scores of exquisitely sculp- tured pinnacles rising and flowering all around you, the noble city of Milan beneath, and all the Alps in the horizon, — it is one of the grand- est views on earth. Then, inside the church, the grand Gothic perspective of the aisles, the col- our of the light which all enters through stained glass, the richness and magnitude of all the objects, — truly it is good to be there.