in the long, crescent-shaped quay called Riva degli Schiavoni. Looking
northward up the Piazzetta from the Molo, the vision traverses the eastern
breadth of the Piazza, and rests upon the Clock Tower, gleaming with blue
and gold, on which the bronze Giants beat the hours; or it climbs the
great mass of the Campanile San Marco, standing apart from the church at
the corner of the New Procuratie, and rising four hundred feet toward the
sky--the sky where the Venetian might well place his heaven, as the Moors
bounded Paradise in the celestial expanse that roofed Granada.

My first lodging was but a step out of the Piazza, and this vicinity
brought me early into familiar acquaintance with its beauty. But I never,
during three years, passed through it in my daily walks, without feeling
as freshly as at first the greatness of this beauty. The church, which the
mighty bell-tower and the lofty height of the palace-lines make to look
low, is in nowise humbled by the contrast, but is like a queen enthroned
amid upright reverence. The religious sentiment is deeply appealed to, I
think, in the interior of St. Mark's; but if its interior is heaven's, its
exterior, like a good man's daily life, is earth's; and it is this winning
loveliness of earth that first attracts you to it, and when you emerge
from its portals, you enter upon spaces of such sunny length and breadth,
set round with such exquisite architecture, that it makes you glad to be
living in this world. Before you expands the great Piazza, peopled with
its various life; on your left, between the Pillars of the Piazzetta,
swims the blue lagoon, and overhead climb the arches, one above another,
in excesses of fantastic grace.

Whatever could please, the Venetian seems to have brought hither and made
part of his Piazza, that it might remain forever the city's supreme grace;
and so, though there are public gardens and several pleasant walks in the
city, the great resort in summer and winter, by day and by night, is the