lla
Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso
Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova
citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua,
1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together,
we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello
was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church
till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small
importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the
wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of
as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older
building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only
says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I
think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele,
it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the
order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This
does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a
highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least
interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea
on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of
lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended
before its mildewed facade and solitary tower.

5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.

I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book
of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy
were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the
examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the
following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present
permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant
with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will
be of great value to the general reader:--

"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century,
churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible
to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten,
with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters
concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk
of Venetian benefi