and as such, they are rather to be condemned
as illusory and fictitious, than as idolatrous, nor even as such,
condemned altogether, for strong love and faith are often the roots of
them and the errors of affection are better than the accuracies of
apathy. But the unhappy results, among all religious sects, of the habit
of allowing imaginative and poetical belief to take the place of
deliberate, resolute, and prosaic belief, have been fully and admirably
traced by the author of the "Natural History of Enthusiasm."

11. SITUATIONS OF BYZANTINE PALACES.

(1.) _The Terraced House._

The most conspicuous pile in the midmost reach of the Grand Canal is the
Casa Grimani, now the Post-Office. Letting his boat lie by the steps of
this great palace, the traveller will see, on the other side of the
canal, a building with a small terrace in front of it, and a little
court with a door to the water, beside the terrace. Half of the house is
visibly modern, and there is a great seam, like the edge of a scar,
between it and the ancient remnant, in which the circular bands of the
Byzantine arches will be instantly recognized. This building not having,
as far as I know, any name except that of its present proprietor, I
shall in future distinguish it simply as the Terraced House.

(2.) _Casa Businello._

To the left of this edifice (looking from the Post-Office) there is a
modern palace, on the other side of which the Byzantine mouldings appear
again in the first and second stories of a house lately restored. It
might be thought that the shafts and arches had been raised yesterday,
the modern walls having been deftly adjusted to them, and all appearance
of antiquity, together with the ornamentation and proportions of the
fabric, having been entirely destroyed. I cannot, however, speak with
unmixed sorrow of these changes, since, without his being implicated in
the shame of them, they fitted this palace to become the residence of
the kindest friend I had in Venice. It is generally known as the Casa
Businello.

(3.) _The Braided House._

Leaving the steps of the Casa Grimani, and turning the gondola away from
the Rialto, we will pass the Casa Businello, and the three houses which
succeed it on the right. The fourth is another restored palace, white
and conspicuous, but retaining of its ancient structure only the five
windows in its second story, and an ornamental moulding above them which
appears to be ancient, though it