From the Museo Civico, whither we repaired first in the morning, and where there are some beautiful Montagnas, and an assortment of good and bad works by other masters, we went to the Campo Santo, which is worthy to be seen, if only because of the beautiful Laschi monument by Vela, one of the greatest modern sculptors.  It is nothing more than a very simple tomb, at the door of which stands a figure in flowing drapery, with folded hands and uplifted eyes in an attitude exquisitely expressive of grief.  The figure is said to be the portrait statue of the widow of him within the tomb, and the face is very beautiful.  We asked if the widow was still young, and the custodian answered us in terms that ought to endear him to all women, if not to our whole mortal race,—­“Oh quite young, yet.  She is perhaps fifty years old.”

After the Campo Santo one ought to go to that theatre which Palladio built for the representation of classic tragedy, and which is perhaps the perfectest reproduction of the Greek theatre in the world.  Alfieri is the only poet of modern times, whose works have been judged worthy of this stage, and no drama has been given on it since 1857, when the “Oedipus Tyrannus” of Sophocles was played.  We found it very silent and dusty, and were much sadder as we walked through its gayly frescoed, desolate anterooms than we had been in the Campo Santo.  Here used to sit, at coffee and bassett, the merry people who owned the now empty seats of the theatre,—­lord, and lady, and abbe—­who affected to be entertained by the scenes upon the stage.  Upon my word, I should like to know what has become, in the other world, of those poor pleasurers of the past whose memory makes one so sad upon the scenes of their enjoyment here!  I suppose they have something quite as unreal, yonder, to satisfy them as they had on earth, and that they still play at happiness in the old rococo way, though it is hard to conceive of any fiction outside of Italy so perfect and so entirely suited to their unreality as this classic theatre.  It is a Greek theatre, for Greek tragedies; but it could never have been for popular amusement, and it was not open to the air, though it had a sky skillfully painted in the centre of the roof.  The proscenium is a Greek facade, in three stories, such as never was seen in Greece; and the architecture of the three streets running back from the proscenium, and forming the one unchangeable scene of all the dramas, is—­like the statues in the niches and on the gallery inclosing the auditorium—­Greek in the most fashionable Vicentine taste.  It must have been but an operatic chorus that sang in the semicircular space just below the stage and in front of the audience.  Admit and forget these small blemishes and aberrations, however, and what a marvelous thing Palladio’s theatre is!  The sky above the stage is a wonderful trick, and those three streets—­one in the centre and serving as entrance for the royal persons of the drama, one at the right for the nobles, and