ated
funeral barge, on which it was guarded during the transit by four
'Uscieri' in gala dress, two sergeants of the Municipal Guard, and two
firemen bearing torches. The remainder of these followed in their boats.
The funeral barge was slowly towed by a steam launch of the Royal Navy.
The chief officers of the Municipality, the family, and many others in a
crowd of gondolas, completed the procession. San Michele was reached as
the sun was setting, when the firemen again received their burden and
bore it to the principal mortuary chapel."

Later the municipality of Venice fixed the memorial tablet to the wall
of the palace. The quotation, from the poet, cut under his name, runs
thus:--

Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, Italy.

The tablet is a graceful recognition of the devotion of Browning and his
wife to their adopted country. Did the authorities, I wonder, know that
Browning's love of their city led him always to wear on his watch-chain
a coin struck by Manin in 1848 commemorating the overthrow of Austrian
power in Venice?

The Rezzonico was built by Longhena, the architect of the Salute. Carlo
Rezzonico, afterwards Pope Clement XIII, lived here. The Emperor Joseph
II stayed here. So much for fact. I like far more to remember the
Christmas dinner eaten here--only, alas, in fancy, yet with all the
illusion of fact--by Browning and a Scandinavian dramatist named Ibsen,
brought together for the purpose by the assiduous Mr. Gosse, as related
with such skill and mischief by Mr. Max Beerbohm.

Next the Rezzonico is the commonplace Nani; then a tiny calle; and then
an antiquity store, one of the three adjoining palaces of the great
Giustiniani family, in the second of which once lived Richard Wagner.

But first a word as to the Giustiniani's great feat, in the twelfth
century, of giving every male member to the Republic. It happened that
in 1171 nearly all the Venetians in Constantinople were massacred. An
expedition was quickly despatched to demand satisfaction for such a
deed, but, while anchored at Scio, the plague broke out and practically
demolished this too, among those who perished being the Giustiniani to a
man. In order that the family might persist, the sole surviving son, a
monk named Niccolo, was temporarily released from his vows to be
espoused to the daughter of the Doge, Vitale Michiel. Sufficient sons
having been born to them, the father returned to his monastery and the
mo