ure, so that he might prove openly to all men that it was not
his own advantage that he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There
was no one (Sanuto goes on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to
oppose the wishes of the Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously
devoted to the expenses of the work. "And they set themselves with much
diligence to the work; and the palace was begun in the form and manner
in which it is at present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not
long after, he ended his life, and not only did not see the work brought
to a close, but hardly even begun."

Sec. XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts which,
if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the whole
palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember, that,
at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred years
in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it;
and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to destroy
and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose
in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of Parliament,
under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_.

Sec. XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once be
seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we now
speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in the
minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were in it
the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices of
public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower of
olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one;
and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and
rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
Council Chamber, of which the whole facade to the Sea consisted, never
entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
connected with the Ducal residence.

I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year
1422[130] that the decree passed to rebuild the palace: Mocenigo died in
the following year,[131] and Francesco Foscari was elected in hi