1409, they fortified it so strongly that the confederate princes united
in the league of Cambray assaulted it in vain.

Santa Giustina's church is the most beautiful place of worship I have
ever yet seen; so regularly, so uniformly noble, uncrowded with figures
too: the entrance strikes you with its simple grandeur, while the small
chapels to the right and left hand are kept back behind a colonade of
pillars, and do not distract attention and create confusion of ideas,
as do the numerous cupolas of St. Anthony's more magnificent but less
pleasing structure. The high altar here at Santa Giustina's church
stands at the end, and greatly increases the effect on entering, which
always suffers when the length is broken. Nothing, however, is to be
perfect in this world, and Paul Veronese's fine view of the suffering
martyr has not size enough for the place; and is beside crowded with
small unconsequential figures, which cannot be distinguished at a
distance. Some carvings round the altar, representing, in wooden
bas-reliefs, the history of the Old and New Testament, are admirable in
their kind; and I am told that the organ on which Bertoni, a blind
nephew of Ferdinand, our well-known composer, played to entertain us, is
one of the first in Italy: but an ordinary instrument would have charmed
us had he touched it.

I must not leave the Terra Firma, as they call it, without mentioning
once more some of the animals it produces; among which the asses are so
justly renowned for their size and beauty, that _come un afino di Padua_
is proverbial when speaking of strength among the Italians: how should
it be otherwise indeed, where every herb and every shrub breathes
fragrance; and where the quantity as well as quality of their food
naturally so increases their milk, that I should think some of them.
might yield as much as an ordinary cow?