lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."

Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
was the City, and which the Shadow.

I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.

SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred
with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean,
where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries
in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as
they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind
than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may,
perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to
form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of
Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest