vone. But it has, what is rare in Venice, a bronze bas-relief
from Tuscany, probably by Verrocchio and possibly by Leonardo himself.
It is just inside the side door, on the right as you enter, and might
easily be overlooked. Over the dead Christ bend women in grief; a
younger woman stands by the cross, in agony; and in a corner are
kneeling, very smug, the two donors, Federigo da Montefeltro and
Battista Sforza.

Across the road is a Scuola with ceilings by the dashing Tiepolo--very
free and luminous, with a glow that brought to my mind certain little
pastorals by Karel du Jardin, of all people!

It is now necessary to get to the Campo di S. Barnaba, where under an
arch a constant stream of people will be seen, making for the iron
bridge of the Accademia, and into this stream you will naturally be
absorbed; and to find this campo you turn at once into the great campo
of S. Margherita, leaving on your left an ancient building that is now a
cinema and bearing to the right until you reach a canal. Cross the
canal, turn to the left, and the Campo di S. Barnaba, with its archway
under the houses, is before you.

The direct way from S. Sebastiano to this same point and the iron bridge
is by the long Calle Avogadro and Calle Lunga running straight from the
bridge before the church. There is no turning.

The Calle Lunga is the chief shopping centre of this neighbourhood--its
Merceria--and all the needs of poorer Venetian life are supplied there.
But what most interested me was the death-notices in the shop windows.
Every day there was a new one; sometimes two. These intimations of
mortality are printed in a copper-plate type on large sheets of paper,
usually with black edges and often with a portrait. They begin with
records as to death, disease, and age, and pass on to eulogise the
departed. It is the encomiastic mood that makes them so charming. If
they mourn a man, he was the most generous, most punctilious, and most
respected of Venetian citizens. His word was inviolable; as a husband
and father he was something a little more than perfection, and his
sorrowing and desolate widow and his eight children, two of them the
merest bambini, will have the greatest difficulty in dragging through
the tedious hours that must intervene before they are reunited to him in
the paradise which his presence is now adorning. If they mourn a woman,
she was a miracle of fortitude and piety, and nothing can ever efface
her memory and no one