reserved, and published by the Abbe Cadorin, and they form one of
the most important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace.

I can not help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental
resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was
first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others,
especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute
designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and, to his
immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for
the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and
Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise
of Guariento had withered before the flames.

The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive,
and interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace;
still the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of
the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the
Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect
them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work
brought the whole edifice into its present form; with the exception of
alterations in doors, partitions, and staircases among the inner
apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and defacements as
have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I suppose, nearly
every building of importance in Italy.

THE LAGOONS[52]

BY HORATIO F. BROWN

The colonization of the Venetian estuary is usually dated from the year
452, the period of the Hunnish invasion under Attila, when the Scourge
of God, as he was named by his terror-stricken opponents, sacked the
rich Roman cities of Aquileia, Concordia, Opitergium, and Padua. In one
sense the date is correct. The Hunnish invasion certainly gave an
enormous increase to the lagoon population, and called the attention of
the mainlanders, to the admirable asylum which the estuary offered in
times of danger.

When Alcuin, the great scholar from Yorkshire, was teaching
Charlemagne's son and heir, Pepin, he drew up for his pupil's use a
curious catechism of questions and answers. Among others this occurs:
"What is the sea." "A refuge in time of danger." Surely a strange
answer, and one which can hardly be reckoned as true except in the
particular case of the Venetian lagoons. For the mainlanders were caught
between the devi