the effect produced by the continuity of spreading umbrella-like
tops is peculiar.

Then, soon after the forest has become visible, the road brings the
wayfarer within sight of a vast lonely structure heaving its huge
long back against the low horizon, like some monster antidiluvian
saurian, the fit denizen of this marsh world. It is the venerable
Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe.

Through all this dismal scene Paolina tripped lightly along with a
quick step through the crisp morning air, no little awed by the
dreary, voiceless desolation of it, but yet encouraged and not
unpleased by the solitude of it.

The walk she found to be quite within her powers, at all events at
that hour of the morning and in that season of the year; and when
she stood before the western door of the ancient church, in front of
which the road passes, Ludovico and Bianca were only then on the
point of starting from the quarters of the latter, in the Strada di
Porta Sisi.

Though knowing but little of the long and strangely diversified
story which presses on the mind of a stranger read in history as he
stands before the door of that desolate old church, Paolina could
not but be much struck by the appearance of the building and of the
scene around it. If ever a spot was expressive in every way by which
a locality can speak to the imagination of the abomination of
desolation, the view which spreads before the eye at the huge
doorway of the Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe is so. The
general character of the country around it has been described. But