Men, pil'd on men, with active leaps arise, Though we meet with the Veneti in the old poets, the city of Venice is too modern to find a place among them. Sannazarius's epigram is too well known to be inserted. The same poet has celebrated this city in two other places of his poems: -Quis Veneta miracula proferat urbis? Una instar magni quæ simul orbis habet. Lib. 3. el. 1. Venetia stands with endless beauties crown'd, Nec tu semper eris, quæ septem amplecteris arces, Lib. 2. el. 1. Thou too shalt fall by time or barb'rous foes, FERRARA, RAVENNA, RIMINI. AT Venice I took a bark for Ferrara, and in my way thither saw several mouths of the Po, by which it empties itself into the Adriatic. -Quo non alius per pinguia culta In mare purpureum violentior effluit amnis. VIRG. Georg. 4. which is true, if understood only of the rivers of Italy. Lucan's description of the Po would have been very beautiful, had he known when to have given over: Quoque magis nullum tellus se solvit in amnem The Po that, rushing with uncommon force, Lib. 2. Quench'd the dire flame that set the world on fire. The poet's reflections follow. Non minor hic Nilo, si non per plana jacentis Non minor hic Istro, nisi quod, dum permeat orbem Nor would the Nile more watʼry stores contain, That is, says Scaliger, the Eridanus would be bigger than the Nile and Danube, if the Nile and Danube were not bigger than the Eridanus. What makes the poet's remark the more improper, the very reason why the Danube is greater than the Po, as he assigns it, is that which really makes the Po as great as it is; for before its fall into the gulf, it receives into its channel the most considerable rivers of Piedmont, Milan, and the rest of Lombardy. From Venice to Ancona the tide comes in very sensibly at its stated periods, but rises more or less in proportion as it advances nearer the head of the gulf. Lucan has run out of his way to describe the phenomenon, which is indeed very extraordinary to those who lie out of the neighbourhood of the great ocean; and, according to his usual custom, lets his poem stand still that he may give way to his own reflections. Quáque jacet littus dubium, quod terra, fretumque Destituatque ferens: an sidere mota secundo Tethyos unda vagæ lunaribus æstuet horis : Lib. 1. Wash'd with successive seas, the doubtful strand Nor into what the gods conceal presumptuously inquire. At Ferrara I met with nothing extraordinary. The town is very large, but extremely thin of people. It has a citadel, and something like a fortification running round it, but so large that it requires more soldiers to defend it than the pope has in his whole dominions. The streets are as beautiful as any I have seen, in their length, breadth, and regularity. The Benedictines have the finest convent of the place. They showed us in the church Ariosto's monument: his epitaph says, he was Nobilitate generis atque animi clarus, in rebus publicis administrandis, in regendis populis, in gravissimis et summis Pontificis legationibus prudentia consilio, eloquentia præstantissimus. I came down a branch of the Po, as far as Alberto, within ten miles of Ravenna. All this space lies miserably uncultivated till you come near Ravenna, where the soil is made extremely fruitful, and shows what much of the rest might be, were there hands enough to manage it to the best advantage. It is now on both sides the road very marshy, and generally overgrown with rushes, which made me fancy it was once floated by the sea, that lies within four miles of it. Nor could I in the least doubt it when I saw Ravenna, that is now almost at the same distance from the Adriatic, though it was formerly the most famous of all the Roman ports. One may guess at its ancient situation from Martial's Meliusque rana garriant Ravennates. Ravenna's frogs in better music croak. Lib. 3. and the description that Silius Italicus has given us of it: Quique gravi remo limosis segniter undis Lib. 8. Accordingly the old geographers represent it as situated among marshes and shallows. The place which is shown for the haven is on a level with the town, and has probably been stopped up by the great heaps of dirt that the sea has thrown into it; for all the soil on that side of Ravenna has been left there insensibly by the sea's discharging itself upon it for so many ages. The ground must have been formerly much lower, for otherwise the town would have lain under water. The remains of the Pharos, that stand about three miles from the sea, and two from the town, have their foundations covered with earth for some yards, as they told me, which notwithstanding are upon a level with the fields that lie about them, though it is probable they took the advantage of a |