them, it was our doubt whether any one of them had ever experienced
perfect repletion. I incline to think that a chronic famine gnawed their
entrails, and that they never filled their bellies but with draughts of
the east wind disdained of Job. The smaller among them even scrambled with
the dog for the bones, until a little girl was bitten, when a terrific
tumult arose, and the dog was driven home by the whole multitude. The
children presently returned. They all had that gift of beauty which Nature
seldom denies to the children of their race; but being, as I said, so
dirty, their beauty shone forth chiefly from their large soft eyes. They
had a very graceful, bashful archness of manner, and they insinuated
beggary so winningly, that it would have been impossible for hungry people
to deny them. As for us, having lunched, we gave them every thing that
remained, and went off to feast our enthusiasm for art and antiquity in
the cathedral.

Of course, I have not the least intention of describing it. I remember
best among its wonders the bearing of certain impenitents in one of the
mosaics on the walls, whom the earnest early artist had meant to represent
as suffering in the flames of torment. I think, however, I have never seen
complacence equal to that of these sinners, unless it was in the
countenances of the seven fat kine, which, as represented in the vestibule
of St. Mark's, wear an air of the sleepiest and laziest enjoyment, while
the seven lean kine, having just come up from the river, devour steaks
from their bleeding haunches. There are other mosaics in the Torcello
cathedral, especially those in the _apsis_ and in one of the side
chapels, which are in a beautiful spirit of art, and form the widest
possible contrast to the eighteenth-century high altar, with its insane
and ribald angels flying off at the sides, and poising themselves in the
rope-dancing attitudes favored by statues of heavenly persons in the
decline of the Renaissance. The choir is peculiarly built, in the form of