good old times are gone and going. One learns in these aged lands to hate
and execrate the past.



CHAPTER XV.

SOME MEMORABLE PLACES.


We came away from the Ghetto, as we had arrived, in a gentle fall of
goose-down, and winding crookedly through a dirty canal, glided into purer
air and cleaner waters. I cannot well say how it was we came upon the old
Servite Convent, which I had often looked for in vain, and which,
associated with the great name of Paolo Sarpi, is to me one of the most
memorable places in Venice. We reached it, after passing by that old, old
palace, which was appointed in the early ages of Venetian commerce for the
reception of oriental traffic and traffickers, and where it is said the
Moorish merchants resided till the later time of the Fondaco dei Turchi on
the Grand Canal. The facade of the palace is richly sculptured; and near
one corner is the bass-relief of a camel and his turbaned driver,--in
token, perhaps, that man and beast (as orientals would understand them)
were here entertained.

We had lived long enough in Venice to know that it was by no means worth
while to explore the interior of this old palace because the outside was
attractive, and so we left it; and turning a corner, found ourselves in a
shallow canal, with houses on one side, and a grassy bank on the other.
The bank sloped gently from the water up to the walls of some edifice, on
which ruin seemed to have fastened soon after the architect had begun his