The island of Torcello is some five miles away from Venice, in the
northern lagoon. The city was founded far back in the troubled morning of
Christian civilization, by refugees from barbarian invasion, and built
with stones quarried from the ruins of old Altinum, over which Attila had
passed desolating. During the first ages of its existence Torcello enjoyed
the doubtful advantage of protection from the Greek emperors, but fell
afterward under the domination of Venice. In the thirteenth century the
_debris_ of the river that emptied into the lagoon there began to
choke up the wholesome salt canals, and to poison the air with swampy
malaria; and in the seventeenth century the city had so dwindled that the
Venetian _podesta_ removed his residence from the depopulated island
to Burano,--though the bishopric established immediately after the
settlement of the refugees at Torcello continued there till 1814, to the
satisfaction, no doubt, of the frogs and mosquitoes that had long
inherited the former citizens.

I confess that I know little more of the history of Torcello than I found
in my guide-book. There I read that the city had once stately civic and
religious edifices, and that in the tenth century the Emperor
Porphorygenitus called it "_magnum emporium Torcellanorum_." The
much-restored cathedral of the seventh century, a little church, a
building supposed to have been the public palace, and other edifices so
ruinous and so old that their exact use in other days is not now known,
are all that remain of the _magnum emporium_, except some lines of
moldering wall that wander along the canals, and through pastures and
vineyards, in the last imbecile stages of dilapidation and decay. There is
a lofty bell-tower, also, from which, no doubt, the Torcellani used to
descry afar off the devouring hordes of the barbarians on the main-land,
and prepare for defense. As their city was never actually invaded, I am at