their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating, "Oh! here's somebody come to see the Pictures! Don't go up! Don't go up!" While we went up, they waited very quietly about the door, in a crowd, cackling to one another occasionally, in a subdued tone; but the instant we appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, "What, you would go, would you! What do you think of it! How do you like it!" they attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, derisively, into Mantua.
The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared with these, Pork to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was! I would take their opinion on a question of art, in preference to the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus ignominiously escorted thither, my little friend was plainly reduced to the "piccolo giro," or little circuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. But my suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Tè (of which I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild place) imparted new life to him, and away we went.
The secret of the length of Midas' ears, would have been more extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough to have published it to all the world. The Palazzo Tè stands in a swamp, among this sort of vegetation; and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever saw.
Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Nor
