Note 311 — THE AGE OF BRONZE.

["I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful—beats even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact, giving a date1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.... The Gothic monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am I.'"—Letter to Moore, November 7, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 386, 387. The tombs of the Scaligers are close to the Church of Santa Maria l'Antica. Juliet's tomb, "of red Verona marble," is in the garden of the Orfanotrofio, between the Via Cappucini and the Adige. It is not "that ancient vault where all the kindred of the Capulets lie," which has long since been destroyed. Since 1814 Verona had been under Austria's sway, and had "treacherously" forgotten her republican traditions.]