th, in the center of the tomb on
which the figure rests, is a seated figure of the Virgin, and the
border of it all around is of flowers and soft leaves, growing rich
and deep as if in a field in summer.

It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo; a man early great among the great of
Venice, and early lost. She chose him for her king in his thirty-sixth
year; he died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to
which we owe half of what we know of her former fortunes.

Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of rich
mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble; and its walls are of
alabaster, but worn and shattered and darkly stained with age, almost
a ruin--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and
the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents: but all beautiful--the
ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and channeled
zones of the alabaster and the time stains on its translucent masses
darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed
when the sun strikes on it through deep sea....

Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
rest, let us enter the church, itself. It is lost in still deeper
twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us
a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a cross, and divided into
shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light
enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and
there a ray or two from some far-away casement wanders into the
darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of
marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What
else there is of light is from torches, of silver lamps, burning
ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels: the roof sheeted with
gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at
every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the
glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as
we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head,
a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into
another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixt together;
dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds
that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from
vases of crystal: the passion