lest some more enlightened critic should come and hang me with
the same rope. Its sum and substance was to have been that--
superficially--Germany is ugly; that Munich is a nightmare,
Heidelberg a disappointment (in spite of its charming castle) and
even Nueremberg not a joy for ever. But comparisons are odious,
and if Munich is ugly Verona is beautiful enough. You may laugh
at my logic, but will probably assent to my meaning. I carried
away from Verona a precious mental picture upon which I cast an
introspective glance whenever between Botzen and Strassburg the
oppression of external circumstance became painful. It was a
lovely August afternoon in the Roman arena--a ruin in which
repair and restoration have been so watchfully and plausibly
practised that it seems all of one harmonious antiquity. The
vast stony oval rose high against the sky in a single clear,
continuous line, broken here and there only by strolling and
reclining loungers. The massive tiers inclined in solid monotony
to the central circle, in which a small open-air theatre was in
active operation. A small quarter of the great slope of masonry
facing the stage was roped off into an auditorium, in which the
narrow level space between the foot-lights and the lowest step
figured as the pit. Foot-lights are a figure of speech, for the
performance was going on in the broad glow of the afternoon, with
a delightful and apparently by no means misplaced confidence in
the good-will of the spectators. What the piece was that was
deemed so superbly able to shift for itself I know not--very
possibly the same drama that I remember seeing advertised during
my former visit to Verona; nothing less than La Tremenda
Giustizia di Dio. If titles are worth anything this product
of the melodramatist's art might surely stand upon its own legs.
Along the tiers above the little group of regular spectators was