I. THE QUARRY 25

in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit of assigning to religion a direct influence over all his own actions, and all the affairs of his own daily life, is remarkable in every great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state;¹ nor are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavour to trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III. against Barbarossa,² than the piety which was excited by the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest councils;* her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the “Chiesa

* “Yes: that is so,-but it is her heart, which was the main gist of the matter,-fool that I was not to understand!³ Venice is superficially and apparently commercial;-at heart passionately heroic and religious; precisely the reverse of modern England, who is superficially and apparently religious; and at heart, entirely infidel, cowardly, and dishonest.” [1879.]

¹ [For instances of this from Venetian paintings, see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 15; and compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 14 (Vol. IV. p. 189 n.). Cf. § 14, below, p. 31.]

² [In 1159; for a statement of the political reasons which may have inclined Venice to the side of the Pope against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, see again H.F. Brown’s Venice, p. 98.]

³ [For a fuller correction of this “blunder, which (says Ruskin) I’ve left standing in all its shame, and with its hat off-like Dr. Johnson repentant in Lichfield Market,” see St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 88-90.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]