204 FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE. [1839, 



through the night, with only a boy with me, through a 

 country which some years ago would not have been 

 deemed safe. But I felt not the slightest alarm, and 

 slept as soundly as possible. 



Ferrara is famous for possessing the tomb and chair 

 of Ariosto, but except this is as uninteresting as you 

 can imagine. It was Sunday, and I spent the day 

 within doors as well as I could. 



By making a very early ride I succeeded in reach- 

 ing Padua at ten o'clock this morning; visited the 

 university so famed of old, the churches, the splendid 

 Gaffe Pedrocchi, the Botanic Garden, the most an- 

 cient in Italy, of which Alpinius, the elder and the 

 younger, and Pontedera were the directors. It is un- 

 der the care of Visiani, 1 to whom I brought a letter 

 from Bentham, and who politely showed me all I 

 wished to see. The university is a queer old place 

 indeed, and the lecture-rooms the most dark, gloomy, 

 and incommodious places you can conceive; every- 

 thing is as old as the fifteenth century. I wish I 

 could describe the anatomical theatre, which is the 

 most curious specimen of antiquity I have seen. The 

 Museum of Natural History is so-so. There is still 

 a goodly number of students, but nothing to what 

 there was in the olden time. The Duomo is a 

 small affair, but the church of St. Antonio is like 

 a mosque, the most Saracenic building I ever saw, - 

 with its seven or eight balloon-shaped domes of vari- 

 ous sizes, and three or four tall and slender minarets. 

 I am sorry I can't get a decent print of it. The 

 interior is noble, and very rich in tombs and shrines 

 and sculptures. Here are tombs of many of the old 



1 Roberto de Visiani, 1809-1878; professor of botany at Padua; 

 author of a Flora Dalmatica. 



