[Footnote: Certain foreigners living in Venice were one day astonished to
find their maid-servant in possession of a mass of this chain, and thought
it their business to reprove her extravagance. "Signori," she explained
paradoxically, "if I keep my money, I spend it; if I buy this chain, it is
always money (_e sempre soldi_)."] and old-fashioned people of the
city, who display the finer sort in skeins or strands. At Chioggia, I
remember to have seen a babe at its christening in church literally
manacled and shackled with Venetian chain; and the little girl who came to
us one day, to show us the splendors in which she had appeared at a
_disputa_ (examination of children in doctrine), was loaded with it.
Formerly, in the luxurious days of the Republic, it is said the chain was
made as fine as sewing-silk, and worn embroidered on Genoa velvet by the
patrician dames. It had then a cruel interest from the fact that its
manufacture, after a time, cost the artisans their eyesight, so nice and
subtle was the work. I could not help noticing that the workmen at the
shops in the Ruga Vecchia still suffer in their eyes, even though the work
is much coarser. I do not hope to describe the chain, except by saying
that the links are horseshoe and oval shaped, and are connected by twos,--
an oval being welded crosswise into a horseshoe, and so on, each two being
linked loosely into the next.

An infinitely more important art, in which Venice was distinguished a
thousand years ago, has recently been revived there by Signor Salviati, an
enthusiast in mosaic painting. His establishment is on the Grand Canal,
not far from the Academy, and you might go by the old palace quite
unsuspicious of the ancient art stirring with new life in its breast. "A.
Salviati, Avvocato," is the legend of the bell-pull, and you do not by any
means take this legal style for that of the restorer of a neglected art,
and a possessor of forgotten secrets in gilded glass and "smalts," as they
term the small delicate rods of vitreous substance, with which the wonders