The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the low-lying marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine is distinguishable on the horizon to the left.  The road quickly draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark verdure become visible.  In a forest such as the famous Pineta, consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees.  And the effect produced by the continuity of spreading umbrella-like tops is peculiar.

Then, soon after the forest has become visible, the road brings the wayfarer within sight of a vast lonely structure heaving its huge long back against the low horizon, like some monster antidiluvian saurian, the fit denizen of this marsh world.  It is the venerable Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe.

Through all this dismal scene Paolina tripped lightly along with a quick step through the crisp morning air, no little awed by the dreary, voiceless desolation of it, but yet encouraged and not unpleased by the solitude of it.

The walk she found to be quite within her powers, at all events at that hour of the morning and in that season of the year; and when she stood before the western door of the ancient church, in front of which the road passes, Ludovico and Bianca were only then on the point of starting from the quarters of the latter, in the Strada di Porta Sisi.

Though knowing but little of the long and strangely diversified story which presses on the mind of a stranger read in history as he stands before the door of that desolate old church, Paolina could not but be much struck by the appearance of the building and of the scene around it.  If ever a spot was expressive in every way by which a locality can speak to the imagination of the abomination of desolation, the view which spreads before the eye at the huge doorway of the Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe is so.  The general character of the country around it has been described.  But the church itself is the most dreary and melancholy feature in the landscape.  No desolation resulting solely from the operations of Nature, even in her least kindly mood, can ever suffice to speak to the imagination as the change and decay of the works of man’s hand speak.  To produce the effect of desolation in its highest degree man must have at some former period been present on the scene, and the remains of his work must be there to show that activity, life, energy, has once existed where it exists no more.  Nature is always and everywhere progressive, and no sentiment of sadness belongs to progress.  Man’s ruined work alone imparts the suggestion—­(a delusive one, indeed, but most forcible)—­of falling back from the better to the worse.