is no stable outline such as one finds
among the mountains, no permanent vista, as in a view across a
plain. The two great constituents of the Venetian landscape, the
sea and the sky, are precisely the two features in nature which
undergo most incessant change. The cloud-wreaths of this evening's
sunset will never be repeated again; the bold and buttressed piles
of those cloud-mountains will never be built again just so for us;
the grain of orange and crimson that stains the water before our
prow, we cannot be sure that we shall look upon its like again....
One day is less like another in Venice than anywhere else. The
revolution of the seasons will repeat certain effects; spring will
chill the waters to a cold, hard green; summer will spread its
breadth of golden light on palace front and water way; autumn will
come with its pearly-gray sirocco days, and sunsets flaming a
sombre death; the stars of a cloudless winter night, the whole vast
dome of heaven, will be reflected in the mirror of the still
lagoon. But in spite of this general order of the seasons, one day
is less like another in Venice than anywhere else; the lagoon wears
a different aspect each morning when you rise, the sky offers a
varied composition of cloud each evening as the sun sets. Words
cannot describe Venice, nor brush portray her ever-fleeting,
ever-varying charm. Venice is to be felt, not reproduced; to live
there is to live a poem, to be daily surfeited with a wealth of
beauty enough to madden an artist to despair."

It was in the autumn of 1882 that the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, later
Bishop of Massachusetts, visited Venice and wrote of San Marco:--

"Strange how there is nothing like St. Mark's in Venice, nothing of
the same kind as the great church. It would have seemed as if,
standing here for so many centuries, and always profoundly loved
and honored, it would almost of necessity have influenced the minds
of the generations of architects, and shown its power in their
works. But there seems to be no sign of any such influence. It
stands alone."

Dr. Brooks noted that Venice had "two aspects, one sensuous and
self-indulgent, the other lofty, spiritual, and even severe. Both
aspects," he continues, "are in its history and both are also in its
art. Titian often represents the former. The loftie