But the most populous occasion on which I ever saw S. Mark's was on S.
Mark's own day--April 25. Then it is solid with people: on account of
the procession, which moves from a point in front of the high altar and
makes a tour of the church, passing down to the door of the Baptistery,
through the atrium, and into the church again by the door close to the
Cappella dei Mascoli. There is something in all Roman Catholic
ceremonial which for me impairs its impressiveness--perhaps a thought
too much mechanism--and I watched this chanting line of choristers,
priests, and prelates without emotion, but perfectly willing to believe
that the fault lay with me. Three things abide vividly in the memory:
the Jewish cast of so many of the large inscrutable faces of the wearers
of the white mitres; a little aged, isolated, ecclesiastic of high rank
who muttered irascibly to himself; and a precentor who for a moment
unfolded his hands and lowered his eyes to pull out his watch and peep
at it. Standing just inside the church and watching the people swarm in
their hundreds for this pageantry, I was struck by the comparatively
small number who made any entering salutation. No children did. Perhaps
the raptest worshipper was one of Venice's many dwarfs, a tiny, alert
man in blue linen with a fine eloquent face and a great mass of
iron-grey hair.

This was the only occasion on which I saw the Baptistery accessible
freely to all and the door into the Piazzetta open.

One should not look at a guide-book on the first visit to S. Mark's; nor
on the second or third, unless, of course, one is pressed for time. Let
the walls and the floors and the pillars and the ceiling do their own
quiet magical work first. Later you can gather some of their history.
The church has but one fault which I have discovered, and that is the