it silver cups and flagons of wine, and all marched in fair
order, singing ballads and songs of greeting, and saluted the
Doge and Dogaressa in turn, crying 'Long live our lord, the
noble Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo!' Gild after gild they marched in
their splendour, lovely alike to ear and eye; and a week fled
before the rejoicings were ended and all had passed in
procession. Canale surpasses himself here, for he loved State
ceremonies; he gives a paragraph to the advance of each gild,
its salutation and withdrawal, and the cumulative effect of
all the paragraphs is enchanting, like a prose ballade, with
a repeated refrain at the end of every verse.[9]

What, they lived once thus in Venice, where the merchants were the
kings,
Where St Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Listening to the magnificent salutation of the Doge by the
priests of St Mark's, 'Criste, vince, Criste regne, Criste
inpere. Notre signor Laurens Teuples, Des gracie, inclit Dus
de Venise, Dalmace atque Groace, et dominator de la quarte
partie et demi de tot l'enmire de Romanie, sauvement, honor,
vie, et victoire. Saint Marc, tu le aie,'[10] who, hearing,
could have doubted that Venice, defier of Rome and conqueror
of Constantinople, was the finest, richest, most beautiful,
and most powerful city in the world?

But was she? Listen and judge. Thousands of miles away from
Venice, across the lands and seas of Asia, a little south of
the Yangtze River and close to the sea stood the city of
Kinsai or Hangchow, the capital of the Sung emperors, who