those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St.
Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own
beams;--these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice"
(Villehardouin, lib. in. p. 129). (See _Sketches from Venetian History_,
1831, i. 161.)]

[380] [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious
Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue
distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal
service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the
proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth
of the Roman Empire" (_ibid._, 1831, i. 167).]

[ld] _Monarchs sate down_----.--[D. erased.]

[381] [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate
stanzas of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, capping each other like the
shepherds in the _Bucolics_. The rival reciters were sometimes attached
to the same gondola; but often the response came from a passing
gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers,
in his _Italy_, laments the silence which greeted the swan-song of his
own gondolier--

"He sung,
As in the time when Venice was Herself,
Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars
We rested; and the verse was verse divine!
We could not err--Perhaps he was the last--
For none took up the strain, none answer'd him;
And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear
A something like the dying voice of Venice!"
_The Gondola_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 79).

Compare, too, Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 6, 1786: "This
evening I bespoke the celebrated _song_ of the mariners, who chaunt
Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be
ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather
belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a
gondola by moonlight, with one _singer_ before and the other behind me.
They _sing_ their _song_, taking up the verses alternately....

"Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the
side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating
voice--the multitude admire force above everything--anxious only to be
heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels
far."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 73.]

[le] {330} _The pleasure-place of all festivity_