maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, a cent mils de
la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cite que j'aye jamais veue et qui
plus faict d'honneur a ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
saigement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus
sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Memoires de Commynes, liv.
vii. ch. xviii.]

SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real
life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
fronts."

On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of