ters; nay, the
foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that
sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the venders of toys and caricatures.
Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a
continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes
lounge, and read empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands[47]
play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the
organ notes--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd
thickening round them--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would
stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the
porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed
and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded
children--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and
stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing--gamble, and
fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised
centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of
Christ and His angels look down upon it continually....

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, or 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 mixed 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 passions and the pleasures
of human life symboliz