_September_ 5_th_.—The glow and splendour of the rising sun, for once in
my life, drew little of my attention. I was too deeply plunged in my
reveries, to notice the landscape which lay before me; and the walls of
Padua presented themselves some time ere I was aware. At any other
moment, how sensibly should I have been affected with their appearance!
how many ideas of Antenor and his Trojans, would have thronged into my
memory! but now I regarded the scene with indifference, and passed many a
palace, and many a woody garden, with my eyes riveted to the ground. The
first object that appeared, upon lifting them up, was a confused pile of
spires and cupolas, dedicated to blessed St. Anthony, who betook himself
to the conversion of fish, after the heretics would lend no ear to his
discourses.
You are too well apprised of the veneration I have always entertained for
this ingenious preacher, to doubt that I immediately repaired to his
shrine and offered up my little orisons before it. Mine was a disturbed
spirit, and required all the balm of St. Anthony’s kindness to appease
it. Perhaps you will say I had better gone to bed, and applied myself to
my sleepy friend, the pagan divinity. ’Tis probable that you are in the
right; but I could not retire to rest without venting some portion of
effervescence in sighs and supplications. The nave was filled with
decrepit women and feeble children, kneeling by baskets of vegetables and
other provisions; which, by good Anthony’s interposition, they hoped to
sell advantageously in the course of the day. Beyond these, nearer the
choir, and in a gloomier part of the edifice, knelt a row of rueful
penitents, smiting their breasts, and lifting their eyes to heaven.
Further on, in front of the dark recess, where the sacred relics are
deposited, a few desperate, melancholy sinners lay prostrate.
To these I joined myself, and fell down on the steps before the shrine.
The sunbeams had not yet penetrated into this religious quarter; and the
only light it received proceeded from the golden lamps, which hang in
clusters round the sanctuary. A lofty altar, decked with superstitious
prodigality, conceals the holy pile from profane glances. Those who are
profoundly touched with its sanctity may approach, and walking round,
look through the crevices of the tomb, and rub their noses against the
identical bones of St. Anthony, which, it is observed, exude a balsamic
odour. But supposing a traveller ever so heretical, I would advise him
by no means to neglect this pilgrimage; since every part of the recess he
visits is decorated with the most exquisite sculptures. Sansovino and
the best artists have vied with each other in carving the alto relievos
of the arcade, which, for design and execution, would do honour to the
sculptors of antiquity.
Having observed these objects with much less exactness than they merited,
and acted perhaps too capital a part amongst the devotees, I hastened to
the inn, luckily hard by, and one of the best I am acquainted with. Here
I soon fell asleep in defiance of sunshine. ’Tis true my slumbers were
not a little agitated. St. Anthony had been deaf to my prayer, and I
still found myself a frail, infatuated mortal.
At five I got up; we dined, and afterwards, scarcely knowing, nor much
caring, what became of us, we strolled to the great hall of the town; an
enormous edifice, as large as that of Westminster, but free from stalls,
or shops, or nests of litigation. The roof, one spacious vault of brown
timber, casts a solemn gloom, which was still increased by the lateness
of the hour, and not diminished by the wan light, admitted through the
windows of pale blue glass. The size and shape of this colossal chamber,
the coving of the roof, with beams like perches for the feathered race,
stretching across it, and, above all, the watery gleams that glanced
through the casements, possessed my fancy with ideas of Noah’s ark, and
almost persuaded me I beheld that extraordinary vessel. The
representation one sees of it in Scheutzer’s “Physica Sacra” seems to be
formed upon this very model, and for several moments I indulged the
chimera of imagining myself confined within its precincts. How
willingly, could I but choose my companions, would I encounter a deluge,
to float whole years instead of months upon the waves!
We remained walking to and fro in the ark, till the twilight faded into
total darkness. It was then full time to retire, as the guardian of the
place was by no means formed to divine our diluvian ideas.