consideration be supposed. In fact, the whole church is in a blaze
of gold; and I was told that the gilding alone cost upward of ninety
thousand florins. Upon the whole, I understood that the church of this
monastery was considered as the most beautiful in Austria; and I can
easily believe it to be so.


THROUGH THE TYROL[23]

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities (Venice), and took the
road for the Tyrol. We passed through a level fertile country, formerly
the territory of Venice, watered by the Piave, which ran blood in one of
Bonaparte's battles. At evening we arrived at Ceneda, where our Italian
poet Da Ponte[24] was born, situated just at the base of the Alps, the
rocky peaks and irregular spires of which, beautifully green with the
showery season, rose in the background. Ceneda seems to have something
of German cleanliness about it, and the floors of a very comfortable inn
at which we stopt were of wood, the first we had seen in Italy, tho'
common throughout Tyrol and the rest of Germany. A troop of barelegged
boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and swinging their books
and slates in the air, passed under my window.

On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of
which was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, resting on
arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the
Middle Ages. Near it I remarked an old castle, which formerly commanded
the pass, one of the finest ruins of the kind I had ever seen. It had a
considerable extent of battlemented wall in perfect preservation, and