than those of the Amphitheatre, for in many cases they are not constructed, but hewn out of the living rock, so that in this light the theatre is a gigantic sculpture.  Below all are cut channels to collect and carry off the water of the springs in which the rock abounds.  The depth of one of these channels near the Jesuit convent must be fifty feet below the present surface.  Only in one place does the ancient edifice rise near the top of the ground, and there is uncovered the arched front of what was once a family-box at the theatre, with the owner’s name graven upon the arch.  Many poor little houses have of course been demolished to carry on the excavations, and to the walls that joined them cling memorials of the simple life that once inhabited them.  To one of the buildings hung a melancholy fire-place left blackened with smoke, and battered with use, but witnessing that it had once been the heart of a home.  It was far more touching than any thing in the elder ruin; and I think nothing could have so vividly expressed the difference which, in spite of all the resemblances noticeable in Italy, exists between the ancient and modern civilization, as that family-box at the theatre and this simple fireside.

I do not now remember what fortunate chance it was that discovered to us the house of the Capulets, and I incline to believe that we gravitated toward it by operation of well-known natural principles which bring travellers acquainted with improbabilities wherever they go.  We found it a very old and time-worn edifice, built round an ample court, and we knew it, as we had been told we should, by the cap carven in stone above the interior of the grand portal.  The family, anciently one of the principal of Verona, has fallen from much of its former greatness.  On the occasion of our visit, Juliet, very dowdily dressed, looked down from the top of a long, dirty staircase which descended into the court, and seemed interested to see us; while her mother caressed with one hand a large yellow mastiff, and distracted it from its first impulse to fly upon us poor children of sentiment.  There was a great deal of stable litter, and many empty carts standing about in the court; and if I might hazard the opinion formed upon these and other appearances, I should say that old Capulet has now gone to keeping a hotel, united with the retail liquor business, both in a small way.

Nothing could be more natural, after seeing the house of the Capulets, than a wish to see Juliet’s Tomb, which is visited by all strangers, and is the common property of the hand-books.  It formerly stood in a garden, where, up to the beginning of this century, it served, says my “Viaggio in Italia,” “for the basest uses,”—­just as the sacred prison of Tasso was used for a charcoal bin.  We found the sarcophagus under a shed in one corner of the garden of the Orfanotrofio delle Franceschine, and had to confess to each other that it looked like a horse-trough roughly hewn out of