s through the square door of marble, deeply moulded,
in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting
on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so
presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence to the
entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of
the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the
frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another time to
examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the
piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging
groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into
the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then
we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great
light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of
St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements
and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.

And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches
there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems
to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far
away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long
low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of
gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into
five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with
sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture
fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and
pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all
twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the
midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the
feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures
indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves
beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded
back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were
angel-guarded long ago. An