fact that they do not increase so
rapidly as to become a nuisance instead of a pleasure, lends some color
to the suspicion that pigeon pies are not unknown at certain tables
during the proper season.

TORCELLO, THE MOTHER CITY[56]

BY JOHN RUSKIN

Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the
city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level,
and hoist themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and
there into shapeless mounds, and interrupted by narrow creeks of sea.
One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among
buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburned weeds whitened with
webs of fucas, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of
greener grass covered with ground-ivy and violets. On this mound is
built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if
we ascend toward evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of
its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from
it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours.

Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
ashen-gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
level gloom. To the very horizon, on the northeast; but to the north and
west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and
above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with
snow.

To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary
intervals as the surf breaks on the bar of sand; to the south, the
widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green,
as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath
our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a
group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (tho
built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an
octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red
roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave
and aisles, but