ing principally to St. Nicodemus, and much lamented when they and
the church were together destroyed by fire in 1105.

It was then rebuilt in "magnifica forma," much resembling, according to
Corner, the architecture of the chancel of St. Mark;[29] but the
information which I find in various writers, as to the period at which
it was reduced to its present condition, is both sparing and
contradictory.

Sec. V. Thus, by Corner, we are told that this church, resembling St.
Mark's, "remained untouched for more than four centuries," until, in
1689, it was thrown down by an earthquake, and restored by the piety of
a rich merchant, Turrin Toroni, "in ornatissima forma;" and that, for
the greater beauty of the renewed church, it had added to it two facades
of marble. With this information that of the Padre dell' Oratoria
agrees, only he gives the date of the earlier rebuilding of the church
in 1175, and ascribes it to an architect of the name of Barbetta. But
Quadri, in his usually accurate little guide, tells us that this
Barbetta rebuilt the church in the fourteenth century; and that of the
two facades, so much admired by Corner, one is of the sixteenth century,
and its architect unknown; and the rest of the church is of the
seventeenth, "in the style of Sansovino."

Sec. VI. There is no occasion to examine, or endeavor to reconcile, these
conflicting accounts. All that is necessary for the reader to know is,
that every vestige of the church in which the ceremony took place was
destroyed _at least_ as early as 1689; and that the ceremony itself,
having been abolished in the close of the fourteenth century, is only to
be conceived as taking place in that more ancient church, resembling St.
Mark's, which, even according to Quadri, existed until that period. I
would, therefore, endeavor to fix the reader's mind, for a moment, on
the contrast between the former and latter aspect of this plot of
ground; the former, when it had its Byzantine church, and its yearly
procession of the Doge and the Brides; and the latter, when it has its
Renaissance church "in the style of Sansovino," and its yearly honoring
is done away.

Sec. VII. And, first, let us consider for a little the significance and
nobleness of that early custom of the Venetians, which brought about the
attack and the rescue of the year 943: that there should be but one
marriage day for the nobles of the whole nation,[30] so that all might
rejoice together; and that the