g sun like a mirror of molten gold. But, alas! it
was only a glorious vision; for the power and wealth of Venice are
departed.

"The long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust.

* * * * *

Empty halls,
Thin streets and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls."

The gun which had awaked me reminds the Queen of the Adriatic every
morning that the day of her dominion and glory is over, and that the
night has come upon her,--a night, the deep unbroken shadows of which,
even the bright morning that was now opening on the Adriatic could not
dispel.

After breakfast I hurried to the church of S. Mark. Mass was proceeding
as usual; and a large crowd of worshippers,--spectators I should rather
say,--stood densely packed in the chancel. If I except the Madeleine in
Paris, I have nowhere seen in a Roman Catholic church an attendance at
all approximating even a tolerable congregation, save here. I remarked,
too, that these were not the beggars which usually form the larger
proportion of the attendance, such as it is, in Roman churches. The
people in S. Mark's were well dressed, though it was not easy to
conceive where these fine clothes had come from, seeing the sea has now
failed Venice, and land she never possessed. This was the first symptom
I saw (I met others in the course of the day) that in Venice the Roman
religion has a stronger hold upon the people than in the rest of Italy.
It is an advantage in this respect to be some little distance from Rome,
and to have an insular position. Besides, I believe that the priests in
Venetian Lombardy, and, I presume, in Venice also, are men of more
reputable lives than their brethren in other parts of the Peninsula.
Anciently it was not so. Venice was wont to be termed "the paradise of
monks." There no pleasure allowable to a man of the world was forbidden
to a priest. The Senate, jealous of everything that might abridge its
authority, encouraged this relaxation of the Church's discipline, in the
hope of lowering the influence of its clergy with the people.

S. Mark's is an ancient, quaint-looking pile, with the dim hoar light of
history around it. On its threshold Pope Alexander III. met the Emperor
Frederick in 1177, and, with pride unabated by his enforced flight from
Rome in the disguise of a