The region here described is the Marca Trivigiana, lying between Venice (here indicated by one of its principal wards, the Rialto) and the Alps, dividing Italy from Germany. ↩

The hill on which stands the Castello di Romano, the birthplace of the tyrant Ezzelino, or Azzolino, whom, for his cruelties, Dante punished in the river of boiling blood, Inferno XII 110. Before his birth his mother is said to have dreamed of a lighted torch, as Hecuba did before the birth of Paris, Althaea before the birth of Meleager, and the mother of St. Dominic before the birth of