to row in the gondolier fashion, I voyaged much in the lagoon with my
boat, and often stopped at this church. It has a curious feature in the
chapel of the Madonna di Loreto, which is built in the middle of the nave,
faced with marble, roofed, and isolated from the walls of the main edifice
on all sides. On the back of this there is a bass-relief in bronze,
representing the Nativity--a work much in the spirit of the bass-reliefs
in San Giovanni e Paolo; and one of the chapels has an exquisite little
altar, with gleaming columns of porphyry. There has been no service in the
church for many years; and this altar had a strangely pathetic effect, won
from the black four-cornered cap of a priest that lay before it, like an
offering. I wondered who the priest was that wore it, and why he had left
it there, as if he had fled away in haste. I might have thought it looked
like the signal of the abdication of a system; the gondolier who was with
me took it up and reviled it as representative of _birbanti
matricolati_, who fed upon the poor, and in whose expulsion from that
island he rejoiced. But he had little reason to do so, since the last use
of the place was for the imprisonment of refractory ecclesiastics. Some of
the tombs of the Morosini are in San Clemente--villanous monuments, with
bronze Deaths popping out of apertures, and holding marble scrolls
inscribed with undying deeds. Indeed, nearly all the decorations of the
poor old church are horrible, and there is one statue in it meant for an
angel, with absolutely the most lascivious face I ever saw in marble.

The islands near Venice are all small, except the Giudecca (which is
properly a part of the city), the Lido, and Murano. The Giudecca, from
being anciently the bounds in which certain factious nobles were confined,
was later laid out in pleasure-gardens, and built up with summer-palaces.
The gardens still remain to some extent; but they are now chiefly turned
to practical account in raising vegetables and fruits for the Venetian
market, and the palaces have been converted into warehouses and factories.