e building on the island, like those on the shore,
is recent, that it stands on the ruins of the Church of St. Cristoforo
della Pace; and that with a singular, because unintended, moral, the
modern Venetians have replaced the Peace of the Christ-bearer by the
Peace of Death, and where they once went, as the sun set daily, to their
pleasure, now go, as the sun sets to each of them for ever, to their
graves.

Sec. III. Yet the power of Nature cannot be shortened by the folly, nor
her beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of man. The broad tides
still ebb and flow brightly about the island of the dead, and the linked
conclave of the Alps know no decline from their old pre-eminence, nor
stoop from their golden thrones in the circle of the horizon. So lovely
is the scene still, in spite of all its injuries, that we shall find
ourselves drawn there again and again at evening out of the narrow
canals and streets of the city, to watch the wreaths of the sea-mists
weaving themselves like mourning veils around the mountains far away,
and listen to the green waves as they fret and sigh along the cemetery
shore.

Sec. IV. But it is morning now: we have a hard day's work to do at Murano,
and our boat shoots swiftly from beneath the last bridge of Venice, and
brings us out into the open sea and sky.

The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another,
rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its
foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the
horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet
them, and are lost in them, barred across by the grey terraces of those
cloud foundations, and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted
here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial, greenish light,
strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the
mainland, fringed with low trees; and then the wide-waving surface of
the burnished lagoon trembling slowly, and shaking out into forked bands
of lengthening light the images of the towers of cloud above. To the
north, there is first the great cemetery wall, then the long stray
buildings of Murano, and the island villages beyond, glittering in
intense crystalline vermilion, like so much jewellery scattered on a
mirror, their towers poised apparently in the air a little above the
horizon, and their reflections, as sharp and vivid and substantial as
themselves, thrown on the vacan