d the ravage of the Turks, carried
to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea
and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue
distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb
ever bestowed on her monarchs.

Sec. XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of
the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the
tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative
by translation.

"Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore
antico che senza ombra d'imitazione traspare da tutta l'opera"--&c.
"Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s'alza uno
stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta
leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novita di pensiero e di
effetto va coronato da un fregio il piu gentile che veder si
possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l'_arca dove_ sta
chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c.

There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the
dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this
rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it
here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)

"Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts
attained by ministry of the chisel."

To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
far more laboriously cut, bu