"It would have to be very great and beautiful," says Marco Polo, "to
out-weigh the greatness and the beauty that are here. You mustn't
think I'm running down your country, mister," says he; "but for
greatness, where is the beating of Venice in this day? What struck
Constantinople like a thunderbolt but the mailed hand of Venice?
When the Barbary corsairs roamed the seven seas, so that it was no
more safe for a merchant vessel to be sailing than for a babe to be
walking through a wild jungle, it was Venice who accepted the challenge
and made the great sea as peaceful as the Grand Canal. Who humbled
proud Genoa? And hurled the Saracen from Saint John of Acre's walls?
Venice. And as for magnificence, the retinue of our doge when he goes
to marry the sea with a ring it makes the court of Lorenzo seem like
a huckster's train."

"It is a crowning city."

"And as for beauty, sir," went on Marco Polo, "there is nothing in
the world like San Marco's, and it ablaze in the setting sun, and
the great pillars before it rising in tongues of flame. And was
there ever in all time anything like the Grand Canal at the dusk
of day, and the torches beginning to show like fireflies, and the
lap of the water, and stringed music, and the great barges going
by like swans, now a battle-hacked captain of war, now a great
gracious lady? And the moon does be rising. . .

"You've sailed all the way from China and seen strange and beautiful
things, but I remember one summer's day, when I took out my little
sailing-boat and went out on the water to compose a poem for a lady,
and the water was blue -- oh, as blue as the sky's self, and the sands