narrow streets that lead to the Piazza, filled all the further
end of it with a sort of dazzling silver presence--to-day this
lovely vision is in a way to be completely reformed and indeed
well-nigh abolished. The old softness and mellowness of colour--
the work of the quiet centuries and of the breath of the salt
sea--is giving way to large crude patches of new material which
have the effect of a monstrous malady rather than of a
restoration to health. They look like blotches of red and white
paint and dishonourable smears of chalk on the cheeks of a noble
matron. The face toward the Piazzetta is in especial the newest-
looking thing conceivable--as new as a new pair of boots or as
the morning's paper. We do not profess, however, to undertake a
scientific quarrel with these changes; we admit that our
complaint is a purely sentimental one. The march of industry in
united Italy must doubtless be looked at as a whole, and one must
endeavour to believe that it is through innumerable lapses of
taste that this deeply interesting country is groping her way to
her place among the nations. For the present, it is not to be
denied, certain odd phases of the process are more visible than
the result, to arrive at which it seems necessary that, as she
was of old a passionate votary of the beautiful, she should to-
day burn everything that she has adored. It is doubtless too soon
to judge her, and there are moments when one is willing to
forgive her even the restoration of St. Mark's. Inside as well
there has been a considerable attempt to make the place more
tidy; but the general effect, as yet, has not seriously suffered.
What I chiefly remember is the straightening out of that dark and
rugged old pavement--those deep undulations of primitive mosaic
in which the fond spectator was thought to perceive an intended
resemblance to the waves of the ocean. Whether intended or not