every thing one reads of it has any foundation in truth.

The Ducal palace is so beautiful, it were worth while almost to cross
the Alps to see that, and return home again: and St. Mark's church,
whose Mosaic paintings on the outside are surpassed by no work of art,
delights one no less on entering, with its numberless rarities; the
flooring first, which is all paved with precious stones of the second
rank, in small squares, not bigger than a playing card, and sometimes
less. By the second rank in gems I mean, carnelion, agate, jasper,
serpentine, and verd antique; on which you place your feet without
remorse, but not without a very odd sensation, when you find the ground
undulated beneath them, to represent the waves of the sea, and
perpetuate marine ideas, which prevail in every thing at Venice. We were
not shewn the treasury, and it was impossible to get a sight of the
manuscript in St. Mark's own hand-writing, carefully preserved here, and
justly esteemed even beyond the jewels given as votive offerings to his
shrine, which are of immense value.

The pictures in the Doge's house are a magnificent collection; and the
Noah's Ark by Bassano would doubtless afford an actual study for natural
historians as well as painters, and is considered as a model of
perfection from which succeeding artists may learn to draw animal life:
scarcely a creature can be recollected which has not its proper place in
the picture; but the pensive cat upon the fore-ground took most of my
attention, and held it away from the meeting of the Pope and Doge by the
other brother Bassano, who here proves that his pencil is not divested
of dignity, as the connoisseurs sometimes tell us that he is. But it is
not one picture, or two, or twenty, that seizes one's mind here; it is
the accumulation of various objects, each worthy to detain it. Wonderful
indeed, and sweetly-satisfying to the intellectual appetite, is the