lane at the side of the church--were
both rich and generous, and many of its gifts and furnishings reflected
the highest art to which modern Venice had attained. Between the
wonderful, mystic, Eastern glory of San Marco, all shadows and
symbolisms and harmonies, and the positive, realistic assertions,
aesthetic and spiritual, of the Frari, lay the entire reach of the art
and religion of the Most Serene Republic.

The church was ancient enough to be a treasure-house for the historian,
and it had been restored, with much magnificence, less than a century
before,--which was modern for Venice,--while innumerable gifts had
brought its treasures down to the days of Titian and Tintoret.

To-day the people were coming in throngs, as to a _festa_, on foot from
under the Portico di Zen, across the little marble bridge which spanned
the narrow canal; on foot also from the network of narrow paved lanes,
or _calle_, which led off into a densely populated quarter; for to-day
the people had free right of entrance, equally with those others who
came in gondolas, liveried and otherwise, from more distant and
aristocratic neighborhoods. This pleasant possibility of entrance
sufficed for the crowd at large, who were not learned, and who preferred
the attractions of the outside show to the philosophical debate which
was the cause of all this agreeable excitement, and which was presently
to take place in the great church before a vast assembly of nobles and
clergy and representatives from the Universities of Padua, Mantua, and
Bologna; and outside, in the glowing sunshine, with the strangers and
the confusion, the shifting sounds and lights, the ceaseless unlading of
gondolas and massing and changing of colors, every minute was a
realization of the people's ideal of happiness.

Brown, bare-legged boys flocked from San Pantaleone and the people's
quarters on the smaller canals, remitting, for the nonce, their
absorbing pastimes of crabbing and petty gambling, and ragged and
radiant, stretched themselves luxuriously along the edge of the little
quay, faces downward, emphasizing their humorous running commentaries
with excited movements of the bare, upturned feet; while the gondoliers
landed their passengers to a lively refrain of "_Stali_!" their curses
and appeals to the Madonna blending not discordantly with the general
babel of sound which gives such a sense of companionship in
Venice--human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from