d as not immediate,
and the worst they expected was the fall of the angle where the crack
had appeared. A complete collapse of the whole tower was absolutely
excluded. As a precautionary measure the music in the Piazza was
suspended on Saturday evening. On Sunday orders were issued to endeavor
to bind the threatened angle.

But by Monday morning early (July 14th) it was evident that the
catastrophe could not be averted. Dust began to pour out of the widening
crack, and bricks to fall. A block of Istrian stone crashed down from
the bell-chamber, then a column from the same site. At 9.47 the ominous
fissure opened, the face of the Campanile toward the church and the
Ducal Palace bulged out, the angle on the top and the pyramid below it
swayed once or twice, and threatened to crush either the Sansovino's
Library or the Basilica of San Marco in their fall, then the whole
colossus subsided gently, almost noiselessly, upon itself, as it were in
a curtsey, the ruined brick and mortar spread out in a pyramidal heap, a
dense column of white powder rose from the Piazza, and the Campanile was
no more.

It is certainly remarkable, and by the people of Venice it is reckoned
as a miracle, that the tower in its fall did so little harm. Not a
single life was lost, tho the crowd in the Piazza was unaware of its
danger till about ten minutes before the catastrophe.

THE PALACE OF THE DOGES[50]

BY JOHN RUSKIN

The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are
all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and
the existing building is formed by the union of the two. We shall review
the history of each in succession.

1st. The Byzantine Palace. In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813,
the Venetians determined to make the island of Rialto the seat of the
government and capital of their state. Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello
Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the
small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future
Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the banks of
sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges
over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built the Church of
St. Mark; an