lls the
dominion of the majority the rule of many tyrants! In short, he was an
aristocrat; and no man had more industriously or more successfully
persuaded himself into the belief of all the dogmas that were favorable
to his caste. He was a powerful advocate of vested rights, for their
possession was advantageous to himself; he was sensitively alive to
innovations on usages and to vicissitudes in the histories of families,
for calculation had substituted taste for principles; nor was he
backward, on occasion, in defending his opinions by analogies drawn from
the decrees of Providence. With a philosophy that seemed to satisfy
himself, he contended that, as God had established orders throughout his
own creation, in a descending chain from angels to men, it was safe to
follow an example which emanated from a wisdom that was infinite.
Nothing could be more sound than the basis of his theory, though its
application had the capital error of believing there was any imitation
of nature in an endeavor to supplant it.

CHAPTER VII.

"The moon went down; and nothing now was seen
Save where the lamp of a Madonna shone
Faintly."
ROGERS.

Just as the secret audiences of the Palazzo Gradenigo were ended, the
great square of St. Mark began to lose a portion of its gaiety. The
cafes were now occupied by parties who had the means, and were in the
humor, to put their indulgences to more substantial proof than the
passing gibe or idle laugh; while those who were reluctantly compelled
to turn their thoughts from the levities of the moment to the cares of
the morrow, were departing in crowds to humble roofs and hard pillows.
There remained one of the latter class, however, who continued to occupy
a spot near the junction of the two squares, as motionless as if his
naked feet grew to the stone on which he stood. It was Antonio.

The position of the fisherman brought the whole of his muscular form and
bronzed features beneath the rays of the moon. The dark, anxious, and
stern eyes were fixed upon the mild orb, as if their owner sought to
penetrate into another world, in quest of that peace which he had never
known in this. There was suffering in the expression of the weather-worn
face; but it was the suffering of one whose native sensibilities had
been a little deadened by too much familiarity with the lot of the
feeble. To one who considered life and humanity in any other than their
fa