the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away,
and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours,
and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down
where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has
rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it
would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy
depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all
the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste;
any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are
muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have
changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will
seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act
them on this ghostly stage.

It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where the
darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the
main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by
the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory
of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing,
feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions
before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning
the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy
tone.

Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town, this
same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre
of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door,
and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest
trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately, came tearing round the
corner, an equestrian company from Paris: marshalling themselves