rd the horizon with their purple towers, and solemn
forests, that gather their weight of leaves, bronzed with sunshine, not
with age, into those gloomy masses fixed in heaven, which storm and
frost have power no more to shake, or shed;--that mighty Humanity, so
perfect and so proud, that hides no weakness beneath the mantle, and
gains no greatness from the diadem; the majesty of thoughtful form, on
which the dust of gold and flame of jewels are dashed as the sea-spray
upon the rock, and still the great Manhood seems to stand bare against
the blue sky;--that mighty Mythology, which fills the daily walks of men
with spiritual companionship, and beholds the protecting angels break
with their burning presence through the arrow-flights of
battle:--measure the compass of that field of creation, weigh the value
of the inheritance that Venice thus left to the nations of Europe, and
then judge if so vast, so beneficent a power could indeed have been
rooted in dissipation or decay. It was when she wore the ephod of the
priest, not the motley of the masquer, that the fire fell upon her from
heaven; and she saw the first rays of it through the rain of her own
tears, when, as the barbaric deluge ebbed from the hills of Italy, the
circuit of her palaces, and the orb of her fortunes, rose together, like
the Iris, painted upon the Cloud.

FOOTNOTES

[41] In the year 1851, by the Duchesse de Berri.

[42] Of the Braided House and Casa Businello, described in the
Appendix, only the great central arcades remain.

[43] Only one wing of the first story is left. See Appendix 11.

[44] I am obliged to give these measures approximately, because,
this front having been studied by the builder with unusual care, not
one of its measures is the same as another; and the symmetries
between the correspondent arches are obtained by changes in the
depth of their mouldings and variations in their heights, far too
complicated for me to enter into here; so that of the two arches
stated as 19 ft. 8 in. in span, one is in reality 19 ft. 6-1/2 in.,
the other 19 ft. 10 in., and of the two stated as 20 ft. 4 in., one is
20 ft. and the other 20 ft. 8 in.

[45] By Mr. Penrose.

[46] I am sometimes obliged, unfortunately, to read my woodcuts
backwards owing to my having forgotten to reverse them on the wood.

[47] Vide Plate X. figs. 1 and 4.

[48]
1. Fondaco de' Turehi, lateral 8. St.