executed; they were strangled, and without seeing their
executioner, for a cord was passed through an opening, which he
twisted till the victim was dead. This was the mode pursued with
the prisoners of the Inquisitors; those of the Council were often
placed in a cell to which there was a thickly grated window,
through which the executioner did his office, and if they
resisted he stabbed them in the throat. The wall is still covered
with the blood of those who have thus suffered. From the time of
their erection, 800 years ago, to the destruction of the Republic
nobody was ever allowed to see these prisons, till the French
came and threw them open, when the people set fire to them and
burnt all the woodwork; the stone was too solid to be destroyed.
One or two escaped, and they remain as memorials of the horrors
that were perpetrated in them.

[Page Head: VENICE]

June 17th, 1830 {p.408}

This morning was fine again, and everything looks gayer than
yesterday. From the Rialto to the Piazza di San Marco there is
plenty of life and movement, and it is exactly like Cranbourne
Alley and the other alleys out of Leicester Square. While Venice
was prosperous St. Mark's must have been very brilliant, but
everything is decayed. All round the piazza are coffee houses,
which used to be open and crowded all night, and some of them are
still open, but never crowded. They used to be illuminated with
lamps all round, but most of these are gone. One sees a few Turks
smoking and drinking their coffee here, but they are all obliged
to dine and sleep in one house, which is on the Grand Canal, and
called the Casa dei Turchi. I went this morning to the Chiesa
Scalzi, San Georgio Meggiore, Redentore, SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
and the Gesuiti. The latter is the most beautiful church I ever
saw, the whole of it adorned with white marble inlaid with verd
antique in a regular pattern. SS. Giovanni e Paolo has no marble
or gilding, but is full of monuments of Doges and generals. To
the Manfrini Palace for the pictures. The finest picture in the
palace is Titian's 'Deposition from the Cross,' for which the
Marchese Manfrini refused 10,000 ducats. A Guido (Lucretia) and
some others. Tintoret was no doubt a great genius, but his large
pictures I cannot admire, and Bassano's still less. Titian's
portrait of Ariosto is the most interesting in the collection. To
the Arsenal, which is three miles in circumference, and a
prodigious establishment. In the