, in which we
may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch,
cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then
rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and
clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps
burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted.

Sec. XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
comparatively empty.[28] But this effect is altogether to be ascribed to
its richer assemblage of those sources of influence which address
themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind, and which, in
all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in the support
of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of building;
artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained with a
constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness; preciousness of
material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close air loaded with a
sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious services, solemn
music, and tangible idols or images having popular legends attached to
them,--these, the stage properties of superstition, which have been from
the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it, employed by
all nations, whether openly savage or nominally civilized, to produce a
false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the true nature of the
Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as far as I know,
unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the Magus and the
Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed Christianity; and
the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be regarded by us
with no m