New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1844-03-23
oslimpses at Europe.
NUMBER XVI

NUMBER XVI [BY RAvELIse NEw-YoRxER.
Foreign Correspondence OF The New-York Tribune.
VERONA, vlCENZA-PADUA.
"L' eccelsa, grazioSa, alma VERONA" merits
all the enthusiastic admiration lavlshed on 1t by
the poet Berni, particularly in the eyes of trav-
eIer Just from the marshes of Mantua. Through
the city PUSHES the river Adige; around it are
villas surrounded by groves in which tie spire-
like cypress rises conspicuous and behind 1t are
the blue Alps. Many fine churches and palaces
are scattered through it, but all the other build
ings are only shops and there seems to be not
merely scantiness but an utter absence of any
private houses in which gentlemen could live.
Shakespeare wrote of 1.-The two gentlemen of
Verona,'' as if there were no more than two Of
the kind in the time of his comedy, and since
then they seem to have died and left no copy"
In the midst of the city, surrounded by modern
houses is the Roman AmpMtheatre, as perfect
in the interior as when twenty thousand specta-
tors twenty centuries ago filled its seats to exult
over the mutual butchery of men and beasts, in
the arena within. Imagine the oval f" Bowling
Green' of New York surrounded by an enor-
mousmass of masonry, eighty feet high and as
many wide at bottom, but slopng backward and
upward all around from the open space which it
enclosed. The sloping interior is notched out
into forty-four stone steps which run entirely
around, and at regular intervals there arc open
ings, through which you descend as into a cellar,
and enter the corridor running around the in
terror of the huge building, which is supported by
arches upon arches and cut up in every direction
by vaulted passages, starcases and chambers, IN
which stranger could easily lose himself, and
which would contain hundred thousand per-
sons, though they arc merely spaces followed
out of the immense wall which supports the
seats and surrounds the arena with its mountain
of stone When you walk around the upper
range of seats the interior seems like the crater
of q volcano, while outwardy the walls descend
perpendicuary to the level of the stcet OF
rather below it, for the building now stands in ar
excavation in the soil which has accumulated
above its original level Around the ccntra
arena arc various passages and openings, through
which the wild beasts were let on, upon the
pladators, and in the centre is well to hold tn,
mast which supported the awning, stretched owe
the vast space to protect the spectators from thu
sun and rain. All these minor points are how
ever disputed by some antiquaries, who comba
paper about the arena, as fercely as did thei
ancestors within it.
In every Italian city its most characteristic
peculiarly is found in it's PiaSsa, around which
are clustered its public buildings and in which
are held the markets and fairs of the people. We
rona has two of these. The Piazza del Siopor
was once the site of the Scaligcrs and other pow
eriul lords of the city, and its tesselated pave
ment is still framed, as it were, by the quain
palaces winch they inhabited. From one rises
Cempaaile tower to the hight of $50 feet, an
uSoa another are statues of six Latin authors,
whom Verona claims to be the birth place. The
are Piny the younger, valerius, Vitruriu'
Macer, Cornelius Nepos, and above all the res
Catulus, o, whom Martial says with happ
antIthesis,
Iantam rnsgoa Verona Gatrllo.
tltant"m paIva suo Alantua Fiisii.o
On the other side of the Scaligcr palace is the p
azza dele ERIE, one of the most peculiar an
interesting in all Italy. AT one end of it stand
noble colamn Of white marble, where insolvcn
debtors III former time used to "take the beneh
of the act" for If they could succeed IN reaching