352 THE STONES OF VENICE

Correr Museum;*-and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani.†

§ 25. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the “Renaissance.” It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,-and of Venice herself.

The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun; I dated its commencement above (Chap. I. Vol. I.) from the death of Mocenigo.¹ A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honour of future Venice, he had forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her fortunes, the city never flourished again.

§ 26. I have no intention of following out, in their

* “E a di 23 April” (1423, by the context) “sequente fo fatto Gran Conseio in la salla nuova dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran Conseio si che el primo Gran Conseio dopo la sua” (Foscari’s creation) “fo fatto in la salla nuova, nel qual conseio fu el Marchese di Mantoa,” etc., p. 426.

† Compare Appendix 1, Vol. III.

¹ [1423: see Vol. IX. p. 21. This also was a coincidence which pleased Ruskin. In sending the first draft of this passage to his father he writes:-

“16th April [1852].-I hope the enclosed pieces of MS. will be rather more interesting to you than those you have had lately. They are so to me as finally settling a question which has cost me much trouble to investigate: more perhaps as a victory over difficulties than for the actual value of the results. But it is curious, among the other coincidences which offer themselves as I work the thing more completely out, that the first hammer should have been lifted against the old palace in the very year, from which I have dated the visible commencement of the Fall of Venice, 1424. However patriotic and fine the conduct of the Doge, I intend to show that he was mistaken in his patriotism, and that old palaces should not be thrown down to build new ones. There is another curious thing respecting this epoch-that at the accession of Foscari, ‘si festeggia la citta me anno intero’ (the city made feast for a whole year). ‘Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep’ [Luke vi. 25]. It all comes together very wonderfully.”

For some further remarks on this passage, see Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 130, note of 1880. With Ruskin’s saying that “old palaces should not be thrown down to build new ones,” compare Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. i. p. 225.]

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