, admirably restored, the civic museum.

It is necessary to visit the collections preserved here, but I cannot
promise any feelings of exultation among them. The Museo Civico might
be so interesting and is so depressing. Baedeker is joyful over the
"excellent illustrative guide (1909), 1 franc," but though it may have
existed in 1909 there is no longer any trace of it, nor could I obtain
the reason why. Since none of the exhibits have descriptive labels (not
even the pictures), and since the only custodians are apparently retired
and utterly dejected gondoliers, the visitor's spirits steadily fall.

One enters to some fine well-heads and other sculpture, not very
different from the stock-in-trade of the ordinary dealer in antiquity
who has filched a palace. On the next floor is a library; but I found
the entrance barred. On the next is a series of rooms, the museum
proper. In the first are weapons, banners, and so forth. In the second
is a vast huddle of pictures, mostly bad copies, but patience may
discover here and there an original by a good hand not at its best. I
noticed a Tiepolo sketch that had much of his fine free way in it, and a
few typical Longhis. For the rest one imagines that some very
indifferent churches have been looted.

Follow four rooms of miscellaneous articles: weapons, ropes, a rather
fascinating white leather suit in a case, and so forth. Then a room of
coins and medals and ducats of the Doges right away from 1279. Then two
rooms (VIII and IX) which are more human, containing costumes, laces,
fans, the death masks of two Doges in their caps, a fine wooden
balustrade from a fifteenth-century palace, a set of marionettes with
all their strings, a Vivarini Madonna on an easel.

[Illustration: S. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM WITH SAINTS
FROM THE PAINTING BY PIOMBO
_In the Church of S. Giov. Crisostomo_]

Then some stairs and a set of eighteenth-century rooms with curiously
real carnival costumes in them, like Longhi's pictures come to life, and
a painting or two by Guardi, including what purports to be his own
portrait. Then a Chinese room, and a Goldoni room with first editions
of the little man's plays, his portrait, and other relics. This series
undoubtedly brings Venice of the eighteenth-century very vividly before
one.

Returning to Room X in the main sequence we find wood-carving and
pottery. In Room XI, just inside the door on the left, is a noble
gondola prow in iron, richly wrought, which one