ST. MARK'S REST. THE HISTORY OF VENICE WRITTEN FOR THE HELP OF THE FEW TRAVELLERS WHO STILL CARE FOR HER MONUMENTS. BY JOHN KUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHCRCB, AND SI.ADK PROFESSOR OF FIN! ABT, OXFORD. I. BURDEN OF TYRE. II. LATRATOR ANUBIS. III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. V. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL. VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS. VII. DIVINE RIGHTS. VIII. THE REQUIEM. SUPPLEMENTS. FIRST THE SHRINE OP THE SLAVES. SHCOND THE PLACE OP DRAGONS. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. 8ANCTU8, 8ANCTU8, 8ANCTUS. NEW YORK : JOHN WILEY & SONS, 53 EAST TKNTH STUEKT. 1890. stack Annex PREFACE. GRKAT nations "write their autobiographies in three manuscriptsthe hook of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Xot one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others ; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune ; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children : but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race. Again, the policy of a nation may be compelled, and, therefore, not indicative of its true character. Its words may be false, while yet the race remain unconscious of their falsehood; and no historian can a<> tiredly detect the hypocrisy. But art is always instinctive ; and the honesty or pretence of it are therefore open to the dav. The Delphic oracle may or may not have been spoken by an honest priestess, we cannot tell by the words of it ; a liar may rationally believe them a lie, such a.s he would himself have spoken ; and a true man, with IV PREFACE. equal reason, may believe them spoken in truth. But there is no question possible in art : at a glance (when we have learned to read), we know the religion of An- gelico to be sincere, and of Titian, assumed. The evidence, therefore, of the third book is the most .vital to our knowledge of any nation's life ; and the his- tory of Venice is chiefly written in such manuscript. It once lay open on the waves, miraculous, like St. Cuth- bert's book, a golden legend on countless leaves : now, like Baruch's roll, it is being cut with the penknife, leaf by leaf, and consumed in the fire of the most brutish of the fiends. What fragments of it 'may yet be saved in blackened scroll, like those withered Cottonian relics in our National library, of which so much has been redeemed by love and skill, this book will help you, partly, to read. Partly, for I know only myself in part ; but what I tell \<>u, so far as it reaches, will be truer than you have heard hitherto, because founded on this absolutely faith- ful witness, despised by other historians, if not wholly unintelligible to them. I am obliged to write shortly, being too old now to spare time for any thing more than needful work ; and I write at speed, careless of afterwards remediable mis- takes, of which adverse readers may gather as manv as they choose : that to wliich such readers are adverse will be found truth that can abide any quantity of adversitv. As I can get my chapters done, they shall be published iii this form, for such service as they can presently do. PREFACE. V The entire book will consist of not more than twelve such parts, with two of appendices, forming two volumes: if I can get what I have to say into six parts, with one appen- dix, all the better. Two separate little guides, one to the Academy, the other to San Giorgio de' Schiavoni, will, I hope, be ready with the opening numbers of this book, which must depend somewhat on their collateral illustration ; and what I find likely to be of service to the traveller in my old ' Stones of Venice ' is in course of re-publication, with further illustration of the complete works of Tintoret. But this cannot be ready till -the autumn ; and what I have said of the mightiest of Venetian masters, in my lecture on his relation to Michael Angelo, will be enough at present to enable the student to complete the range of his knowledge to the close of the story of ' St. Mark's Rest.' CONTENTS. PREFACE CHAPTER I. THE BURDEN OP TYRE ........................................ 1 CHAPTER II. LATRATOR ANUBIS ........................................... 12 y CHAPTER III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM .............................. 25 CHAPTER IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER ............................. 34 CHAPTER V. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL ................................... 49 CHAPTER VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS ................ .................... = 57 CHAPTER VII. DIVINE RIGHT ............................................... 65 CHAPTER VIII. THE REQUIEM ................................................ 75 viii CONTENTS. PAGE NOTE ON THE MOSAICS OF ST. MARK'S 106 SUPPLEMENT I. THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES Ill SUPPLEMENT II. Edited by J. Ruskin. THE PLACE OF DRAGONS 155 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. Edited by J. Ruskin. SANCTUS, SANCTUS, SANCTUS 189 INDEX.. .217 ST. MARK'S REST. CHAPTER I. THE BURDEN OF TYRE. Go first into the Piazzetta, and stand anywhere in the shade, where YOU can well see its two granite pillars. Your Murray tells you that they are ' famous,' and that the one is " surmounted by the bronze lion of St. Mark, the other by the statue of St. Theodore, the Protector of the Republic." It does not, however, tell you why, or for what the pillars are ' famous.' Nor, in reply to a question which might conceivably occur to the curious, why St. Theodore should protect the Republic by standing on a crocodile : nor whether the " bronze lion of St. Mark " was cast by Sir Edwin Landseer, or some more ancient and ignorant person ; nor what these nigged corners of limestone rock. at the bases of the granite, were perhaps once in the shape of. Have you any idea why, for the sake of any such things, these pillars were once, or should yet be, more re- nowned than the Monument, or the column of the Place Vendome, both of which are much bigger ( AVell, they are famous, first, in memorial of something which is better worth remembering than the fire of Loii- 2 ST. MARK S REST. don, or the achievements of the great Napoleon. And tlicv are famous, or used to he, among artists, because they are beautiful columns ; nay, as far as we old artists know, the most beautiful columns at present extant and erect in the conveniently visitable world. Each of these causes of their fame I will try in some dim degree to set before you. I said they were set there in memory of things, not of the man who did the things. They are to Venice, in fact, what the Nelson column would be to London, if, instead of a statue of Nelson and a coil of rope, on the top of it, we had put one of the four Evangelists, and a saint, for the praise of the Gospel and of Holiness: trusting the memory of Nelson to our own souls. However, the memory of the Nelson of A"enice, being now seven hundred years old, has more or less faded from the heart of Venice herself, and seldom finds its way into the heart of a stranger. Somewhat concerning him, though a stranger, you may care to hear, but you must hear it in quiet ; so let your boatman take you across to San Giorgio Maggiore ; there you can moor your gondola under the steps in the shade, and read in peace, looking up at the pillars when you like. In the year 1117, when the Doge Ordelafo Falier had been killed under the walls of Zara, Venice chose, for his successor, Domenico Michiel, Michael of the Lord, ( Catto- lico nomo e audace,' * a catholic and brave man, the serv- ant of God and of St. Michael. * Marin Sanuto. Vitee Ducuni Venetorum, henceforward quoted as V., with references to the pages of Muratori's edition. See Appendix, Art. 1, which with following appendices will be given in a separate number as soon as there are enough to form one. I. THK WRDKX OF TYRE. Another of Mr. Mnrray's^publications for your general assistance ('Sketches from Venetian History') informs yon that, at this time, the ambassadors of the King of Jerusalem (the second Baldwin) were "awakening the pious zeal, and stimulating the commercial appetite, of the Venetians." This elegantly balanced sentence is meant to suggest to you that the Venetians had as little piety as we have our- selves, and were as fond of money that article being the only one which an Englishman could now think of, as an object of " commercial appetite." The facts which take this aspect to the lively cockney, arc, in reality, that Venice was sincerely pious, and in- tensely covetous. But not covetous merely of money. She was covetous, first, of fame ; secondly, of kingdom ; thirdly, of pillars of marble and granite, such as these that you see ; lastly, and quite principally, of the relics of good people. Such an ' appetite,' glib-tongued cockney friend, is not wholly ' commercial.' To the nation in this religiously covetous hunger, Bald- win appealed, a captive to the Saracen. The Pope sent letters to press his suit, and the Doge Michael called the State to council in the church of St. Mark. There he, and the Primate of Venice, and her nobles, and such of the people as had due entrance with them, by way of be- ginning the business, celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit. Then the Primate read the Pope's letters aloud to the assembly ; then the Doge made the assembly a speech. And there was no opposition party in that parli- ament to make opposition speeches ; and there were no reports of the speed i next morning in any Times or Daily Telegraph. And there were no plenipoten- 4 ST. MARK'S REST. tiaries sent to the East, and" back again. But the vote passed for war. The Doge left his son in charge of the State ; and sailed for the Holy Land, with forty galleys and twenty-eight beaked ships of battle " ships which were painted with divers colors," * far seen in pleasant splendor. Some faded likeness of them, twenty years ago, might be seen in the painted sails of the fishing boats which lay crowded, in lowly lustre, where the development of civili- zation now only brings black steam -tugs, f to bear the people of Venice to the bathing-machines of Lido, cover- ing their Ducal Palace with soot, and consuming its sculp- tures with sulphurous acid. The beaked ships of the Doge Michael had each a hun- dred oars, each oar pulled by two men, not accommo- dated with sliding seats, but breathed well for their great boat-race between the shores of Greece and Italy, whose names, alas, with the names of their trainers, are noteless in the journals of the barbarous time. They beat their way across the waves, nevertheless, \ to the place by the sea-beach in Palestine where Dorcas worked for the poor, and St. Peter lodged with his name- sake tanner. There, showing first but a squadron of a few ships, they drew the Saracen fleet out to sea, and so set upon them. * ' The Acts of God, by the Franks.' Afterwards quoted as G. ((n-sta Dei). Again, see Appendix, Art. 1. f The sails may still be seen scattered farther east along the Riva ; but the beauty of the scene, which gave some image of the past, was in their combination with the Ducal Palace, not with the new French and English Restaurants. \ Oars, of course, for calm, and adverse winds, only ; bright sails full to the helpful breeze. I. THE BL'KPEN OF TYRE. 5 And the Doge, in his true Duke's place, first in his beaked ship, led fur the Saracen admiral's, struck her, and sunk her. And his host of falcons followed to the slaughter : and to the prey also, for the battle was not without gratification of the commercial appetite. The Venetians took a number of ships containing precious silks, and " a quantity of drugs and pepper." After which battle, the Doge went up to Jerusalem, there to take further counsel concerning the use of his Venetian power: and, being received there witli honor, kept his Christmas in the mountain of the Lord. In the council of war that followed, debate became stern whether to undertake the siege of Tyre or Ascalon. The judgments of men being at pause, the matter was given to the judgment of (iod. They put the names of the two cities in an urn, on the altar of the Church of the Sepul- chre. An orphan child was taken to draw the lots, who, putting his hand into the urn, drew out the name of TVKK. Which name you may have heard before, and read per- haps words concerning her fall careless always when the fall took place, or whose sword smote her. She was still a glorious city, still queen of the treasures of the sea;* chietly renowned for her work in glas< and in purple ; set in command of a rich plain, " irrigated with plentiful and perfect waters, famous for its sugar-canes ; ' fortissima/ she herself, upon her rock, double walled towards the sea, treble walled to the land : and, to all seeming, unconquerable but by famine." * " Passava tnttavia per l;i pin popolosav commerciante <\i Siria." Kninanin, ' Storia IWnmiMitata ill Veiie/.ia,' Venice, is,"):}, vol. ii., wilt-net' I lake what else is said in the text ; but see in the Gesta IVi. the older MarinSanuto, lib. iii.,pars. fi. cap. xii., and pars, -s.lv. cap. ii. 6 ST. MARK S REST. For their help in this great siege, the Venetians made their conditions. That in every city subject to the King of Jerusalem, the Venetians should have a street, a square, a bath, and a. bakehouse : that is to say, a place to live in, a place to meet in, and due command of water and bread, all free of tax ; that they should use their own balances, weights, and measures (not by any means false ones, you will please to observe) ; and that the King of Jerusalem should pay annually to the Doge of Venice, on the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, three hundred Saracen byzants. Such, with due approval of the two Apostles of the Gentiles, being the claims of these Gentile mariners from the King of the Holy City, the same were accepted in these terms : " In the name of the Holy and un- divided Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, these are the treaties which Baldwin, second King of the Latins in Jerusalem, made with St. Mark and Dominicus Michael " ; and ratified by the signatuies of / GUARIMOND, Patriarch of Jerusalem ; EBREMAR, Archbishop of Cresarea ; BERNARD, Archbishop of Nazareth ; ASQUIRIN, Bishop of Bethlehem ; \GOLDUMUS, Abbot of St. Mary's, in the Vale of Jehosh- aphat ; AcciiARD, Prior of the Temple of the Lord ; GERARD, Prior of the Holy Sepulchre ; ARNARD, Prior of Mount Syon ; and HUGO DE PAGANO, Master of the Soldiers of the Tem- ple. With others many, whose names are in the chronicle of Andita Dandolo. I. THE BURDEN OF TYRE. 7 And thereupon the French crusaders by land, and the Venetians by sea, drew line of siege round Tyre. You will not expect me here, at St. George's step-. t<> give account of the various mischief done on each other with the dart, the stone, and the fire, by the Christian and Saracen, day by day. Both were at last wearied, when report came of help to the Tyrians by an army from Damax-us, and a fleet from Egypt. Upon which news, discord arose in the invading camp ; and rumor went abroad that the Venetians would desert their allies, and save themselves in their fleet. These reports coming to the ears of the Doge, he took (according to tradition) the sails from his ships' masts, and the rudders from their sterns,* and brought sails, rudders, and tackle ashore, and into the French camp, adding to these, for his pledge, " grave words." The French knights, in shame of their miscreance, bade him retit his ships. The Count of Tripoli and William of Bari were sent to make head against the Damascenes ; and the Doge, leaving ships enough to blockade the port, sailed himself, with what could be spared, to find the Kgyptian ileet. He sailed to Alexandria, showed his sails along the coast in detiance, and returned. Meantime his coin for payment of his mariner.- was .-pent. He did not care to depend on remittances, lie * By doing this lie left his fleet helpless before an enemy, for nuval warfare at this time depended wholly on the fine steering of the ships at the moment of onset. But for all ordinary mano-uvres necessary for the safety of the fleet in harbor, their o;irs wi-re enough. Andrea Oandolo says he took a plank (" tabula") out of each ship, a more fatal injury. I suspect the truth to have been that he simply lin- t-hipped the rudders, and brought them into camp ; a grave speech- -ymbol, earnest enough, but not costly of useless labor. 8 ST. MARK'S REST. struck a coinage of leather, with St. Mark's and his own shield on it, promising his soldiers that for every leathern rag, so signed, at Yenice, there should be given a golden zecchin. And his word was taken ; and his word was kept. So the steady siege went on, till the Tyriaus lost hope, and asked terms of surrender. They obtained security of person and property, to the indignation of the Christian soldiery, who had expected the sack of Tyre. The city was divided into three parts, of which two were given to the King of Jerusalem, the third to the Venetians. JIow Baldwin governed his two thirds, I do not know, nor what capacity there was in the Tyrians of being gov- erned at all. But the Venetians, for their third part, ap- pointed a ' bailo ' to do civil justice, and a ' viscount ' to answer for military defence ; and appointed magistrates under these, who, on entering office, took the following oath : " I swear on the holy Gospels of God, that sincerely and without fraud I will do right to all men who are under the jurisdiction of Venice in the city of Tyre ; and to every other who shall be brought before me for judg- ment, according to the ancient use and law of the city. And so far as I know not, and am left uninformed of that, I will act by such rule as shall appear to me just, according to the appeal and answer. Farther, I will give faithful and honest counsel to the Bailo and the Viscount, u'li f 11 lam asked for it; and if they share any secret with me, I will keep it ; neither will I procure by fraud, good to a friend, nor evil to an enemy." And thus tlr_ Venetian state planted stable colonies in Asia. I. THE BURDEN OF TYRE. 9 Thus far Romanin ; to whom, nevertheless, it does not occur to ask what ; establishing colonies in Asia ' meant for Venice. "Whether they were in Asia, Africa, or the Island of Atlantis, did not at this time greatly matter ; but it mattered infinitely that they were colonies tiviny in fr'i< /////// rrlittnm* "-'th the Saracen, and that at the verv same moment arose cause of quite other than friendly re- lations, between the Venetian and the Greek. For while the Doge Michael fought for the Christian king at Jerusalem, the Christian emperor at Byzantium attacked the defenceless states of Venice, on the main- land of Dalmatia, and seized their cities. Whereupon the Doge set sail homewards, fell on the Greek islands of the Egean, and took the spoil of them ; seized Cephalonia ; recovered the lost cities of Dalmatia; compelled the Greek emperor to sue for peace, gave it, in angry scorn ; and set his sails at last for his own Rialto, with the scep- tres of Tyre and of Byzantium to lay at the feet of Venice. Spoil also he brought, enough, of such commercial kind as Venice valued. These pillars that you look upon, of rosy and gray rock ; and the dead bodies of St. Donato and St. Isidore. lie thus returned, in 1126 : Fate had left him yet four years to live. In which, among other homely work, he made the beginning for you (oh much civilized friend, you will at least praise him in this) of these mighty gaseou.- illnminations by which Venice provides for your seeing her shop-wares by night, and provides against your seeing the moon, or stars, or sea. For, finding the narrow streets of Venice dark, and opportune for robbers, he ordered that at the heads of 10 ST. MARK'S REST. them there should be set little tabernacles for images of the saints, and before each a light kept burning. Tims he commands, not as thinking that the saints themselves had need of candles, but that they would gladly grant to poor mortals in danger, material no less than heavenly light. And having in this pretty and lowly beneficence ended what work he had to do in this world, feeling his strength fading, he laid down sword and ducal robe together ; and became a monk, in this island of St. George, at the shore of which you are reading : but the old monastery on it which' sheltered him was destroyed long ago, that this stately Palladian portico might be built, to delight Mr. Eustace on his classical tour, and other such men of re- nown, and persons of excellent taste, like yourself. And there he died, and was buried ; and there he lies, virtually tombless : the place of his grave you find by going down the steps on your right hand behind the altar, leading into what was yet a monastery before the last Italian revolution, but is now a finally deserted loneli- ness. Over his grave there is a heap of frightful modern up- holsterer's work, Longhena's ; his first tomb (of which you may see some probable likeness in those at the side of St. John and St. Paul) being removed as too modest and time worn for the vulgar Venetian of the seventeenth century ; and this, that you see, put up to please the Lord Mayor and the beadles. The old inscription was copied on the rotten black slate which is breaking away in thin flakes, dimmed by dusty salt. The beginning of it yet remains : " Here lies the Terror of the Greeks." Read also the last lines : I. THE BURDEN OF TYRE. 11 THOU ART, WHO COMEST TO BEHOLD THIS TOMB OF HIS, BOW THYSELF DOWX BEFOKE GoD, BECAUSE OF HIM." Of these things, then, tlie two pillars before you are " famous ' in memorial. TVhat in themselves they po.-~ deserving honor, we will next try to discern. But ye you try now to make a capital of it without cut- ting away so much cheese. If you begin half way down the side, with a shorter but more curved cut, you may re- duce the base to the same form, and supposing you are working in marble instead of cheese you have not only much le.-s trouble, but you keep a much more solid block of stone to bear superincumbent weight. Now you may go back to the Piazzetta, and, thence proceeding, so as to get svell in front of the Ducal Palace, look first to the Greek shaft capitals, and then to those of the Ducal Palace upper arcade. You will recognize, especially in those nearest the Ponte della Paglia (at least, if you have an eye in your head), the shape of your second block of Gruyere, decorated, it is true, in mani- fold ways, but essentially shaped like your most cheaply cut block of cheese. Modern architects, in imitating these capitals, can reach as- far as imitating your Gruyere. Not being able to decorate the block when they have got it, they declare that decoration is "a superficial merit." ^ e>, very superficial. Eyelashes and eyebrows lips and nostrils chin-dimples and curling hair, are all very superiici.il things, wherewith Heaven decorates the human skull ; making the maid's face of it, or the knight's. Neverthele-s, what I want you to notice now, is but the form of the block of Istrian stone, usually with a spiral. IS ST. MARK'S REST. more or less elaborate, on each of its projecting angles. For there is infinitude of history in that solid angle, pre- vailing over the light Greek leaf. That is related to our humps and clumps at Durham and Winchester. Here is, indeed, Xorman temper, prevailing over Byzantine; %nd it means, the outcome of that quarrel of Alichiel with the Greek Emperor. It means western for eastern life, in the mind of Venice. It means her fellowship with the western chivalry ; her triumph in the Crusades, triumph over her own foster nurse, Byzantium. Which significances of it, and many others with them, if we w r ould follow, we must leave our stone-cutting for a little while, and map out the chart of Venetian history from its beginning into such masses as we may remember without confusion. But, since this will take time, and we cannot quite tell how long it may be before we get back to the t\velfth century again, and to our Piazzetta shafts, let me complete what I can tell you of these at once. In the first place, the Lion of St. Mark is a splendid piece of eleventh or twelfth century bronze. I know that by the style of him ; but have never found out where he came from.* I may now chance on it, however, at any moment in other quests. Eleventh or twelfth century, the Lion fifteenth, or later, his wings ; very delicate in feather-workmanship, but with little lift or strike in them ; * "He" the actual piece of forged metal, I mean. (See Appendix II. for account of its recent botchings.) Your modern English ex- plainers of him have never heard, I observe, of any such person as an ' Evangelist,' or of any Christian symbol of such a being ! See pagu 42 of Mr. Adams' 'Venice Past and Present ' (Edinburgh and New York, 1852). II. LATRATOR ANT1US. 10 oVrorative mainly. Without doubt his first wings were thin sheets of beaten bronze, shred into plumule : far wider in their sweep than these.f The statue of St. Theodore, wliatever its age, is wholly without merit. I can't make it out myself, nor find record of it : in a stonemason's yed it as modern. But this merit of the statue is here of little consequence, the power of it being wholly in its meaning. St. Theodore represents the power of the Spirit of (iolo c di>' grand! clie ne sono gli abitanti. Non vi e vera fclicita, ,\v their u\vn street in the holy city, and their covenant with the Prior of Mount Syon, and of the Tem- ple of the Lord: they themselves having struck down Tyre with their own swords, taken to themselves her power, and now reading, as of themselves, the encom- passing henediction of the prophecy for all Gentile nations, " Ecce alienigeme et Tyrns." A notable piece of Scripture for them, to be dwelt on, in every word of it, with all humility of faith. "What then /# the meaning of the two verses just pre- ceding these '. " Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou City of God. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon, with them that know me.'' If yon like to see a curious mistake at least of one Prot- estant's 'private judgment 'of this verse, you must look 22 ST. MARK'S REST. at my reference to it in Fors Clavigera of April, 1876, p. 110, with its correction by Mr. Gordon, in Fors for June, 1876, pp. 178-203, all containing variously useful notes on these verses ; of which the gist is, however, that the ' Rahab ' of the Latin text is the Egyptian ' Dragon,' the crocodile, signifying in myth, which has now been three thousand years continuous in human mind, the total power of the crocodile-god of Egypt, couchant on his slime, born of it, mistakable for it, his gray length of unintelligible scales, fissured and wrinkled like dry clay, itself but, as it were, a shelf or shoal of coagulated, malig- nant earth. He and his company, the deities born of the earth beast headed, with only animal cries for voices : " Omnigenumque Deum monstra, et latrator Anubis Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam." This is St. Theodore's Dragon-enemy Egypt, and her captivity ; bondage of the earth, literally to the Israelite, in making bricks of it, the first condition of form for the God : in sterner than mere literal truth, the captivity of the spirit of man, whether to earth or to its creatures. And St. Theodore's victory is making the earth his pedestal, instead of his adversary ; he is the power of gen- tle and rational life, reigning over the wild creatures and senseless forces of the world. The Latrator Anubis most senseless and cruel of the guardians of hell becoming, by human mercy, the faithfullest of creature-friends to man. Do you think all this work useless in your Venetian guide ? There is not a picture, not a legend, scarcely a column or an ornament, in the art of Venice or of Italy, which, by this piece of work, well done, will not become more precious to you. Have you ever, for instance, noticed II. LATKATOK ANTBIS. 23 ho\v the baying of Cerberus is stopped, in the sixth canto uf Dante, " II duca mio Presc In terra ; et con piene Ic pugne La gitto dentro alle bramose cainic." (To the three, therefore plural.) It is one of the innu- merable subtleties which mark Dante's perfect knowledge inconceivable except as a form of inspiration of the inner meaning of every myth, whether of classic or Chris- tian theology, known in his day. Of the relation of the dog, horse, and eagle to the chiv- alry of Europe, you will tind, if you care to read, more noted, in relation to part of the legend of St. Theodore, in the Fors of March, this year; the rest of his legend, with what is n-.tablest in his ' Mariegola,' I will tell you when we come to examine Carpaccio's canonized birds and beasts; of which, to refresh you after this piece of hard ecclesiastical reading (for I can't tell you about the ba>o of the pillars to-day. We must get into another humor to see these), you may see within live minutes' walk, three together, in the little chapel of St. George of the Schia- voiii: St. George's 1'orphyrio,' the bird of chastity, with the bent spray of sacred vervain in its beak, at the foot of the steps on which St. George is baptizing the princess; St. Jerome's lion, being introduced to the monastery (with resultant effect on the minds of the brethren) ; and St. .Jerome's dog, watching his master translating the Bible with highest complacency of approval. And of St. Theodore himself you may be glad to know that he was a very historical and substantial saint as late a> the fifteenth century, for in the Inventory of the goods and chattels of his scuola, made by order of its master 24 ST. MARK'S REST. (Gastoldo), and the companions, in the year 1450, the first article is the body of St. Theodore, with the bed it lies on, covered by a coverlid of "pafio di grano di seta, brocado deorofino." So late as the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury (certified by the inventario fatto a di XXX. de Xovembrio MCCCCL. per. Sr nanni di piero de la col5na, Gastoldo, e suoi campagni, de tntte reliquie e arnesi e beni, se trova in questa hora presente in la nostra scnola), here lay this treasure, dear to the commercial heart of Venice. Oh, good reader, who hast ceased to count the Dead bones of men for thy treasure, hast thoii then thy Dead laid up in the hands of the Living God ? CHAPTER III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. TWICE one is two, and twice two is four ; but twice one is not three, and twice two is not six, whatever Shy lock may wish, or say, in the matter. In wholesome memory of which arithmetical, and (probably) eternal, fact, and in loyal defiance of Shylock and his knife, I write down for you these figures, large and plain : 1. 2. 4. Also in this swiftly progressive ratio, the figures may express what modern philosophy considers the rate of pro- gress of Venice, from her days of religion, and golden ducats, to her days of infidelity, and paper notes. Read them backwards, then, sublime modern philoso- pher; and they will give you the date of the birth of that foolish Venice of old time, on her narrow island. 4. 2. 1. In that year, and on the very day (little foolish Venice used to say, when she was a very child), in which, once upon a time, the world was made ; and, once upon another time the Ave Maria first said, the first stone of Venice was laid on the sea sand, in the name of St. James the fisher. I think you had better go and see with your own e\c-. tread with your own foot, the spot of her nativity : .-<> 26 ST. MARK'S REST. much of a spring day as the task will take, cannot often be more- profitably spent, nor more affectionately towards God and man, if indeed you love either of them. So, from the Grand Hotel, or the Swiss Pension or the duplicate Danieli with the drawbridge, or wherever else among the palaces of resuscitated Venice you abide, congratulatory modern ambassador to the Venetian Sen- ate, please, to-day, walk through the Merceria, and through the Square of St. Bartholomew, where is the little octagon turret-chapel in the centre, for sale of news : and cross the Rialto not in the middle of it, but on the right hand side, crossing from St. Mark's. You will probably find it very dirty, it may be, indecently dirty, -that is modern progress, and Mr. Buckle's civilization ; rejoice in it with a thankful heart, and stay in it placidly, after cross- ing the height of the bridge, when you come down just on a level with the capitals of the first story of the black and white, all but ruined, Palace of the Camerlenghi ; Trea- surers of Venice, built for them when she began to feel anxious about her accounts. ' Black and white,' I call it, because the dark lichens of age are yet on its marble or, at least, were, in the winter of '76-'77 ; it may be, even before these pages get printed, it will be scraped and re- gilt or pulled down, to make a railroad station at the Rialto. Here standing, if with good eyes, or a good opera glass, you look back,- up to the highest story of the blank and ugly building on the side of the canal you have just crossed from, you will see between two of its higher windows, the remains of a fresco of a female figure. It is, so far as I know, the last vestige of the noble fresco painting of Venice on her outside walls; Giorgione's, no less, III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. 27 when Titian and he were house-painters, the Sea-Queen so ranking them, for her pomp, in her proud days. Of this, and of the black and white palace, we will talk another day. I only asked you to look at the fresco just now, because therein is seen tbe end of my Venice, the Venice I have to tell you of. Yours, of the Grand Hotels and the Peninsular steamers, you may write the history of, I'm- yourself. Therein, as it fades away ends the Venice of St. Mark's Rest. But where she was born, you may now go quite down the steps to see. Down, and through among the fruit-stalls into the little square on the right ; then turning back, the low portico is in front of you not of the ancient church indeed, but of a fifteenth century one variously translated, in succeeding times, into such small picturesqueness of stage effect as it yet possesses ; escap- ing, by God's grace, however, the fire which destroyed all the other buildings of ancient Venice, round her Rialto square, in 1513.* Some hundred or hundred aiid fifty years before that, Venice had begun to suspect the bodies of saints to In- a poor property; carrion, in fact, and not even exchange- able carrion. Living flesh might be bought instead, per- haps of prettier aspect. So, as I said, for a hundred years or so, she had brought home no' relics, but set her mind on trade-profits, and other practical matters; tending to the achievement of wealth, and its comforts, and dignities. The curious result being, that at that particular monlent, when the fire devoured her merchants' square, centre of the * Many chronicles speak of it as burned ; but the authoritative in- scription of 1601 speaks of it as 'consumed by age,' and is therefore conclusive on this point. 28 ST. MARK'S REST. then mercantile world she happened to have no money in her pocket to build it again with ! Nor were any of her old methods of business again to be resorted to. Her soldiers were now foreign mercena- ries, and had to be paid before they would light ; and prayers, she had found out long before our English wiseacre apothecaries' apprentices, were of no use to get either money, or new houses with, at a pinch like this. And there was really nothing for it but doing the thing cheap, since it had to be done. Fra Giocondo of Verona offered her a fair design ; but the city could not afford it. Had to take Scarpagnino's make-shift instead; and with his help, and Sansovino's, between 1520 and 1550, she just managed to botch up what you see surround the square, of architectural stateliness for her mercantile home. Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, the main cause of these sorrowful circumstances of hers, observe sagacious historians. At all events, I have no doubt the walls were painted red, with some medallions, or other cheap decoration, under the cornices, enough to make the little square look comfortable.- Whitewashed and squalid now it may be left, for this time, without more note of it, as we turn to the little church.* Your Murray tells you it was built "in its present form" in 1194, and " rebuilt in 1531, but precisely ui the old form," and that it " has a iine brick campanile." The fine 'brick campanile, visible, if you look behind you, on * Do not, if you will trust me, at this time let your guide take you look at the Uobbo di Rialto, or otherwise interfere with your immrdia' business. III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. 29 the other side of the street, belongs to the church of St. John Elemosinario. And the statement that the church was k - rebuilt in precisely the old form" must also be re- ceived with allowances. For the "campanile" here, is in the most orthodox English Jacobite style of the seventeenth century, the portico is Venetian fifteenth, the walls are in no style at all, and the little Madonna inserted in the middle of them is an exquisitely finished piece of the finest work of 1320 to 1350. And, alas, the church is not only quite other in form, but even other in place, than it was in the fifth century, having been moved like a bale of goods, and with ap- parently as little difficulty as scruple, in 1322, on a report of the Salt Commissioners about the crowding of shops round it. And, in sum, of particulars of authentically certified vicissitudes, the little church has gone through these following how many more than these, one cannot say but these at least (see Appendix III.) : I. Founded traditionally in 421 (serious doubts whether on Friday or Saturday, involving others about the year itself). The tradition is all we need care for. II. Rebuilt, and adorned with Greek mosaic work by the Doge Domenico Selvo, in 1073 ; the Doge having married a Greek wife, and liking pretty things. Of this husband and wife you shall hear more, anon. III. Retouched, and made bright again, getting also its due share of the spoil of Byzantium sent home by Henry I )andolo, 1174. IY. Dressed up again, and moved out of the buyers' and sellers' way, in ].">22. Y. ' Instaurated ' into a more splendid church (dicto templo in splendidiorem ecclesiam instaurato) by the 30 ST. MARK'S REST. elected plebanus, Natalis Regia, desirous of having the church devoted to his honor instead of St. James's, 1531. VI. Lifted up (and most likely therefore first much pulled down), to keep the water from coming into it, in 1601, when the double arched campanile was built, and the thing finally- patched together in the present form. Doubtless, soon, by farther ' -progresso ' to become a pro- vision, or,, perhaps, a petroleum-store, Venice having no more need of temples ; and being, as far as I can observe, ashamed of having so many, overshadowing her buyers and sellers. Better rend the veils in twain forever, if convenient storeshops may be formed inside. These, then, being authentic epochs of change, you may decipher at ease the writing of each of them, what is left of it. The campanile with the ugly head in the centre of it is your final Art result, 1601. The portico in front of you is Natalis Regia' s ' instantiation ' of the church as it stood after 1322, retaining the wooden sim- plicities of bracket above the pillars of the early loggia ; the Madonna, as I said, is a piece of the 1320 to 1350 work ; and of earlier is no vestige here. But if you will walk twenty steps round the church, at the back of it, on the low gable, you w r ill see an inscription in firmly graven long Roman letters, under a cross, similarly inscribed. That is a vestige of the eleventh century church ; nay, more than vestige, the Voice of it Sibylline, left when its body had died.' Which I will ask you to hear, in a little while. But first you shall see also a few of the true stones of the older Temple. Enter it now ; and reverently ; for though at first, amidst wretched whitewash and stucco, you will scarcely see the true marble, those six pillars III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. 31 and their capitals are yet actual remnants and material marble of the venerable church ; probably once extend- ing into more arches in the nave ; but this transept ceil- ing of wagon vault, with the pillars that carry it, is true remnant of a mediaeval church, and, in all likelihood, true image of the earliest of all of the first standard of Venice, planted, under which to abide; the Cross, en- graven on the sands thus in relief, with two little pieces of Roman vaulting, set cross wise ; your modern engi- neers will soon make as large, in portable brickwork, for London drains, admirable, worshipful, for the salvation of London mankind : here artlessly rounded, and with small cupola above the crossing. Thus she set her sign upon the shore ; some knot of gelatinous sea \\Ved there checking the current of the ' Deep Stream,' which sweeps round, as you see, in that sigma of canal, as the Wharfe round the shingly bank of Bolton Abbey, a notablest Crook of Lime, this ; and Castrum, here, on sands that will abide. It is strange how seldom rivers have been named from their depth. Mostly they take at once some dear, com- panionable name, and become gods, or at least living creatures, to their refreshed people ; if not thus Pagan- named, they are noted by their color, or their purity, White River, Black River, Rio Verde, Aqua Dolce, Fiume di Latte; but scarcely ever, 'Deep River.' And this Venetian slow-pacing water, not so much as a river, or any thing like one; but a rivulet, ' fiumicello,' only, rising in those low mounds of volcanic hill to the west. " ' Rialto,' ' Rialtum,' ' /Vealtum ' " (another idea getting confused with the first), " dal fiumicello di cgnal nome che, scendendo dei colli Euganei gettavasi nel 32 ST. MARK'S REST. Brenta, con esso scorrendo luugo quelle isole dette ap- punto Realtine."* The serpentine depth, consistent always among consistent shallow, being here vital ; and the conception of it partly mingled with that of the power of the open sea the infinite ' Altum ;' sought by the sacred water, as in theMream of Eneas, " lacu fluvius se condidit alto." Hence the united word takes, in de- clining Latin, the shorter form, "Rialtum, properly, in the scholarship of the State-documents, ' Rivoalt^s.' So also, throughout Venice, the Latin Rivus softens into Rio ; the Latin Ripa into Riva, in the time when you had the running water not ' canals,' but running brooks of sea, ' lympha f ugax,' trembling in eddies, between, not quays, but banks of pasture land ; soft ' campi,' of which, in St. Margaret's field, I have but this autumn seen the last worn vestige trodden away ; and yesterday, Feb. 26th, in the morning, a little tree that was pleasant to me taken up from before the door, because it had heaved the pavement an inch or two out of square ; also beside the Academy, a little overhanging momentary shade of boughs hewn away, ' to make the street " bello," ' said the axe-bearer. ' What,' I asked, ' will it be prettier in summer without its trees ? ' ' Non x'e bello il verde,' he answered.f True oracle, though he knew not what * Romanin. f I observe the good people of Edinburgh have the same taste ; and rejoice proudly at having got an asphalt esplanade at the end of Prince's Street, instead of cabbage-sellers. Alas ! my Scottish friends ; all that Prince's Street of yours has not so much beauty in it as a single cabbage-stalk, if you had eyes in your heads, rather the ex- treme reverse of beauty ; and there is not one of the lassies who now stagger up and down the burning marie in high-heeled boots and French bonnets, who would not look a thousand-fold prettier, and III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM. 33 lie said; voice of the modern Church of Venice rank- ing herself under the black standard of the pit. 1 said you should hear the oracle of her ancient Church in a little while ; but you must know why, and to whom it was spoken, first, and we must leave the Rialto for to-day. Look, as you recross its bridge, west- ward, along the broad-flowing stream ; and come here also, this evening, if the day sets calm, for then the waves of it from the Rialto island to the Ca Foscari, glow like an Eastern tapestry in soft-flowing crimson, fretted with gold ; and beside them, amidst the tumult of squalid ruin, remember the words that are the ' burden of Venice,' as of Tyre : " Be still, ye inhabitants of the Isle. Thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have re- plenished. By great waters, the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue ; and she is a mart of nations." feel, there's no countirg how much nobler, bare-headed but for the snood, and bare-foot on old-faehioned grass by the Nor' loch side, bringing home from market, basket on arm, pease for papa's dinner, and a bunch of cherries for baby. CHAPTER IY. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. THE history of Venice divides itself, with more sharp- ness than any other I have read, into periods of distinct tendency and character; marked, in their transition, by phenomena no less definite than those of the putting forth the leaves, or setting of the fruit, in a plant ; and as definitely connected by one vitally progressive organ- ization, of which the energy must be studied in its con- stancy, while its results are classed in grouped system. If we rightly trace the -order, and estimate the dura- tion, of such periods, we understand the life, whether of an organized being or a state. But not to know the time when the seed is ripe, or the soul mature, is to misunder- stand the total creature. In the history of great multitudes, these changes of their spirit, and regenerations (for they are nothing less) of their physical power, take place through so subtle grada- tions "of declining and dawning thought, that the effort to distinguish them seems arbitrary, like separating the belts of a rainbow's color by firmly drawn lines. But, at Venice, the lines are drawn for us by her own hand ; and the changes in her temper are indicated by parallel modifications of her policy and constitution, to which his- torians have always attributed, as to efficient causes, the national fortunes of which they are only the signs and limitation. IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER 35 In this history, the reader will find little importance at- tached to these external phenomena of political constitu- tion ; except as labels, or, it may be, securing seals, of the state of the nation's heart. They are merely shapes of amphora, artful and decorative indeed; tempting to criti- cism or copy of their form, usefully recordant of differ- ent ages of the wine, and having occasionally, by the porousness or perfectness of their clay, effect also on its quality. But it is the grape-juice itself, and the changes in it, not in the forms of flask, that we have in reality to study. Fortunately also, the dates of the great changes are easily remembered ; they fall with felicitous precision at the beginning of centuries, and divide the story of the city, as the pillars of her Byzantine courts, the walls of it, with symmetric stability. She shall also tell you, as I promised, her own story, in her own handwriting, all through. Not a word shall I have to say in the matter ; or aught to do, except to deepen the letters for you when they are indistinct, and sometimes to hold a blank space of her chart of life to the fire of your heart for a little while, until words, writ- ten secretly upon it, are seen ; if, at least, there is fire enough in your own heart to heat them. And first, therefore, I must try what power of reading you have, when the letters are quite clear. "We will take to-day, so please you, the same walk we did yesterday ; but looking at other things, and reading a wider lesson. As early as you can (in fact, to get the good of this walk, you must be up with the sun), any bright morning, when the streets are quiet, come with me to the front of St. Mark's, to begin our lesson there. 36 ST. MARK'S REST. You see that between the arches of its vaults, there are six oblong panels of bas-relief. Two of these are the earliest pieces of real Venetian work I know of, to show you ; but before beginning with them, you must see a piece done by her Greek mas- ters. Go round therefore to the side farthest from the sea, where, in the first broad arch, you will see a panel of like shape, set horizontally ; the sculpture of which represents twelve sheep, six on one side, six on the other, of a throne : on which throne is set a cross ; and on the top of the cross a circle ; and in the circle, a little caprioling creature. And outside of all, are two palm trees, one on each side ; and under each palm tree, two baskets of dates ; and over the twelve sheep, is written in delicate Greek letters " The holy Apostles ;" and over the little caprioling creature, " The Lamb." Take your glass and study the carving of this bas-relief intently. It is full of sweet care, subtlety, tenderness of touch, and mind ; and fine cadence and change of line in the little bowing heads and bending leaves. Decorative in the extreme ; a kind of stone-stitching, or sampler- work, done with the innocence of a girl's heart, and in a like unlearned fulness. Here is a Christian man, bringing order and loveliness into the mere furrows of stone. Not by any means as learned as a butcher, in the joints of lambs ; nor as a grocer, in baskets of dates ; nor as a gardener, in endogenous plants : but an artist to the heart's core ; and no less true a lover of Christ and His word. Helpless, with his childish art, to carve Christ, he carves a cross, and caprioling little thing in a ring at the IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 37 top of it. You may try you to carve Christ, if you can. Helpless to conceive the Twelve Apostles, these nevertheless are sacred letters for the bearers of the Gos- pel of Peace. Of such men Venice learned to touch the stone ; to become a Lapieida, and furrower of the marble as well as the sea. Xo\v let us go back to that panel on the left" side of the central arch in front.* This, you see, is no more a symbolical sculpture, but quite distinctly pictorial, and laboriously ardent to ex- pre>s, though in very low relief, a curly-haired personage, handsome, and something like George the Fourth, dressed in richest Roman armor, and sitting in an absurd manner, more or less tailor-fashion, if not cross-legged himself, at least on a conspicuously cross-legged piece of splendid fur- niture ; which, after deciphering the Chinese, or engi- neer's isometrical, perspective of it, you may perceive to be only a gorgeous pic-nic or drawing-stool, apparently of portable character, such as are bought (more for luxury than labor, for the real working apparatus is your tri- pod) at .'Miw-rs. Newman's, or AVinsor and Newton's. Apparently portable, I say ; by no means intended as * Generally note, when I say ' right ' or ' left ' side of a church or chapel, I mean, either as you enter, or as you look to the altar. It is not safe to say ' north and south,' for Italian churches stand all round tin- cnmpui-s ; and besides, the phrase would be false of lateral chapels. TraiiM-pts an- awkward, because often they have an altar instead of an entrance at their ends ; it will be least confusing to treat them always as large la-teral chapels, and place them in the series of such chapels at the sides of the nave, calling the sides right and left as you look either from the nave into the chapels, or from the nave's centre to the rose window, or other termination of transept. 38 ST. MARK'S REST. such by the sculptor. Intended for a most permanent and magnificent throne of state ; nothing less than a de- rived form of that Greek Thronos, in which you have seen set the cross of the Lamb. Yes ; and of the Tyrian and Jndsean Thronos Solomon's, which it frightened the queen of Sheba to see him sitting on. Yes ; and of the Egyptian throne of eternal granite, on which colossal Memnon sits, melodious to morning light, son of Au-, rora. Yes; and of the throne of Isis-Madomm, and, mightier yet than she, as we return towards the nativitj of queens and kings. We must keep at present to oui own poor little modern, practical saint sitting on his. portable throne (as at the side of the opera when extra people are let in who shouldn't be) ; only seven hundred years old. To this cross-legged apparatus the Egyptian throne had dwindled down ; it looks even as if the saint who sits on it might begin to think about getting up some day or other. All the more when you know who he is. Can you read the letters of his name, written beside him ? SCS UEORGIVS Mr. Emerson's purveyor of bacon, no less! * And he does look like getting up, when you observe him farther. Unsheathing his sword, is not he? No ; sheathing it. That was the difficult thing he had first to do, as you will find on reading the true legend of him, which this sculptor thoroughly knew ; in whose con- ception of the saint one perceives the date of said.sculp- * See Fors Clavigera of February, 1873, containing the legend of St. G orge. This, with the other numbers of Fors referred to in the text ut ' St. Mark's Rest,' may be bought at Venice, together with it. IV. ST. THEODOKE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 39 tor, no less than in the stiff work, so dimly yet perceptive of the ordinary laws of the aspect of things. From the bas- reliefs of the Parthenon through sixteen hundred years of effort, and speech-making, and fighting human intel- ligence in the Arts has arrived, here in Venice, thus far. But having got so far, we shall come to something fresh soon ! "We have become distinctly representative again, you see ; desiring to show, not a mere symbol of a living man, but the man himself, as truly as the poor stone- cutter can carve him. All bonds of tyrannous tradition broken ; the legend kept, in faith yet ; but the symbol become natural ; a real armed knight, the best he could form a notion of ; curly-haired and handsome ; and, his also the boast of Dogberry, every thing handsome about him. Thus far has Venice got in her art schools of the early thirteenth century. I can date this sculpture to that time, pretty closely ; earlier, it may be, not later ; see afterwards the notes closing this chapter. And now, if you so please, we will walk under the clock-tower, and down the Merceria, as straight as we can go. There is a little crook to the right, bringing us op- posite St. Julian's church (which, please, don't stop to look at just now) ; then, sharply, to the left again, and we come to the Ponte de' Baratteri, " Kogue's Bridge" on which, as especially a grateful bridge to English business- feelings, let us reverently pause. It has been widened lately, you observe, the use of such bridge being greatly increased in these times ; and in a convenient angle, out of passenger current (may you find such wayside with- drawal in true life), you may stop to look back at the house immediately above the bridge. In the wall of which you will see a horizontal panel of 4:0 ST. MARK'S REST. bas-relief, with two shields on each side, bearing six fleur- de-lys. And this you need not, I suppose, look for letters on, to tell you its subject. Here is St. George indeed ! our own beloved old sign of the George and Dragon, all correct ; and, if you know your Seven champions, Sabra too, on the rock, thrilled witness of the fight. And see what a dainty St. George, too ! Here is no mere tailor's enthronement. Eques, ipso melior Bellerophonti, how he sits ! how he holds his lance ! how brightly youthful the crisp hair under his light cap of helm, how deftly curled the fringe of his horse's 'crest, how vigorous in disciplined career of accustomed conquest, the two noble living creatures ! This is Venetian fifteenth century work of finest style. Outside-of -house work, of course : we compare at present outside work only, panel with panel : but here are three hundred years of art progress written for you, in two pages, from early thirteenth to late fifteenth century ; and in this little bas-relief is all to be seen, that can be, of elementary principle, in the very crest and pride of Venetian sculpture, of which note these following points. First, the aspirations of the front of St. Mark's have been entirely achieved, and though the figure is still sym- bolical, it is now a symbol consisting in the most literal realization possible of natural facts. That is the way, if you care to see it, that a young knight rode, in 1480, or thereabouts. So, his foot was set in stirrup, so his body borne, so trim and true and orderly every thing in his harness and his life : and this rendered, observe, with the most consummate precision of artistic touch. Look at tlr.- strap of the stirrup, at the little delicatest line of tli spur, can you think they are stone ? don't they look likj IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 41 leather and steel ? His flying mantle, is it not silk more than marble ? That is all in the beautiful doing of it : precision first in exquisite sight of the thing itself, and understanding of the qualities and signs, whether of .silk or steel ; and then, precision of touch, and cunning in use of material, which it had taken three hundred years to learn. Think what cunning there is in getting such ed^v to the marble as will represent the spur line, or strap leather, with such solid under-support that, from 1480 till now, it stands rain and frost! And for knowledge of form, look at the way the little princess's foot comes out under the drapery as she shrinks back. Look at it first from the left, to see how it is foreshortened, flat on the rock ; then from the right, to see the curve of dress up the limb : think of the difference between this and the feet of poor St. George Sartor of St. Mark's, pointed down all their length. Finally, see how studious the whole thing is of beauty in every part, how it expects you also to be studious. Trace the rich tresses of the princess's hair, wrought where the figure melts into shadow ; the sharp edges of the dragon's mail, slipping over each other as he wrings neck and coils tail ; nay, what decorative ordering and symmetry is even in the roughness of the ground and rock ! And lastly, see how the whole piece of work, to the simplest frame of it, must be by the sculp- tor's own hand : see how he breaks the line of his panel moulding with the princess's hair, with St. George's hel- met, with the rough ground itself at the base; the entire tablet varied to its utmost edge, delighted in and ennobled to its extreme limit of substance. Here, then, as I said, is the top of Venetian sculpture- art. Was there no going beyond this, think you ? 42 ST. MARK'S REST. Assuredly, much beyond this the Venetian could have gone, had he gone straight forward. But at this point he became perverse, and there is one sign of evil in this piece, which you must carefully discern. In the two earlier sculptures, of the sheep, and the throned St. George, the artist never meant to say that twelve sheep ever stood in two such rows, and were the twelve apostles ; nor that St. George ever sat in that man- ner in a splendid chair. But he entirely believed in the facts of the lives of the apostles and saints, symbolized by such figuring. But the fifteenth century sculptor does, partly, mean to assert that St. George did in that manner kill a dragon : does not clearly know whether he did or not ; does not care very much whether he did or not ; thinks it will be very nice if, at any rate, people believe that he did ; but is more bent, in the heart of him, on making a pretty bas- relief than on any thing else. Half way to infidelity, the fine gentleman is, with all his dainty chiselling. We will see, on those terms, what, in another century, this fine chiselling comes to. So now walk on, down the Merceria di San Salvador. Presently, if it is morning, and the sky clear, you will see, at the end of the narrow little street, the brick apse of St. Baviour's, warm against the blue ; and, if you stand close to the right, a solemn piece of old Venetian wall and win- dow on the opposite side of the calle, which you might pass under twenty times -without seeing, if set on the study of shops only. Then you must turn to the right; perforce, to 'the left again ; and now to the left, once more ; and you are in the little piazza of St. Salvador, with a building in front of you, now occupied as a fur- IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 43 nitnre store, which you will please look at with atten- tion. It reminds you of many things at home, I suppose ? lias a respectable, old-fashioned, city-of-London look about it ; something of Greenwich Hospital, of Temple Bar, of St. Paul's, of Charles the Second and the Constitution, and the Lord Mayor and Mr. Bumble? Truly English, in many respects, this solidly rich front of Ionic pillars, with the four angels on the top, rapturously directing your at- tention, by the gracefullest gesticulation, to the higher figure in the centre ! You have advanced another hundred and fifty years, and are in mid seventeenth century. Here is the ' Progresso ' of Venice, exhibited to you, inconsequence of her wealth, and gay life, and advance in anatomical and other sciences. Of which, note first, the display of her knowledge of angelic anatomy. Sabra, on the rock, just showed her foot beneath her robe, and that only because she was drawing back, frightened ; but, here, every angel has his petticoats cut up to his thighs; he is not sufficiently sacred or sublime unless you see his legs so high. Secondly, you see how expressive are their attitudes, What a wonderful personage is this we have got in the middle of us!" That is Raphaelesque art of the finest. Raphael, by this time, had taught the connoisseurs of Europe that whenever you admire anybody, you open your mouth and eyes wide ; when you wish to show him to somebody else you point at him vigorously with one arm, and wave the somebody else on with the other; when you have nothing to do of that sort, you stand on one leg and hold up the 44 ST. MARK'S REST. other in a graceful line ; these are the methods of true dramatic expression. Your drapery, meanwhile, is to be arranged in " sublime masses," and is not to be suggestive of any particular stuff ! If you study the drapery of these four angels thor- oughly, you can scarcely fail of knowing, henceforward, what a bad drapery is, to the end of time. Here is drapery supremely, exquisitely bad ; it is impossible, by any contrivance, to get it worse. Merely clumsy, ill-cut clothing, you may see any day ; but there is skill enough in this to make it exemplarily execrable. That flabby flutter, wrinkled swelling, and puffed pomp of infinite dis- order ; the only action of it, being blown up, and away ; the only calm of it, collapse ; the resolution of every miserable fold not to fall, if it can help it, into any natu- ral line, the running of every lump of it into the next, as dough sticks to dough remaining, not less, evermore incapable of any harmony or following of each other's lead or way ; and the total rejection of all notion of beauty or use in the stuff itself. It is stuff without thick- ness, without fineness, without warmth, without coolness, without lustre, without texture ; not silk, not linen, not woollen ; something that wrings, and wrinkles, and gets between legs, that is all. Worse drapery than this, you cannot see in mortal investiture. Nor worse want of drapery, neither for the legs are as ungraceful as the robes that discover them ; and the breast of the central figure, whom all the angels admire, is packed under its corslet like a hamper of tomata apples. To this type the Venetians have now brought their symbol of divine life in man. For this is also St. Theo- , IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 45 dore \ And the respectable building below, in the Bum- ble style, is the last effort of his school of Venetian gentle- men to house themselves respectably. "With Ionic capi- tals, bare-legged angels, and the Dragon, now square- headed and blunt-nosed, they thus contrive their last club- house, and prepare, for resuscitated Italy, in continued ' Progress,' a stately furniture store. Here you may buy cruciform stools, indeed ! and patent oilcloths, and other supports of your Venetian worshipful dignity, to heart's content. Here is your God's Gift to the nineteenth cen- tury. " Deposito mobili nazionali edesteri ; quadri ; libri antichi e moderni, ed oggetti diversj." Nevertheless, through all this decline in power and idea, there is yet, let us note finally, some wreck of Chris- tian intention, some feeble coloring of Christian faith. A saint is still held to be an admirable person ; he is prac- tically still the patron of your fashionable club-house, where you meet to offer him periodical prayer and alms. This architecture is, seriously, the best you can think of ; those; angels are handsome, according to your notions of personality; their attitudes really are such as you sup- pose to be indicative of celestial rapture, their features, of celestial disposition. AVe will see what change another fifty years will bring about in these faded feelings of Venetian soul. o The little calle on your right, as you front St. Theo- dore, will bring you straight to the quay below the Ri- alto, where your gondola shall be waiting, to take you as far as the bridge over the Cannareggio under the Palazzo Labia. Stay your gondola before passing under it, and look carefully at the sculptured ornaments of the arch, and then at the correspondent ones on the other side. 46 ST. MARK'S REST. In these yon see the last manner of sculpture, executed by Venetian artists, according to the mind of Venice, for her own pride and pleasure. Much she has done since, of art-work, to sell to strangers, executed as she thinks will please the stranger best. But of art produced for her own joy and in her own honor, this is a chosen example of the last ! Not representing saintly persons, you see ; nor angels in attitudes of admiration. Quite other personages than angelic,, and with expressions of any thing rather than af- fection or respect for aught of good, in earth or heaven. Such were the last imaginations of her polluted heart, be- fore death. She had it no more in her power to conceive any other. " Behold thy last gods," the Fates compel her thus to gaze and perish. This last stage of her intellectual death precedes her political one by about a century ; during the last half of which, however, she did little more than lay foundations of walls which .she could not complete. Virtually, we may close her national history with the seventeenth cen- tury ; we shall not ourselves follow it even so far. I have shown you, to-day, pieces of her art-work by which yon may easily remember its cardinal divisions. You saw first the work of her Greek masters, under whom she learned both her faith and art. Secondly, the beginning of her own childish efforts, in the St. George enthroned. Thirdly, the culmination of her skill in the St. George combatant. Fourthly, the languor of her faith and art power, under the advance of her luxury, in the hypocrisy of St. Theo- dore's Scuola, now a furniture warehouse. IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER. 47 Lastly, her dotage before shameful death. In the next chapter, I will mark, by their natural limits the epochs of her political history, which correspond to these conditions of her knowledge, hope, and imagination. lint as you return home, and again pass before the porches of St. Mark's, I may as well say at once what I can of these six bus-reliefs between them. On the sides of the great central arch are St. George and St. Demetrius, so inscribed in Latin. Between the next lateral porches, the Virgin and Archangel Gabriel, so inscribed, the Archangel in Latin, the " Mother of God " in Greek. And between these and the outer porches, unin scribed, two of the labors of Hercules. I am much doubtful concerning these, myself, do not know their manner of sculpture, nor understand their meaning. They are fine work; the Venetian antiquaries say, very early (sixth century) ; types, it may be, of physical human power prevailing over wild nature ; the war of the world before Christ. Then the Madonna and Angel of Annunciation express the Advent. Then the two Christian Warrior Saints express the heart of Venice in her armies. There is no doubt, therefore, of the purposeful choos- ing and placing of these bas-reliefs. Where the outer ones were brought from, I know not ; the four inner ones, I think, are all contemporary, and carved for their place by the Venetian scholars of the Greek schools, in late twelfth or early thirteenth century. My special reason for assigning this origin to them is the manner of the foliage under the feet of the Gabriel, ST. MARKS REST. ' in which is the origin of all the early foliage in the Gothic of Yenice. This bas-relief, however, appears to be by a better master than the others perhaps later ; and is of extreme beauty. Of the ruder St. George, and successive sculptures of Evangelists on the north side, I cannot }^et speak with decision ; nor would you, until we have followed the story of Venice farther, probably care to hear. CHAPTER Y. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL. THE history of Venice, then, divides itself into four quite distinct periods. I. The first, in which the fugitives from many cities on the mainland, gathered themselves into one nation, de- pendent for existence on its labor upon the sea ; and which develops itself, by that labor, into a race distinct in temper from all the other families of Christendom. This process of growth and mental formation is neces- sarily a long one, the result being so great. It takes roughly, seven hundred years from the fifth to the eleventh century, both inclusive. Accurately, from the Annunciation day, March 25th, 421, to the day of St. Nicholas, December 6th, 1100. At the close of this epoch Venice had fully learned Christianity from the Greeks, chivalry from the Nor- mans, and the laws of human life and toil from the ocean. Prudently and nobly proud, she stood, a helpful and wise princess, highest in counsel and mightiest in deed, among the knightly powers of the world. IT. The second period is that of her great deeds in war, and of the establishment of her reign in justice and truth (the best at least that she knew of either), over, nominally, the fourth part of the former Roman Empire. It in- cludes the whole of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 50 ST. MARK'S REST. and is chiefly characterized by the religious passion of the Crusades. It lasts, in accurate terms, from December 6th, y.00, to February 28th, 1297; but as the event < f that day was not confirmed till three years afterwards, we get the fortunately precise terminal date of 1301. III. The third period is that of religious meditation, as distinct, though not withdrawn from, religious action. It is marked by the establishment of schools of kindly civil order, and by its endeavors to express, in word and picture, the thoughts which until then had wrought in silence. The entire body of her noble art-work belongs to this time. It includes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and twenty years more : -from 1301* to 1520. IT. The fourth period is that of the luxurious use, and display, of the powers attained by the labor and medi- tation of former times, but now applied without either labor or meditation: religion, art, and literature, hav- ing become things of custom and " costume." It spends, in eighty years, the fruits of the toil of a thousand, and terminates, strictly, with the death of Tintoret, in 1594; we will say 1600. From that day the remainder of the record of Venice is only the diary of expiring delirium, and by those who love her, will be traced no farther. But while you are here within 'her walls I will endeavor to interpret clearly to you the legends on them, in which she has herself re- lated the passions of her Four Ages. And see how easily they are to be numbered and re- membered. Twelve hundred years in all ; divided if, broadly, we call the third period two centuries, and the * Compare ' Stones of Venice ' (old edit.), vol. ii., p. 291. . V. THE S11A1>0\V ()X THE DIAL. 51 fourth, one, in diminishing proportion, 7, 2, 2, 1 : it is like the spiral of a shell, reversed. I have in this first sketch of them distinguished these four ages ly the changes in the chief element of every nation's mind its religion, with the consequent results upon its art. But you see I have made no mention what- ever of all that common historians think it their primal business to discourse of, policy, government, commercial prosperity! One of my dates however is determined by a crisis of internal policy ; and I will at least note, as the material instrumentation of the spiritual song, the m -ta- morphoses of state-order which accompanied, in each transition, the new nativities of the state's heart. I. During the first period, which completes the binding of many tribes into one, and the softening of savage faith- into intelligent Christianity, we see the gradual establish- ment of a more and more distinctly virtuous monarchic authority ; continually disputed, and often abused, but purified by every reign into stricter duty, and obeyed by every generation with more sacred regard. At the close of this epoch, the helpful presence of God, and the leading powers of the standard-bearer Saint, and sceptre-bearing King, are vitally believed ; reverently, and to the death, obeyed. And, in the eleventh century, the Palace of the Duke and lawgiver of the people, and his Chapel, en- shrining the body of St. Mark, stand, bright with marble and gold, side by side. II. In the second period, that of active Christian war- fare, there separates itself from the mass of the people, chiefly by pre-eminence in knightly achievement, and per- sistence in patriotic virtue, but also, by the intellectual training received in the conduct of great foreign enter- 52 ST. MARK'S REST. prise, and maintenance of legislation among strange people, an order of aristocracy, raised both in wisdom and valor greatly above the average level of the multitude, and gradually joining to the traditions of Patrician Rome, the domestic refinements, and imaginative sanctities, of the northern and Frankish chivalry, whose chiefs we're their battle comrades. At the close of the epoch, this more sternly educated class determines to assume author- ity in the government of the State, unswayed by the humor, and unhindered by the ignorance, of the lower classes of the people ; and the year which I have assigned for the accurate close of the second period is that of the great division between nobles and plebeians, called by the Venetians the "Closing of the Council," the restriction, that is to say, of the powers of the Senate to the lineal aristocracy. III. The third period shows us the advance of this now separate body of Venetian gentlemen in such thought and passion as the privilege of their position admitted, or its temptations provoked. The gradually increasing knowl- edge of literature, culminating at last in the discovery of printing, and revival of classic formulae of method, modi- fied by reflection, or dimmed by disbelief, the frank Christian faith of earlier ages ; and social position indepen- dent of military prowess, developed at once the ingenuity, frivolity, and vanity of the scholar, with the avarice and cunning of the merchant. Protected and encouraged by a senate thus composed, distinct companies of craftsmen, wholly of the people, gathered into vowed fraternities of social order ; and, re- taining the illiterate sincerities of their religion, labored in unambitious peace, under the orders of the philosophic V. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL. 53 aristocracy ; built for them their great palaces, and over- laid their walls, within and without, with gold and purple of Tyre, precious now in Venetian hands as the colors of heaven more than of the sea. By the hand of one of them, the picture of Venice, with her nobles in her streets, at the end of this epoch, is preserved to you as yet, and I trust will be, by the kind fates, preserved datelessly. IV. In the fourth period, the discovery of printing having confused literature into vo'ciferation, and the deli- cute skill of the craftsman having provoked splendor into lasdviousness, the jubilant and coruscant passions of the nobles, stately yet in the forms of religion, but scornful of her discipline, exhausted, in their own false honor, at once the treasures of Venice and her skill ; reduced at last her people to misery, and her policy to shame, and smoothed for themselves the downward way to the abdication of their might for evermore. Xnw these t\v< histories of the religion and policy of Venice are only intense abstracts of the same course of thought and events in every nation of Europe. Through- out the whole of Christendom, the two stories in like manner proceed together. The acceptance of Christianity the practice of it the abandonment of it and moral ruin. The development of kingly authority, the obedi- ence to it- the corruption of it and social ruin. But there is no evidence that the first of these courses of national fate is vitally connected with the second. That infidel kings may be just, and Christian ones corrupt, was the first lesson Venice learned when she began to be a scholar. And observe there are three quite distinct conditions of feeling and assumptions of theory in which we may ap- 54 ST. MARK'S REST. proach this matter. The first, that of our numerous cock- ney friends, that the dukes of Venice were mostly hyp- ocrites, and if not, fools ; that their pious zeal was merely such acloak for their commercial appetite as modern church- going is for modern swindling; or else a pitiable halluci- nation and puerility: that really the attention of the supreme cockney mind would be wasted on such bygone absurdities, and that out of mere respect for the common sense of monkey-born-and-bred humanity, the less we say of them the better. The second condition of feeling is, in its full confession, a very rare one ; that of true respect for the Christian faith, and sympathy with the passions and imaginations it excited, while yet in security of modern enlightenment, the observer regards the faith itself only as an exquisite dream of mortal childhood, and the acts of its votaries as a beautifully deceived heroism of vain hope. This theory of the splendid mendacity of Heaven, and majestic somnambulism of man, I have only known to be held in the sincere depth of its discomfort, by one of my wisest and dearest friends, under the pressure of uncom- prehended sorrow in his own personal experience. But to some extent it confuses or undermines the thoughts of nearly all men who have been interested in the material investigations of recent physical science, while retaining yet imagination and understanding enough to enter into the heart of the religious and creative ages. And it necessarily takes possession of the spirit of such men chiefly at the times of personal sorrow, which teach even to the wisest, the hollowness of their best trust, and the vanity of their dearest visions ; and when the epitaph V. THE SHADOAV OX THE DIAL. 55 of all hnnum virtue, and sum of human peace, seem to be written in the lowly argument, " We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." The third, the only modest, and therefore the only ra- tional, theory, is, that we are all and always, in these as in former ages, deceived by our own guilty passions, blinded by our own obstinate wills, and misled by the in- solence and fantasy of our ungoverned thoughts ; but that there is verily a Divinity in nature which has shaped the rough hewn deeds of |^r weak human effort, and revealed itself in rays of broken, but of eternal light, to the souls which have desired to see the day of the Son of Man. By the more than miraculous fatality which has been hitherto permitted to rule the course of the kingdoms of this world, the men who are capable of accepting such faith, are rarely able to read the history of nation's by its inter- pretation. They nearly all belong to some one of the passionately egoistic sects of Christianity ; and are mis- erably perverted into the missionary service of their own schism ; eager only, in the records of the past, to gather evidence to the advantage of their native persuasion, and to the disgrace of all opponent forms of similar heresy ; or, that is to say, in every case, of nine-tenths of the re- ligion of this world. "With no less thankfulness for the lesson, than shame for what it showed, I have myself been forced to recog- nize the degree in which all my early work on Venetian history was paralyzed by this petulance of sectarian ego- tism ; and it is among the chief advantages I possess for 56 ST. MARK'S REST. the task now undertaken in my closing years, that there are few of the errors against which I have to warn my readers, into which I have not myself at some time fallen. Of which errors, the chief, and cause of all the rest, is the leaning on our own understanding ; the thought that we can measure the hearts of our brethren, and judge of the ways of God. Of the hearts of men, noble, yet " de- ceitful above all things, who can know them ? " that in- finitely perverted scripture is yet infinitely true. And for the ways of God ! Oh, my good and gentle reader, how much otherwise would not you and I have made this world ? CHAPTER VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS. NOT, therefore, to lean on our own sense, but in all the strength it has, to use it ; not to be captives to our private thoughts, but to dwell in them, without wandering, until, out of the chambers of our own hearts we begin to con- ceive what labyrinth is in those of others, thus we have to prepare ourselves, good reader, for the reading of any history. If but we may at last succeed in reading a little of our own, and discerning what scene of the world's drama we are set to play in, drama whose tenor, tragic or other, seemed of old to rest with so few actors; but now, with this pantomimic mob upon the stage, can you make out any of the stery? prove, even in your own heart, how much you believe that there is any Playwright behind the scenes ? Such a wild dream as it is ! nay, as it always has been, except in momentary fits of consciousness, and instants of startled spirit, perceptive of heaven. For many cen- turies the Knights of Christendom wore their religion gay as their crest, familiar as their gauntlet, shook it high in the summer air, hurled it fiercely in other people's fa grasped their spear the firmer for it, sat their horses the prouder ; but it never entered into their minds for an in- stant to ask the meaning of it! ' Forgive us our sins:' by 58 ST. MARK'S REST. all means yes, and the next garrison that holds out a day- longer than is convenient to us, hang them every man to his battlement. ' Give us this day our daily bread,' yes, and our neighbor's also, if we have any luck. l Our Lady and the saints ! ' Is there any infidel dog that doubts of them ? in God's name, boot and spur and let us have the head off him. It went on so, frankly and bravely, to the twelfth century, at the earliest ; when men begin to think in a serious manner ; more or less of gentle manners and do- mestic comfort being also then conceivable and attainable. Rosamond is not any more asked to drink out of her father's skull. Rooms begin to be matted and wainscoted ; shops to hold store of marvellous foreign wares ; knights and ladies learn to spell, and to read, with pleasure ; music is everywhere ; Death, also. Much to enjoy much to learn, and to endure with Death always at the gates. " If war fail thee in thine own country, get thee with haste into another," says the faithful old French knight to the boy-chevalier, in early fourteenth century days. No country stays more than two centuries in this in- termediate phase between Faith and Reason. In France it lasted from about 1150 to 1350 ; in England, 1200 to 1400 ; in Venice, 1300 to 1500. The course of it is al- ways in the gradual development of Christianity, till her yoke gets at once too aerial, and too straight, for the mob, who break through it at last as if it were so much gossamer ; and at the same fatal time, wealth and luxury, with the vanity of corrupt learning, foul the faith of the upper classes, who now begin to wear their Christianity, not tossed for a crest high over their armor, but stuck as a plaster over their sores, inside of their clothes. Then comes printing, and universal gabble of fools ; gunpow- VI. KED AXI) WHITE CLOUDS. 59 der, and the end of all the noble methods of war ; trade, and universal swindling; wealth, and universal gambling; idleness, and universal harlotry ; and so at last Modern Science and Political Economy ; and the reign of St. Pe- troleum instead of St. Peter. Out of which God only knows what is to come next ; but He <70e,s' know, whatever the Jew swindlers and apothecaries' 'prentices think about it. Meantime, with what remainder of belief in Christ may be left in us ; and helping that remnant with all the power we have of imagining what Christianity was, to people who, without understanding its claims or its meaning, did not doubt for an instant its statements of fact, and used the whole of their childish imagination to realize the acts *-j of their Saviour's life, and the presence of His angels, let us draw near to the first sandy thresholds .of the Vene- tiau's home. Before you read any of the so-called historical events of the first period, I want you to have some notion of their scene. Your will hear of Tribunes Consuls Doges ; but what sort of tribes were they tribunes of ? what sort of nation were they dukes of? You will hear of brave naval battle victory over sons of Emperors : what man- ner of people were they, then, whose swords lighten thus brightly in the dawn of chivalry ? For the whole of her first seven hundred years of work and war, Venice was in great part a wooden town ; the houses of the noble mainland families being for long years chiefly at Heraclea, and on other islands ; nor they magnificent, but farm-villas mostly, of which, and their tanning, more presently. Far too much stress has been generally laid on the fishing and salt-works of early Venice, 60 ST. MARK'S REST. as if they were her only businesses ; nevertheless at least you may be sure of this much, that for seven hundred years Venice had more likeness in her to old Yarmouth than to new Pall Mall ; and that you might come to shrewder guess of what she and her people were like, by living for a year or two lovingly among the-herring-catchers of Yar- mouth Roads, or the boatmen of Deal or Boscastle, than by reading any lengths of eloquent history. But you are to know also, and remember always, that this amphibious city this Phocaea, or sea-dog of towns looking with soft human eyes at you from the sand, Proteus himself latent in the salt-smelling skin of her had fields, and plots of garden here and there ; and, far and near, sweet woods of Calypso, graceful with quivering sprays, for woof of nests gaunt with forked limbs for ribs of ships ; had good milk and butter from familiarly couchant cows ; thickets wherein familiar birds could sing ; and finally was observant of clouds and sky, as pleasant and useful phenomena. And she had at due distances among her simple dwellings, stately churches of marble. These things you may know, .if you will, from the fol- lowing "quite ridiculous" tradition, which, ridiculous as it may be, I will beg you for once to read, since the D>--c Andrea Dandolo wrote it for you, with the attention due to the address of a Venetian gentleman, and a King.-" "As head and bishop of the islands, the Bishop Mag- * A more graceful form of this legend lias been translated with feel- ing and care by the Countess Isobel Cholmley, in Berrnani, from an MS. in her possession, copied, I believe, from one of the tenth centurv. But I take the form in which it was written by Andrea Dandolo, t!i: ' the reader may have more direct associations with the beautiful inm of the Doge on his tomb in the Baptistery. VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS. Cl TIMS of Altinum went from place to place to give them comfort, saying that they ought to thank God tor having ,|>ed from these barbarian cruelties. And there ap- peared to him St. Peter, ordering him that in the head of Venice, or truly of the city of Rivoalto, where he should iiud oxen and sheep feeding, he was to build a church under his (St. Peter's) name. And thus he did ; building St. Peter's Church in the island of Olivolo, where at pres- ent is the seat and cathedral church of Venice. " A fter wards appeared to him the angel Raphael, com- mitting it to him, that at another place, where he should iind a number of birds together, he should build him a church : and so he did, which is the church of the Angel 'Raphael in Dorsoduro. " Afterwards appeared to him Messer Jesus Christ our Lord, and committed to him that in the midst of the city he should build a church, in the place, above which he should see a red cloud rest : and so he did ; and it is San Salvador. " Afterwards appeared to him the most holy Mary the Virgin, very beautiful; and commanded him that where lie should see a white cloud rest, he should build a church : which is the church of St. Mary the Beautiful. a Yet still appeared to him St. John the Baptist, com- manding that he should build two churches, one near the other the one to be in his name, and the other in the name of his father. Which he did, and they are San Giovanni in Bragola, and San Zaccaria. " Then appeared to him the apostles of Christ, wishing, they also, to have a church in this new city ; and they committed it to him that where he should see twelve cranes in a company, there he should build it. Lastly 62 ST. MARK'S REST. appeared to him the blessed Virgin Giustina, and ordered him that where he should find vines bearing fresh fruits there he should build her a church." Now this legend is quite one of the most precious things in the story of Venice : preserved for us in this form at the end of the fourteenth century, by one of her most highly educated gentlemen, it shows the very heart of her religious and domestic power, and assures for us, with other evidence, these following facts. First; that a certain measure of pastoral home-life was mingled with Venice's training of her sailors ; evidence whereof remains to this day, in the unfailing 'Campo' round every church ; the church ' meadow ' not church- ' vard.' It happened to me, once -in my life, to go t > church in a state of very great happiness and peace of mind ; and this in a very small and secluded country church. And Fors would have it that I should get a seat in the chancel ; and the day was sunny, and the little side chancel-door was open opposite into, what I hope was a field. I saw no graves in it ; but in the sunshine, sheep feeding. And I never was at so divine a church service before, nor have been since. If you will read the opening of Wordsworth's '"White Doe of Rylstone,' and can enjoy it, you may learn from it what the look of an old Vene- tian church would be, with its surrounding field. St. Mark's Place was only the meadow of St. Theodore's church, in those days. Next you observe the care and watching of animals. That is still a love in the heart of Venice. One of the chief little worries to me in my work here, is that I walki faster than the pigeons are used to have people walk ; and VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS. 63 am continually like to tread on them ; and see story in Fors, March of this year, of the gondolier and his dog. Nay, though, the other day, I was greatly tormented at the public gardens, in the early morning, when I had counted on a quiet walk, by a cluster of boys who were chasing the first twittering birds of the spring from bush to bush, and throwing sand at them, with wild shouts and whistles, they were not doing it, as I at first thought, in mere mischief, but with hope of getting a penny or t\vo to gamble with, if they could clog the poor little creatures' \vings enough to bring one down " ' Canta bene, signor, quell' uccellino." Such the nine- teenth century's reward of Song. Meantime, among the silvery gleams of islet tower on the lagoon horizon, be- yond Mazorbo a white ray flashed from the place where St. Francis preached to the .Birds. Then thirdly note that curious observance of the color of clouds. That is gone, indeed ; and no Venetian, or Italian, or Frenchman, or Englishman, is likely to know or care, more, whether any God-given cloud is white or* red ; the primal effort of his entire human existence being no\v to vomit out the biggest black one he can pollute the heavens with. But, in their rough way, there was yet a perception in the old fishermen's eyes of the difference between white 'nebbia' on the morning sea, and red clouds in the evening twilight. And the Stella Maris comes in the sea Cloud; Leucothea : but the SUM of Man on the jasper throne. Thus much of the aspect, and the thoughts of earliest Venice, we may gather from one tradition, carefully read. "What historical evidence exists to confirm the gathering, you shall see in a little while ; meantime such being the 64: ST. MARK'S REST. scene of the opening drama we must next consider some- what of the character of the actors. For though what manner of houses they had, has been too little known, what manner of men they were, has not at all been known, or even the reverse of known, belied. CHAPTER VII. DIVIDE BIGHT. ARE you impatient with me? and do you wish me, ceasing preamble, to begin ' In the year th is, happened that,' and set you down a page of dates and Doges to be learned off by rote? You must be denied such delight a little while longer. If I begin dividing this first period, at present (and it has very distinctly articulated joints of its own), we should get confused between the subdivided and the great epochs. I must keep your thoughts to the Three Times, till we know them clearly ; and in this chapter I am only going to tell you the story of a single Doge of the First Time, and gather what we can out of it. Only, since we have been hitherto dwelling on the soft and religiously sentimental parts of early Venetian char- acter, it is needful that I should ask you to notice one condition in their government of a quite contrary nature, which historians usually pass by as if it were of no conse- quence ; namely, that during this first period, five Doges, sifter being deposed, had their eyes put out. P ul], card, who, you will find, was the soldier par excellence of the middle .ages, but not his match in the wild-cat cunning both of them alike in O knightly honor, word being given. As a soldier, I say, the match of Gniscard, but not holding war for the pas- time of life, stillJess for the duty of Venice or her king. Peaceful affairs, the justice and the joy of human deeds in these he sought his power, by principle and passion equally ; religious, as we have seen ; royal, as we shall presently see; commercial, as we shall finally see; a per- fect man, recognized as such with concurrent applause of people and submission of noble : u Domenico Selvo, we will, and we approve." No flaw in him, then ? Nay ; " how bad the best of us !" say Punch* and the modern evangelical. Flaw he had, * Epitaph on the Bishop of Winchester (Wilberforce) ; see Fora XI ,11., p. 125. 72 ST. MARK'S REST. such as wisest men are not imliable to, with the strongest Solomon, Samson, Hercules, Merlin the Magician. Liking pretty things, how could he help liking pretty ladies ? He married a Greek maid, who came with new and strange light on Venetian eyes, and left wild fame of herself: how, every morning, she sent her handmaidens to gather the dew for her to wash w r ith, waters of earth being not pure enough. So, through lapse of fifteen hundred year.-, descended into her Greek heart that worship in the Temple of the Dew. Of this queen's extreme luxury, and the miraculousness of it in the eyes of simple Venice, many traditions are current among later historians; which, nevertheless, 'I find resolve themselves, on closer inquiry, into an appalled record of the fact that she would actually not eat her meat with her fingers, but applied it to her mouth with " certain two-pronged instruments"* (of gold, indeed, but the luxurious sin, in Venetian eyes, was evidently not in the metal, but the fork) ; and that she indulged herself greatly in the use of perfumes : especially about her bed, for which whether to praise her, as one would an English housewife for sheets laid up in lavender, or to cry haro upon her, as the " stranger who flattereth," f I know not, until I know better the reason of the creation of per- fume itself, arid of its use in Eastern religion and delight "All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces whereby thou hast made me glad " fading and corrupting at last into the incense of the mass, and the extrait de Mille-fleurs of Bond Street. What I do * Oibos digitis non tangebat, sed quibusdam fuscinulis aureis et bidentibus suo ori applicabat." (Petrus Damianus, quoted by Dandolo.) ( Proverbs vii. , 5 and 17. VII. DIVINE RIGHT. 73 know is, that there was no more sacred sight to me, in ancient Florence, than the Spezieria of the Monks of Santa Maria Novella, with its precious vials of sweet odors, each illuminated with the little picture of the flower from which it had truly been distilled and yet, that, in its loaded air one remembered that the flowers had grown in the fields of the Decameron. But this also I know, and more surely, that the beauti- ful work done in St. Mark's during the Greek girl's reign in Venice first interpreted to her people's hearts, and made legible to their eyes, the law of Christianity in its eternal harmony with the laws of the Jew and of the Greek: and gave them the glories of Venetian art in true inheritance from the angels of that Athenian Rock, above which Ion spread his starry tapestry,* and under whose shadow his mother had gathered the crocus in the dew. * I have myself learned more of the real meaning of Greek myths from Euripides than from any other Greek writer, except Pindar. But I do not at present know of any English rhythm interpreting hi m ritrhtly these poor sapless measures must serve my turn ( Wodhull's : 1778.) " The sacred tapestry Then taking from the treasures of the God, He cover'd o'er the whole, a wondrous sight To all beholders : first he o'er the roof Threw robes, which Hercules, the son of Jove, To Phoebus at his temple brought, the spoils Of vanquished Amazons ; On which these pictures by the loom were wrought ; Heaven in its vast circumference all the stars Assembling ; there his courses too the Sun Impetuous drove, till ceas'd his waning flame, And with him drew in his resplendent train, 74 ST. MARK'S REST. Vesper's clear light ; then clad in sable garb Night haslen'd ; hastening stars accompanied Their Goddess ; through mid-air the Pleiades, And with his falchion arm'd, Orion mov'd. But the sides he covered With yet more tapestry, the Barbaric fleet To that of Greece opposed, was there display'd; Follow'd a monstrous brood, half horse, half man, The Thracian monarch's furious steeds subdu'd, And lion of Nemaea." " ... Underneath those craggy rocks, North of Minerva's citadel (the kings Of Athens call them Macra), . . . Thou cam'st, resplendent with thy golden hair, As I the crocus gathered, in my robe Each vivid flower assembling, to compose Garlands of fragrance." The composition of fragrant garlands out of crocuses being however Mr. Michael Wodhull's improvement on Euripides. Creusa's words are literally, " Thou earnest, thy hair flashing with gold, as I let fall the crocus petals, gleaming gold back again, into my robe at my bosom." Into the folds of it, across her breast ; as an English girl would have let them fall into her lap. CHAPTER VIII. THE REQUIEM. .1. As I re-read the description I gave, thirty years since, of St. Mark's Church ; much more as I remember, forty years since, and before, the first happy hour spent in trying to paint a piece of it, with my six-o'clock break- fast on the little cafe table beside me on the pavement in the morning shadow, I am struck, almost into silence, by wonder at my own pert little Protestant mind, which never thought for a moment of asking what the Church had been built for ! Tacitly and complacently assuming that I had had the entire truth of God preached to me in Beresford Chapel in the Walworth Road, recognizing no possible Christian use or propriety in any other sort of chapel elsewhere ; and perceiving, in this bright phenomenon before me, nothing of more noble function than might be in some new and radiant sea-shell, thrown up for me on the sand ; nay, never once so much as thinking, of the fair shell iiM-If, "Who built its domed whorls, then ?" or "What manner of creature lives in the inside?" Much less ever asking, "Who is lying dead therein ?" 2. A marvellous thing the Protestant mind ! Don't think I speak as a Roman Catholic, good reader: I am a mere wandering Arab, if that will less alarm you, seeking but iny cup of cold water in the desert ; and I speak only 76 ST. MAKE'S BEST, as an Arab, or an Indian, with faint hope of ever seeing the ghost of Laughing Water. A marvellous thing, nev- ertheless, I repeat, this Protestant mind ! Down in Brixton churchyard, all the fine people lie inside railings, and their relations expect the passers-by to acknowledge reverently who's there: nay, only last year, in my own Cathedral churchyard of Oxford. I saw the new grave of a young girl fenced about duly with carved stone, and overlaid with flowers ; and thought no shame to kneel for a minute or two at the foot of it, though there were sev- eral good Protestant persons standing by. But the old leaven is yet so strong in me that I am very shy of being caught by any of my country people kneel- ing near St. Mark's grave. "Because you know it's all nonsense: it isn't St. Mark's and never was," say my intellectual English knot of shocked friends. I suppose one must allow much to modern English zeal for genuineness in all commercial articles. Be it so. Whether God ever gave the Venetians what they thought He had given, does not matter to us; He gave them at least joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we have in our real ones. And he gave them the good heart to build this chapel over the cherished grave, and to write on the walls of it, St. Mark's gospel, for all eyes, and, so far as their power went, for all time. 3. But it was long before I learned to read that ; and even when, with Lord Lindsay's first help, I had begun spelling it out, the old Protestant palsy still froze my heart, though my eyes were unsealed ; and the preface to the Stones of Venice was spoiled, in the very centre of its THE BEQUTEM. 77 otherwise good work by that blunder, which I've left standing in all its shame, and with its hat off like Dr. Johnson repentant in Lichfield Market, only putting the note to it " Fool that I was ! " (page 11).* I fancied act- ually that the main function of St. Mark's was no more than of our St. George's at Windsor, to be tire private chapel of the king and' his knights ; a blessed function that also, .but how much lower than the other? 4. " Ghiesa DUCALE." It never entered my heart once to think that there was a greater Duke than her Doge, for Venice ; and that she built, for her two Dukes, each their palace, side by side. The palace of the living, and of the, Dead, was he then the other Duke \ " VIVA SAN MAKCO." You wretched little cast-iron gaspipe of a cockney that you are, who insist that your soul's your own, (see " Punch " for loth March, 1879, on the duties of Lent,) as if anybody else would ever care to have it ! is there yet life enough in the molecules, and plasm, and general mess of the making of you, to feel for an instant what that cry once meant, upon the lips of men ? Viva, Italia! you may still hear that cry sometimes, though she lies dead enough. Viva, Vittor Pieani ! perhaps also that cry, yet again. But the answer, " Not Pisani, but St. Mark," when will you hear tlat again, nowadays ? Yet when those * Scott himself (God knows I say it sorrowfully, and not to excuse my own error, but to prevent his from doing more mischief,) has made just the same mistake, but more grossly and fatally, in the character given to the Vmetiau Procurator in the "Talisman." His error is more shameful, because In- lias confused the institutions of Venice in the fifteenth century with those of the twelfth. 78 ST. MAEK'S BEST. bronze horses were won by the Bosphorus, it was St. Mark's standard, not Henry Dandolo's, that was first planted on the tower of Byzantium, and men believed by his own hand. While yet his body lay here at rest : and this, its requiem on the golden scroll, was then already written over it in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. In Hebrew, by the words of the prophets of Israel. In Greek, by every effort of the building labourer's hand, and vision to his eyes. In Latin, with the rhythmic verse which Virgil had taught, calm as the flowing of Mincio. But if you will read it, you must understand now, once for all, the method of utterance in Greek art, here, and in Greece, and in Ionia, and the isles, from its first days to this very hour. 5. I gave you the bas-relief of the twelve sheep and lit- tle caprioling lamb for a general type of all Byzantine art, to fix in your mind at once, respecting it, that its intense first character is symbolism. The thing represented means more than itself, is a sign, or letter, more than an image. And this is true, not of Byzantine art only, but of all Greek art, pur sang. Let us leave, to-day, the narrow and degrading word ' ; Byzantine." There is but one Greek school, from Homer's day down to the Doge Selvo's; and these St. Mark's mosaics are as truly wrought in the power of Daedalus, with the Greek constructive instinct, and in the power of Athena, with the Greek re- ligious soul, as ever chest of Cypselus or shaft of Erech- theum. And therefore, whatever is represented here, be it flower or rock, animal or man, means more than it is in itself. Not sheep, these twelve innocent woolly things, but the twelve voices of the gospel of heaven ; not palm- VIIL THE REQUIEM. 79 trees, these shafts of shooting stein and beaded fruit, but the living grace of God in the heart, springing up in joy at Christ's coining ; not a king, merely, this crowned creature in his .sworded state, but the justice of God in His eternal Law ; not a queen, nor a maid only, this Madonna in her purple shade, but the love of G.-d poured forth, in the wondert'ulness that passes the love of woman. She may forget yet will I not forget thee. G. And in this function of his art, remember, it does not matter to the Greek how far his image be perfect or not. That it should be understood is enough, if it can be beautiful also, well ; but its function is not beauty, but instruction. You cannot have purer examples of Greek art than the drawings on any good vase of the Maratho- nian time. Black figures on a red ground, a lew white scratches through them, marking the joints of their armour or the folds of their robes, white circles for eyes, pointed pyramids for beards, you don't suppose that in these the Greek workman thought he had given the likeness of gods ? Yet here, to his imagination, were Athena, Poseidon, and TIerakles. and all the powers that guarded his land, and cleansed his soul, and led him in. the way everlasting. 7. And the wider your knowledge extends over the dis- tant days and homes of sacred art, the more constantly and clearlv von will trace the rise of its symbolic function, ., V from the rudest fringe of racing deer, or couchant leo- pards, scratched on some ill-kneaded piece of clay, when men had yet scarcely left their own cave-couchant life, up to the throne of Cimabue's Madonna. All forms, and ornaments, and images, have a moral meaning as a nat- ural one. Yet out of all, a restricted number, chosen for 80 ST. MAEK'S BEST. an alphabet, are recognized always as given letters, of which the familiar scripture is adopted by generation after generation. 8. You had best begin reading the scripture of St. Mark's on the low cupolas of the baptistery, entering, as I asked you many a day since, to enter, under the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo. You see, the little chamber consists essentially of two parts, each with its low cupola : one containing the Font, the other the Altar. The one is significant of Baptism with water unto re- pentance. The other of Resurrection to newness of life. Burial, in baptism with water, of the lusts of the flesh. Resurrection, in baptism by the spirit here, and now, to the beginning of life eternal. Both the cupolas have Christ for their central figure : surrounded, in that over the font, by the Apostles baptiz- ing with water ; in that over the altar, surrounded by the Powers of Heaven, baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Each of the Apostles, over the font, is seen baptizing in the country to which he is sent. Their legends, written above them, begin over the door of entrance into the church, with St. John the Evangelist, and end with St. Mark the order of all being as follows : St. John the Evangelist baptizes in Ephesus. St. James - Judaea. St. Philip _ - Phrygia. St. Matthew _ Ethiopia. St. Simon Egypt. St. Thomas India. VIII. THE REQUIEM. 81 St. Andrew : . Acliaia. St. Peter Rome. St. Bartholomew (legend indecipherable). St. Thaddeus Mesopotamia. St. Matthias . Palestine. St. Mark ^ Alexandria. Over the door is Herod's feast. Herodias' daughter dances with St. John Baptist's head in the charger, on her head, simply the translation of any Greek maid on a Greek vase, bearing a pitcher of water on her head. I am not sure, but I believe the picture is meant to rep- resent the two separate times of Herod's dealing' with St. John ; and that the figure at the end of the table is in the former time, St. John saying to him, " It is not lawful for thee to have her." 9. Pass on now into the farther chapel under the darker dome. Darker, and very dark ; to my old eyes, scarcely deci- ' pherable ; to yours, if young and bright, it should be beau- tiful, for it is indeed the origin of all those golden-domed backgrounds of Bellini, and Cima, and Carpaccio; itself a Greek vase, but with new Gods. That ten-winged cherub in the recess of it, behind the altar, has written on the circle on its breast, " Fulness of Wisdom." It is the type ui x 0* 4* SO Cii ST. MAEK S BEST. of the Breath of the Spirit. But it was once a Greek Harp}-, and its wasted limbs remain, scarcely yet clothed with flesh from the claws of birds that they were. At the sides of it are the two powers of the Seraphim and Thrones: the Seraphim with sword ; the Thrones (TRONIS), with Fleur-de-lys sceptre, lovely. Opposite, on the arch by which yon entered are The "Virtues, (VIRTUTES). A dead body lies under a rock, out of which spring two torrents one of water, one of fire. The Angel of the Virtues calls on the dead to rise. Then the circle is thus completed : ' 1 8 2 7. 3 1, being the Wisdom angel ; 8, the Seraphim ; 2, the Thrones ; and 5, the Virtues. 3. Dominations. 4. Angels. 6, Potentates. 7. Princes: the last with helm and sword. Above, Christ Himself ascends, borne in a whirlwind of angels; and, as the vaults of Bellini and Carpaccio are only the amplification of the Harpy- Vault, so the Paradise of Tintoret is only the final fulfilment of the thought in this narrow cupola. 10. At your left hand, as you look towards the altar, is the most beautiful symbolic design of the Baptist's death that I know in Italy. Herodias is enthroned, not merely VIEL THE REQUIEM. 83 as queen at Herod's table, but high and alone, the type of the Power of evil in 'pride of womanhood, through the past and future world, until Time shall be no longer. On her right band is St. John's execution ; on her left, the Christian disciples, marked by their black crosses, bear his body to the tomb. It is a'four-square canopy, round arched ; of the exact type of that in the museum at Perugia, given to the ninth century ; but that over Herodias is round- tref oiled, and there is no question but that these mosaics are not earlier than the thirteenth century. And yet they are still absolutely Greek in all modes of thought, and forms of tradition. The Fountains of fire and water are merely forms of the Chimera and the Peirene ; and the maid dancing, though a princess of the thirteenth century in sleeves of ermine, is yet the phantom of some sweet water-carrier from an Arcadian spring. 11. These mosaics are the only ones in the interior of the church which belong" to the time (1204) when its facade was completed by the placing of the Greek horses over its central arch, and illumined by the lovely series of mosaics still represented in Gentile Bellini's pictures, of which only one now remains. That one, left nearly intact as Fate has willed represents the church itself so com- pleted ; and the bearing of the body of St. Mark into its gale-, with all the groat kings and queens who have visited his shrine, standing to look on ; not conceived, mind you, as present at any actual time, but as always looking on in their hearts. 12. I say it is left nearly intact. The three figures on the extreme right are restorations; and if the reader will 84: ST. MAKE'S BEST. carefully study the difference between these and the rest ; and note how all the faults of the old work are caricatured, and every one of its beauties lost so that the faces which in the older figures are grave or sweet, are in these three new ones as of staring dolls, he will know, once for all, what kind of thanks he owes to the tribe of Restorers here and elsewhere. Please note, farther, that at this time the church had round arches in the second story, (of which the shells exist yet,) but no pinnacles or marble fringes. All that termi- nal filigree is of a far later age. I take the facade as you see it stood just after 1204 thus perfected. And I will tell you, so far as I know, the meaning of it, and of what it led to, piece by piece. 13. I begin with the horses, those I saw in my dream in 1871, "putting on their harness." See "Ariadne Florentina," p. 203. These are the sign to Europe of the destruction of the Greek Empire by the Latin. They are chariot horses the horses of the Greek quadriga, and they were the trophies of Henry Dandolo. .That is all you need know of them just now; more, I hope, hereafter; but you must learn the meaning of a Greek quadriga first. They stand on the great outer archivolt of the facade : its ornaments, to the front, are of leafage closing out of spirals into balls interpo'sed between the figures of eight Prophets (or Patriarchs ?) Christ in their midst on the keystone. Xo one would believe at first it was thirteenth-century work, so delicate and rich as it looks; nor is there anything else like it that I know, in Europe, of the date : but pure thirteenth-century work it is, of rarest chiselling. I have cast two of its balls with their surrounding leafage, for St. THE REQUIEM. 85 George's Museum ; the most instructive pieces of sculpture of all i can ever show there. 14. Nor can you at all know how good it is, unless you will lea in to draw: but some things concerning it may be seen, by attentive eyes, which are worth the dwelling upon. You see, in the first place, that the outer foliage is all of one kind pure Greek Acanthus, not in the least transforming itself into ivy, or kale, or rose: trusting wholly for its beauty to the varied play of its own narrow and pointed lobes. Narrow and pointed but not jagged ; for the jagged form of Acanthus, look at the two Jean d'Acre columns, and return to this you will then feel why I call \tpure,' it is as nearly as possible the acanthus of early Corinth, only more flexible, and with more incipient blending of the character of the vine which is used for the central bosses. You see that each leaf of these last touches with its point a stellar knot of inwoven braid ; (compare the or- nament round the low archivolt of the porch on your right below), the outer acanthus folding all in spiral whorls. l.">. Now all thirteenth-century ornament of every na- tion runs much into spirals, and Irish and Scandinavian earlier decoration into little else. But these spirals are different from theirs. The Northern spiral is always elastic like that of a watch-spring. The Greek spiral, drifted like that of a whirlpool, or whirlwind. It is always an eddy or vortex not a living rod, like the point <>t' ;; young fern. At least, not living its own life but under another life. It is under the power of the Queen of the Air; the power 86 ST. MARK'S REST. also that is over the Sea. and over the human mind. The first leaves I ever drew from St. Mark's were those drifted under the breathing of it;* these on its uppermost cor- nice, far lovelier, are the final peifection of the Ionic spiral, and of the thought in the temple of the Winds. But perfected under a new influence. I said there was nothing like them (that I knew) in European architecture. But there is, in Eastern. They are only the amplification of the cornice over the arches of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. 16. I have been speaking hitherto of the front of the arch only. Underneath it, the sculpture is equally rich, and much more animated. It represents, What think you, or what would you have, good reader, if you were yourself designing the central archivolt of your native city, to companion, and even partly to sustain, the stones on which those eight Patriarchs were carved and Christ ? The great men of your city, I suppose, or the good women of it? or the squires round about it? with the Muster of the hounds in the middle ? or the Mayor and Corporation ? Well. That last guess comes near the Venetian mind, only it is not my Lord Mayor, in his robes of state, nor the Corporation at their city feast ; but. the mere Craftsmen of Venice the Trades, that is to say, de- pending on handicraft, beginning with the shipwrights, and going on to the givers of wine and bread ending with the carpenter, the smith, and the fisherman. Beginning, I say, if read from left to right, (north to south,) with the shipwrights ; but under them is a sitting * See the large plate of two capitals in early folio illustrations. THE REQUIEM. 87 figure, though sitting, yet supported by crutches. I can- not read this symbol : one may fancy many meanings in it, but I do not trust fancy in such matters. Unless I know what a symbol means, I do not tell you my own thoughts of it. 17. If, however, we read from right to left, Oriental- wise, the order would be more intelligible. It is then thus : 1. Fi si i ing. 2. Forging. 3. Sawing. Rough carpentry? 4. Cleaving wood with axu. Wheelwright ? 5. Cask and tub making. 6. Barber-surgery. 7. W caving. Keystone Christ the Lamb ; i.e., in humiliation. 8. Masonry. 9. Pottery. 10. The Butcher. 11. The Baker. 12. The Vintner. 13. The Shipwright. And 14. The rest of old age ? 18. But it is not here the place to describe these carv- ings to you, there are none others like them in Venice except the bases of the piazzetta shafts ; and there is little work like them elsewhere, pure realistic sculpture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries : 1 may have much to say of them in their day not now. Under these labourers you may read, in large letters, a piece of history from the Vienna Morning Post or what- 88 ST. MAEK'S BEST. ever the paper was of the year 1815, with which we are not concerned, nor need anybody else be so, to the end of time. Mot with that; nor with the mosaic of the vault beneath flaunting glare of Venetian art in its ruin. jSTo vestige of old work remains till we come to those steps of stone ascending on each side over the inner archivolt ; /"a strange method of enclosing its curve ; but done with special pur- pose. If you look in the Bellini picture, you will see that these steps formed the rocky midst of a mountain which rose over them for the ground, in the old mosaic ; the Mount of the Beatitudes, And on the vault above, stood Christ blessing for ever not as standing on the Mount, but supported above it by Angels. 19. And on the archivolt itself were carved the Virtues with, it is said, the Beatitudes; but I am not sure yet of anything in this archivolt, except that it is entirely splendid twelfth-century sculpture. I had the separate figures cast for my English museum, and put off the ex- amination of them when I was overworked. The Forti- tude, Justice, Faith, and Temperance are clear enough on the right and the keystone figure is Constancy, but I am sure of nothing else yet: the less that interpretation partly depended on the scrolls, of which the letters were gilded, not carved : the figures also gilded, in Bellini's time. Then the innermost archivolt of all is of mere twelfth- century grotesque, unworthy of its place. But there were so many entrances to the atrium that the builders did not care to trust special teaching to any one, even the central, except as a part of the facade. The atrium, or outer cloister itself, was the real porch of the temple. And that they covered with as close scripture as they could vm. THE EEQUIEM. 89 the whole Creation and Book of Genesis pictured on it. 20. These are the mosaics usually attributed to the Doge Selvo : I cannot myself date any mosaics securely with precision, never having studied the technical struc- ture of them ; and these also are different from the others of St. Mark's in being more Norman than Byzantine in manner; and in an ugly admittance and treatment of nude form, which I find only elsewhere in manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries of the school of Monte Cassino and South Italy. On the other hand, they possess some qualities of thought and invention almost in a sub- lime degree. But I believe Selvo had better work done under him than these. Better work at all events, you shall now see if you will. You must get hold of the man who keeps sweeping the dust about, in St. Mark's; very thankful he will be, for a lira, to take you up to the gallery on the right-hand side, (south, of St. Mark's in- terior ;) from which gallery, where it turns into the south transept, you may see, as well as it is possible to see, the mosaic of the central dome. 21. Christ enthroned on a rainbow, in a sphere sup- ported by four flying angels underneath, forming white pillars of caryatid mosaic. Between the windows; the twelve apostles, and the Madonna, alas, the head of this principal figure frightfully " restored," and I think the greater part of the central subject. Round the circle enclos- ing Christ is written, u Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye at gaze ? This Son of God, Jesus, so taken from you, departs that He, may be the arbiter of the earth : in charge of judg- ment He comes, and to (jive the laics that ought to be." 22. Such, you see, the central thought of Venetian wor- 90 ST. MARK'S BEST. ship. Not that we shall leave the world, but that our Master will come to it : and such the central hope of Venetian worship, that He shall come to judge the world indeed ; not in a last and destroying judgment, but in an enduring and saving judgment, in truth and righteousness and peace. Catholic theology of the purest, lasting at all events down to the thirteenth century ; or as long as the Byzantines had influence. For these are typical Byzan- tine conceptions : how far taken up and repeated by Italian workers, one cannot say : but in their gravity of purpose, meagre thinness of form, and rigid drapery lines, to be remembered by you with distinctness as expressing the first school of design in Venice, comparable in an in- stant with her last school of design, by merely glancing to the end of the north transept, where that rich piece of foliage, full of patriarchs, was designed by Paul Veronese. And what a divine picture it might have been, if he had only minded his own business, and let the mosaic workers mind theirs! even now it is the only beautiful one of the late mosaics, and shows a new phase of the genius of Veronese. All I want yon to feel, however, is the differ- ence of temper from the time when people liked the white pillar-like figures of the dome, to that when they liked the dark exuberance of those in the transept. 23. But from this coign of vantage you may see much more. Just opposite you, and above, in the arch crossing the transept between its cupola and the central dome, are mosaics of Christ's Temptation, and of his entrance to Jerusalem. The upper one, of the Temptation, is en- tirely characteristic of the Byzantine mythic manner of teaching. On the left, Christ sits in the rocky cave which has sheltered Him for the forty days of fasting : out of THE REQUIEM. 9l the rock above issues a spring meaning that He drank of the waters that spring np to everlasting life, of which whoso drinks shall never thirst ; and in His hand is a book the living Word of God, which is His bread. The Devil holds iip the stones in his lap. Next the temptation on the pinnacle of the Temple, symbolic again, wholly, as you see, in very deed quite impossible : so also that on the mountain, where the treasures of the world are, I think, represented by the glittering fragments on the mountain top. Finally, the falling Devil, cast down head-foremost in the air, and ap- proaching angels in ministering troops, complete the story. 24. And on the whole, these pictures are entirely rep- resentative to yon of the food which the Venetian mind had in art, down to the day of the Doge Selvo. Those were the kind of images and shadows they lived on : you may think of them what you please, but the historic fact is, beyond all possible debate, that these thin dry bones of art were nourishing meat to the Venetian race : that they grew and throve on that diet, every day spiritually fatter for it, and more comfortably round in human soul : no illustrated papers to be Jiad, no Academy Ex- hibition to be seen. If their eyes were to be entertained at all, such must be their lugubrious delectation ; pleasure difficult enough to imagine, but real and pure, I doubt not ; even passionate. In as quite singularly incompre- hensible fidelity of sentiment, my cousin's least baby has fallen ia love with a wooden spoon ; Paul not more devoted to Virginia. The two are inseparable all about the house, vainly the unimaginative bystanders endeavour- ing to perceive, for their part, any amiableness in the spoon. But baby thrives in -his pacific attachment, nay, 92 ST. MAKE'S BEST. is under the most perfect moral control, pliant as a reed, under the slightest threat of being parted from his spoon. And I am assured that the crescent Venetian imagination did indeed find pleasantness in these figures ; more es- pecially, which is notable in the extreme .emaciation of them, a type of beauty kept in their hearts down to the Yivarini days ; afterwards rapidly changing to a very opposite ideal indeed. 25. Nor even in its most ascetic power, disturbing these conceptions of what was fitting and fair in their own per- sons, or as a nation of fishermen. They have left us, hap- pily, a picture of themselves, at their greatest time un- noticed, so far as I can read, by any of their historians, but left for poor little me to discover and that by chance like the inscription on St. James's of the Rialto. But before going on to see this, look behind you, where you stand, at the mosaic on the west wall of the south transept. It is not Byzantine, but rude thirteenth-century, and for- tunately left, being the representation of an event of some import to Venice, the recovery of the lost body of St. Mark. You may find the story told, with proudly polished, or loudly impudent, incredulity, in any modern guide-book. I will not pause to speak of it here, nor dwell, yet, on this mosaic, which is clearly later than the story it tells by two hundred years. We will go on to the picture which shows us things as they ivere, in its time. 26. You must go round the transept gallery, and get the door opened into the compartment of the eastern aisle, in which is the organ. And going to the other side of the square stone gallery, and looking back from behind the organ, you will see opposite, on the vault, a mosaic of VHI. T^F REQUIEM. 93 upright figures in dresses of blue, green, purple, and white, variously embroidered with gold. These represent, as you are told by the inscription above them the Priests, the Clergy, the Doge, and the people of Venice ; and are an abstract, at least, or epitome of those personages, as they were, and felt themselves to be, in those days. I believe, early twelfth-century late eleventh it might be later twelfth it may be, it does not matter : these were the people of Venice in the central time of her un- wearied life, her unsacrificed honour, her unabated power, and sacred 'faith. Her Doge wears, not the contracted shell-like cap, but the imperial crown. Her priests and clergy are alik;e mitred not with the cloven, but simple, cap, like the conical helmet of a knight. Her people are also her soldiers, and their Captain bears his sword, sheathed in black. So far as features could be rendered in the rude time, the faces are all noble (one horribly restored figure on the right shows what tj/nobleness, on this large scale, modern brutality and ignorance can reach) ; for the most part, dark-eyed, but the Doge brown-eyed and fair-haired, the long tresses falling on his shoulders, and his beard braided like that of an Etruscan king. 27. And this is the writing over them. PONTIFICES. CLEKUS. POPULUS. Dux MENTE SEKE- NUS.* * The continuing couplet of monkish Latin, " Laudibus atque choris Excipiunt dulce canons," may perhaps have been made worse or less efficient Latin by some mis- take in restoration. 94 ST. MARK'S REST. The Priests, the Clergy, the People, the Duke, serene of mind. Most Serene Highnesses of all the after Time and World, how many of you knew, or know, what this Venice, first to give the title, meant by her Duke's Seren- ity ! and why she trusted it ? The most precious " historical picture " this, to my mind, of any in worldly gallery, or unworldly cloister, east or west ; but for the present, all I care for you to learu of it, is that these were the kind of priests, and peo- ple, and kings, who wrote this Requiem of St. Mark, of which, now, we will read what more we may. 28. If you go up in front of the organ, you may see, better than from below, the mosaics of the eastern dome. This part of the church must necessarily have been h'rst completed, because it is over the altar and shrine. In it, the teaching of the Mosaic legend begins, and in a sort ends ; " Christ the King," foretold of Prophets de- clared of Evangelists born of a Virgin in due time ! But to understand the course of legend, you must know what the Greek teachers meant by an Evangelion, as dis- tinct from a Prophecy. Prophecy is here thought of in its narrower sense as the foretelling of a good that is to be. But an Evangelion is the voice of the Messenger, say- ing, it is here. And the four mystic Evangelists, under the figures of living creatures, are not types merely of the men that are to bring the Gospel message, but of the power of that message in all Creation so far as it was, and is, spoken in all living things, and as the Word of God, which is Christ, was present, and not merely prophesied, in the Creatures of His hand. VIII. THE REQUIEM. 95 20. Yon will find m your Murray, and other illumined writings of the nineteenth century, various explanations given of the meaning of the Lion of St. Mark derived, they occasionally mention, (nearly as if it had been de- rived by accident!) from the description of Ezekiel.* "Which, perhaps, you may have read once on a time, though even that is doubtful in these blessed days of sci- entific education ; but, boy or girl, man or woman, of you, not one in a thousand, if one, has ever, I am -well as- sured, asked what \vas the nxe of Ezckiel's Vision, either to Ezekiel, or to anybody else ; any more than I used to think, myself, what St. Mark's was built for. In case you have not a Bible with you, I must be tedi- ous enough to reprint the essential verses here. ^ 30. " As I was among the Captives by the Iliver of Chebar, the Heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God." (Fugitive at least, and all but captive, by the Iliver of the deep stream, the Venetians perhaps cared yet to hear what he saw.) "In the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity, the word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the Priest." (We also we Venetians have our Pontifices ; we also our King. May we not hear?) "And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, and a fire infolding itself. Also in the midst thereof wasf the likeness of Four living Creatures. "And this was the aspect of them ; the Likeness of a n was upon them. * Or, with still more enlightened Scripture research, from "one of the visions of Daniel" ! (Sketches, etc., p. 18.) f What alterations 1 make are from the Septuagint. 96 ST. MAKE'S BEST. " And every one had four faces, and every one four wings. And they had the hands of a Man under their wings. And their wings were stretched upward, two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, the noise of an Host." (To us in Venice, is not the noise of the great waters known and the noise of an Host ? May we hear also the voice of the Almighty ?) " And they went every one straight forward. Whither the Spirit was to .go, they went. And this was the like- ness of their faces : they four had the face of a Man " (to the front), " and the face of a Lion on the right side, and the face of an Ox on the left side, and " (looking back) " the face of an Eagle." And not of an Ape, then, my beautifully-browed cock- ney friend ? the unscientific Prophet ! The face of Man ; and of the wild beasts of the earth, and of the tame, and of the birds of the air. This was the Vision of the Glory of the Lord. 31. "And as I beheld the living creatures, behold, one wheel upon the earth, by the living creatures, with /c/.v four faces, . . . and their aspect, and their work, was as a wheel in the midst of a wheel." Crossed, that is, the meridians of the four quarters of the earth. (See Holbein's drawing of it in his Old Testa- ment series.) " And the likeness of the Firmament upon the heads of the living creatures was as the colour of the terrible crystal. " And there was a voice from the Firmament that was THE REQUIEM. 97 over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings. "And above the Firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a Throne ; and upon the likeness of the Throne was the likeness of the Aspect of a Man above, upon it. "And from His loins round about I saw as it were the appearance of fire ; and it had brightness round about, as the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain. This was the appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face." 32. Can any of us do the like or is it worth while ? with only apes' faces to fall upon, and the forehead that refuses to be ashamed ? Or is there, nowadays, no more anything for its to be afraid of, or to be thankful for, in all the wheels, and flame, and light, of earth and heaven '. This that follows, after the long rebuke, is their Evan- gelion. This the sum of the voice that speaks in them, (chap. .\i. 16). " Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord. Though I have cast them far off among the heathen, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the places whither they shall come. " And I will give them one heart ; and I will put a new spirit within them; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh. That theymay walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordi- nances and do them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. " Then did the Cherubims lift up their wings, and the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above." 5 98 ST. MARK'S REST. < 33. That is the story of the Altar- Vault of St. Mark's, of which though much was gone, yet, when I was last in Venice, much was left, wholly lovely and mighty. The principal figure of the Throned Christ was indeed forever destroyed by the restorer; but the surrounding Prophets, and the Virgin in prayer, at least retained so much of their ancient colour and expression as to be entirely noble, if only one had nobility enough in one's own thoughts to forgive the failure of any other human soul to speak clearly what it had felt of most divine. My notes have got confused, and many lost ; and now I have no time to mend the thread of them : I am not sure even if I have the list of the Prophets complete ; but these following at least you will find, and (perhaps with others between) in this order chosen, each, for his message concerning Christ, which is written on the scroll he bears. 3. 1. On the Madonna's left hand, Isaiah. " Behold, a virgin shall conceive." (Written as far as " Immanuel.") 2. Jeremiah. " Hie est in quo, Deus Noster." 3. Daniel. " Cum venerit " as far as to " cessabit unctio." 4. Obadiah. " Ascendit sanctus in Monte Syon." 5. Habakkuk. " God shall come from the South, and the Holy One from Mount Paran." 6. Hosea. (Undeciphered.) 7. Jonah. (Undeciphered.) 8. Zephaniah. " Seek ye the Lord, all in the gen- tle time" (in mansueti tempore). 9. Haggai. "Behold, the desired of all nations shall come." THE REQUIEM. 99 10. Zachariah. " Behold a man whose name is the Branch.'' (Often*.) 11. Malachi. " Behold, I send my messenger," etc. (angel urn meum). 12. Solomon. " \Vho is tliis that ascends as the morning '. " 13. David. "Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne." 35. The decorative power of the colour in these figures, chiefly blue, purple, and white, on gold, is entirely admi- rable, more especially the dark purple of the Virgin's robe, with lines of gold for its folds ; and the figures of David and Solomon, both in Persian tiaras, almost Arab, with falling lappets to the shoulder, for shade; David holding a book with Hebrew letters on it and a cross, (a pretty sign for the Psalms ;) and Solomon with rich orbs of lace like involved ornament on his dark robe, cnsped in the short hem of it, over gold underneath. And note in all these mosaics that Byzantine " purple,'' the colour at once meaning Kinghood and its Sorrow, is the same as ours -not scarlet, but amethyst, and that deep. 36. Then in the spandrils below, come the figures of the forr beasts, with this inscription round, for all of them. " QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS HlS APERIRE DATUR ET IN HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR." "Whatever things under obscure figures have been said of Christ, it is given to ///<.* " (Vreatures) " to open ; and in these, Christ himself is seen/' 100 ST. MAKE'S BEST. A grave saying. Not in the least true of 'mere Mat- thew, Mark, Luke, and John. Christ was never seen in them, though told of by them. But, as the Word by which all things were made, He is seen in all things made, and in the Poiesis of them : and therefore, when the vis- ion of Ezekiel is repeated to St. John, changed only in that the four creatures are to him more distinct each with its eingle aspect, and not each fourfold, they are full of eyes within, and rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come." 37. We repeat the words habitually, in our own most solemn religious service ; but we repeat without noticing out of whose mouths they come. " Therefore," (we say, in much self-satisfaction,) " with Angels and Archangels, and with all the Company of heaven," (meaning each of us, I suppose, the select Com- pany we expect to get into there,) " we laud and mag- nify," etc. But it ought to make a difference in our es- timate of ourselves, and of our power to say, with our hearts, that God is Holy, if we remember that we join in saying so, not, for the present, with the Angels, but with the Beasts. 38. Yet not with every manner of Beast ; for after- wards, when all the Creatures in Heaven and Earth, and the Sea, join in thfc giving of praise, it is only these four who can say " Amen." The Ox that treadeth out the corn ; and the Lion that shall eat straw like the Ox, and lie down with the lamb ; and the Eagle that fluttereth over her young ; and the human creature that loves its mate, and its children. In these four is all the power and all the charity of VHI. THE REQUIEM. 101 earthly life ; and in such power and charity " Deus ipse notatur." 39. Notable, in that manner, lie was, at least, to the men wjio built this shrine where once was St. Theodore's ; not betraying nor forgetting their first master, but plac- ing his statue, with St. Mark's Lion, as equal powers upon their pillars of justice; St. Theodore, as you have before heard, being the human spirit in true conquest over the inhuman, because in true sympathy with it not as St. George in contest with, but being strengthened and ped- estalled by, the " Dragons and all Deeps." 40. But the issue of all these lessons we cannot yet measure ; it is only now that we are beginning to be able to read them, in the myths of the past, and natural history of the present world. The animal gods of Egypt and Assyria, the animal cry that there is no God, of the pass- ing hour, are. both of them, part of the rudiments of the religion yet to be revealed, in the rule of the Holy Spirit over the venomous dust, when the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp, and the weaned child lay his hand on the cockatrice den. 41. And no\v, if you have enough seen, and understood, this eastern dome and its lesson, go down into the church under the central one, and consider the story of that. Under its angles are the four Evangelists themselves, drawn as men, and each with his name. And over tJteni the inscription is widely different.* * I give, and construe, this legend as now written, but the five letters " liter " are recently restored, and I suspect them to have been originally either three or six. "cer"or '-disccr." In all the monkish rhymes I have yet read, I don't remember uny so awkward a division as this ol nat ura- liter. 102 ST. MARK'S BEST. " Sic ACTUS CHEISTI DESCRIBUNT QUATUOR ISTI QUOD NEQUE NATURA LITER NENT, NEC UTRINQUE FIGURA." " Thus do these four describe the Acts of Christ. And weave his story, neither by natural knowledge, nor, con- trariwise, by any figure." Compare now the two inscriptions. In the living creatures, Christ himself is seen by nature and by figure. But these four tell us his Acts, " Not by nature not by figure." How then ? 42. You have had various "lives of Christ," German and other, lately provided among your other severely historical studies. Some, critical ; and some, sentimental. But there is only one light by which you can read the life of Christ, the light of the life you now lead in the flesh; and that not the natural, but the won life. "Nevertheless, I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Therefore, round the vault, as the pillars of it, are the Christian virtues; somewhat more in number, and other in nature, than the swindling-born and business-bred virtues which most Christians nowadays are content in acquiring. But these old Venetian virtues are compliant also, in a way. They are for sea-life, and there is one for r\vry wind that blows. 43. If you stand in mid-nave, looking to the altar, the first narrow window of the cupola (I call it first for reasons presently given) faces you, in the due east. Call the one next it, on your right, the second window; it bears east-south-east. The third, south-east; the fourth, south-south-east ; the fifth, south ; the ninth, VIH. THE REQUIEM. 103 west ; the thirteenth, north ; and the sixteenth east-north- The Venetian Virtues stand, one between each window. On the sides of the east window stand Fortitude and Temperance; Temperance the tir>t. Fortitude the last; ' lie that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." Then their order is as follows: Temperance between the first and second windows, (quenching fire with water) ; between the second and third, Prudence ; and then, in sequence, in. Humility. iv. Kindness, (Benignitas). v. Compassion. vi. Abstinence, vir. Mercy, vni. Long-suffering. ix. Chastity. x. Modesty. xi. Constancy. xn. Charity, xni. Hope. xrv. Faith. xv. Justice, xvi. Fortitude. 44. I meant to have read all their legends, but "could do it any time," and of course never did ! but these following are the most important. Charity is put twelfth at the last attained of the virtues belonging to human life only: but she is called the "Mother of the Virtues" meaning, of them all, when they become divine; and chiefly of the four last, which relate to the other world. 104 ST. MASK'S BEST. Then Long-suffering, (Patientia,) has for her legend, " Blessed are the Peacemakers " ; Chastity, il Blessed are the Pure in Heart " ; Modesty, " Blessed are ye when men hate you " ; while Constancy (consistency) has the two heads, balanced, one in each hand, which are given to the keystone of the entrance arch : meaning, I believe, the equal balance of a man's being, by which it not only stands, but stands as an arch, with the double strength of the two sides of his intellect and soul. " Qui sibi constat" Then note that "Modestia" is here not merely shame- facedness, though it includes whatever is good in that; but it is contentment in being thought little of, or hated, when one thinks one ought to be made much of a very difficult virtue to acquire indeed, as I know some people who know. 45. Then the order of the circle becomes entirely clear. All strength of character begins in temperance, prudence, and lowliness of thought. Without these, nothing is pos- sible, of noble humanity : on these follow kindness, (simple, as opposed to malice,) and compassion, (sympathy, a much rarer quality than mere kindness) ; then, self- restriction, a quite different and' higher condition than temperance, the first being not painful when rightly practised, but the latter always so; ("I held my peace, even from good" "quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit, ab Dis plura feret"). Then come pity and long-suffering, which have to deal with the sin, and not merely with the sorrow, of those around us. Then the three Trial virtues, through which one has to struggle forward up to the power of Love, the twelfth. All these relate only to the duties and relations of the life that is now. VHL THE REQUIEM. 105 But Love is stronger than Death ; and through her, we have, first, Hope of life to come ; then, surety of it ; living by this surety, (the Just shall live by Faith,) Righteous- ness, and Strength to the end. Who bears on her scroll, " The Lord shall break the teeth of the Lions." 46. An undeveloped and simial system of human life you think it cockney friend ! Such as it was, the Venetians made shift to brave the war of this world with it, as well as ever you are like to do ; and they had, besides, the joy of looking to the peace of another. For, you see, above these narrow windows, stand the Apostles, and the two angels that stood by them on the Mount of the Ascension ; and between these the Virgin; and with her, and with the twelve, you are to hear the angels' word, " Why stand ye at gaze ? as He departs, so shall lie come, to give the Laws that ought to be." DEBITA JUKA, a form of "debit" little referred to in modern ledgers, but by the Venetian acknowledged for all devoirs of com- merce and of war; writing, by his church, of the Rialto's business, (the first words, these, mind you, that Venice ever speaks aloud,) " Around this Temple, let the Mer- chant's law be just, his weights true, and his covenants faithful." And writing thus, in lovelier letters, above the place of St. Mark's Rest, "Brave be the living, who live untq the Lonl ; For Blessed are the dead, that die in Him." NOTI?. The mosaics described in this number of St. Mark's Rest being now liable at any moment to destruction from causes already enough specified, T have undertaken, at the instance of Mr. Edward Burne Jones, and with promise of that artist's helpful superintendence, at once to obtain some permanent record of them, the best that may be at present possible : and to that end I have already dispatched to Venice an accomplished young draughtsman, who is content to devote himself, as old painters did, to the work before him for the sake of that, and his own honour, at journeyman's wages. The three of us, Mr. Burne Jones, and he, and I, are alike minded to set our hands and souls hard at this thing : but we can't, unless the public will a little help us. I have given away already all I have to spare, and can't carry on this work at my own cost ; and if Mr. Burne Jones gives his time and care gratis, and without stint, as I know he will, it is all he should be asked for. Therefore, the public must give me enough to maintain my draughtsman at his task : what mode of publication for the draw- ings may be then possible, is for after-consideration. I ask for sub- scriptions at present to obtain the copies only. The reader is requested to refer also to the final note appended to the new edition of the ' Stones of Venice," and to send what subscription he may please to iny publisher, Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. * See appendix to chapter viii., page 187. FIRST SUPPLEMENT. THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. BEIXG A GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES BT VICTOR CARPACCTO IN VENICE. PREFACE. THE following (too imperfect) account of the pictures by Carpaccio in the chapel of San Giorgio de' Schiavo.ni, is properly a supplement to the part of " St. Mark's Rest " in which I propose to examine the religious mind of Venice in the fifteenth century : but I publish these notes prematurely that they may the sooner become help- ful, according to their power, to the English traveller. The second supplement, which is already in the press, will contain the analysis by my fellow-worker, Mr. James Reddie Anderson, of the mythological purport of the pic- tures here described. I separate Mr. Anderson's work thus distinctly from my own, that he may have the entire credit of it ; but the reader will soon perceive that it is altogether necessary, both for the completion and the proof of my tentative statements; and that without the certificate of his scholarly investigation, it would have been lost time to prolong the account of my own conjec- tures or impressions. / THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. COUNTING the canals which, entering the city from the open lagoon, must be crossed as you walk from the Piaz- zetta towards the Public Gardens, the fourth, called the %i Rio della Pieta " from the unfinished church of the Pieta, facing the quay before you reach it, will presently, if you go down it in gondola, and pass the Campo
  • ne of the curious proofs of the grounds he had for naming the Venetians as one of the tribes' of the Illy- rians. ;in