. The right hand giant strikes first,
swinging all his upper part as he does so; and then the other. From
their attitude much of Venice is revealed, but only the thin can enjoy
this view, such being the narrowness of the winding stairs and doorway
by which it is gained. At Easter a procession of mechanical figures
below the clock-face delights the spectators.

It was while Coryat was in Venice that one of these giants, I know not
which, performed a deed of fatal savagery. The traveller thus describes
it: "A certaine fellow that had the charge to looke to the clocke, was
very busie about the bell, according to his usuall custome every day, to
the end to amend something in it that was amisse. But in the meane time
one of those wilde men that at the quarters of the howers doe use to
strike the bell, strooke the man in the head with his brazen hammer,
giving him such a violent blow, that therewith he fell down dead
presently in his place, and never spake more."

At the third turning to the right out of the Merceria is the church of
S. Giuliano, or S. Zulian, which the great Sansovino built. One evening,
hearing singing as I passed, I entered, but found standing-room only,
and that only with the greatest discomfort. Yet the congregation was so
happy and the scene was so animated that I stayed on and on--long enough
at any rate for the offertory box to reach me three separate times.
Every one present was either poor or on the borders of poverty; and the
fervour was almost that of a salvation army meeting. And why not, since
the religion both of the Pope and of General Booth was pre-eminently
designed for the poor? I came away with a tiny coloured picture of the
Virgin and more fleas than I ever before entertained at the same time.

At the end of the Merceria is S. Salvatore, a big quiet church in the
Renaissance style, containing the ashes of S. Theodore, the tombs of
various Doges, and a good Bellini: a warm, rich, and very human scene of
a wayside inn at Emmaus and Christ appearing there. An "Annunciation" by
Titian is in the church proper, painted when he was getting very old,
and framed by Sansovino; a "Transfiguration" by Titian is in the pretty
sacristy, which, like many of the Venetian churches, is presided over by
a dwarf. A procession of Venetian sacristans would, by the way, be a
strange and grotesque spectacle.

The best of the S. Salvatore monuments is that by Sansovino of Doge
Francesco Venier (1554-1556), wit