ld fellow moves about the floor as he has done so
many thousand times, pointing out this beauty and that, above and below,
without the faintest trace of mechanism. In course of time, when he is
fully persuaded that we are not only English but worthy of his secret,
it comes out that he had the priceless privilege of knowing Signor
"Rooskin" in the flesh, and from his pocket he draws a copy of _The
Stones of Venice_, once the property of one Constance Boyle, but now his
own. This he fondles, for though the only words in his own chapters that
he can understand are "Murano" and "Donato," yet did not his friend the
great Signor Rooskin write it, and what is more, spend many, many days
in careful examination of everything here before he wrote it? For that
is what most appeals to the old gentleman: the recognition of his S.
Donato as being worthy of such a study.

The floor is very beautiful, and there is a faded series of saints by
one of the Vivarini of Murano, behind the altar, on which the eye rests
very comfortably--chiefly perhaps on the panels which are only painted
curtains; but the most memorable feature of the cathedral is the ancient
Byzantine mosaic of the Madonna--a Greek Madonna--in the hollow of the
apse: a long slender figure in blue against a gold background who holds
her hands rather in protest than welcome, and is fascinating rather for
the piety which set her there with such care and thought to her glory
than for her beauty. Signor Rooskin, it is true, saw her as a symbol of
sadness, and some of the most exquisite sentences of "The Stones of
Venice" belong to her; but had her robe been of less lovely hues it is
possible that he might have written differently.

When the church was built, probably in the tenth century, the Virgin was
its patron saint. S. Donato's body being brought hither by Doge Domenico
Michiel (1118-1130), the church was known as Santa Maria, or San Donato;
and to-day it is called S. Donato. And when the time comes for the old
sacristan to die, I hope (no matter what kind of a muddle his life has
been) that S. Donato will be at hand, near the gate, to pull him
through, for sheer faithfulness to his church.

The gondola returns by the same route, and as we pass the Campo Santo
the rays of the afternoon sun seem so to saturate its ruddy walls that
they give out light of their own. It is in order to pass slowly beneath
these walls and cypresses that I recommend the gondola as the medium for