illustrious house reigned in Verona. The first six were men of
extraordinary talent, and, for the time in which they lived, of
extraordinary virtue. They not only enlarged the boundaries of the
Veronese, but subjected several distant cities. Albert della Scala added
Trent and Riva, Parma and Reggio, Belluno and Vicenza, to his dominions;
and Can Grande conquered Padua, Trevigi, Mantua, and Feltre. It is his
body that is laid in the plain sarcophagus over the door of the little
church of St. Mary of the Scaligers, only adorned with the figure of a
knight on horseback, of nearly the natural size, above it. The other
tombs, on which it looks down, are those of his successors: they are
gorgeous in ornament, and form a conspicuous group among the picturesque
buildings of the city; but they are built over the ashes of men under
whom their family and state declined, until the Visconti of Milan,
having overcome the princes, built the citadel, and fortified Castello
San Pietro.

We must not omit to state that under Bartolomeo, the third of the
Scaligers, that tragic end was put to the rivalry of the great families,
Capelletti and Montecchi, which served Bandello as the foundation of one
of his most popular novels, and Shakspeare as the plot of Romeo and
Juliet. The tomb now shown as that of Juliet, is an ancient sarcophagus
of red granite: it has suffered from the fire which, burnt down the
church where it was originally placed.

The Visconti did not long rule in Verona: about the year 1405, the
Veronese placed themselves under the protection of Venice, whose good
and ill fortune they partook of, until the period of the French
Revolution, when, in 1796, the Venetian Republic ceased to exist. In
1798, the German army occupied Verona, and thought itself secure behind
walls which had stood against Catinat, and which had been improved and