have
just landed. Near the point of the triangular space is a simple well,
bearing date 1502; in its widest part, between the canal and campanile,
is a four-square hollow pillar, each side formed by a separate slab of
stone, to which the iron hasps are still attached that once secured the
Venetian standard.

The cathedral itself occupies the northern angle of the field,
encumbered with modern buildings, small outhouse-like chapels, and
wastes of white wall with blank square windows, and itself utterly
defaced in the whole body of it, nothing but the apse having been
spared; the original plan is only discoverable by careful examination,
and even then but partially. The whole impression and effect of the
building are irretrievably lost, but the fragments of it are still most
precious.

We must first briefly state what is known of its history.

Sec. VIII. The legends of the Romish Church, though generally more insipid
and less varied than those of Paganism, deserve audience from us on this
ground, if on no other, that they have once been sincerely believed by
good men, and have had no ineffective agency in the foundation of the
existent European mind. The reader must not therefore accuse me of
trifling, when I record for him the first piece of information I have
been able to collect respecting the cathedral of Murano: namely, that
the emperor Otho the Great, being overtaken by a storm on the Adriatic,
vowed, if he were preserved, to build and dedicate a church to the
Virgin, in whatever place might be most pleasing to her; that the storm
thereupon abated; and the Virgin appearing to Otho in a dream showed
him, covered with red lilies, that very triangular field on which we
were but now standing, amidst the ragged weeds and shattered pavement.
The emperor obeyed the vision; and the church was consecrated on the
15th of August, 957.

Sec. IX. Whatever degree of credence we may feel disposed to attach to
this piece of history, there is no question that a church was built on
this spot before the close of the tenth century: since in the year 999
we find the incumbent of the Basilica (note this word, it is of some
importance) di Santa Maria Plebania di Murano taking an oath of
obedience to the Bishop of the Altinat church, and engaging at the same
time to give the said bishop his dinner on the Domenica in Albis, when
the prelate held a confirmation in the mother church, as it was then
commonly called, of Murano. From this