APPENDIX, 4 255

There is, indeed, much true distress occasioned by the measures which the Government is sometimes compelled to take in order to repress sedition; but the blame of this lies with those whose occupation is the excitement of sedition. So also there is much grievous harm done to works of art by the occupation of the country by so large an army; but for the mode in which that army is quartered, the Italian municipalities are answerable, not the Austrians. Whenever I was shocked by finding, as above-mentioned at Milan,¹ a cloister, or a palace, occupied by soldiery, I always discovered, on investigation, that the place had been given by the municipality; and that, beyond requiring that lodging for a certain number of men should be found in such and such a quarter of the town, the Austrians had nothing to do with the matter. This does not, however, make the mischief less: and it is strange, if we think of it, to see Italy, with all her precious works of art, made a continual battle-field; as if no other place for settling their disputes could be found by the European powers, than where every random shot may destroy what a king’s ransom cannot restore.* It is exactly as if the tumults in Paris could be settled no otherwise than by fighting them out in the Gallery of the Louvre.

4. [P. 20.] DATE OF THE PALACES OF THE BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE

In the sixth article of the Appendix to the first volume,² the question of the date of the Casa Dario and Casa Trevisan was deferred until I could obtain from my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, to whom the former palace once belonged, some more distinct data respecting this subject than I possessed myself.

Speaking first of the Casa Dario, he says: “Fontana dates it from about the year 1450, and considers it the earliest specimen of the architecture founded by Pietro Lombardo, and followed by his sons, Tullio and Antonio. In a Sanuto autograph miscellany, purchased by me long ago, and which I gave to St. Mark’s Library, are two letters from Giovanni Dario, dated 10th and 11th July, 1485, in the neighbourhood of Adrianople; where the Turkish camp found itself, and Bajazet II. received presents from the Soldan of Egypt, from the Schah of the Indies (query Grand Mogul), and from the King of Hungary: of these matters, Dario’s letters give many curious details. Then, in the printed Malipiero Annals, page 136 (which err, I think, by a year), the Secretary Dario’s negotiations at the Porte are alluded to; and in

* In the bombardment of Venice in 1848, hardly a single palace escaped without three or four balls through its roof: three came into the Scuola di San Rocco, tearing their way through the pictures of Tintoret, of which the ragged fragments were still hanging from the ceiling in 1851; and the shells had reached to within a hundred yards of St. Mark’s Church itself, at the time of the capitulation.³

¹ [See Vol. X. p. 306 n.]

² [Vol. IX. p. 425.]

³ [i.e. the capitulation of August 1849, to Radetsky, after a siege of fifteen months, when the Republic under Daniele Manin came to an end. For references to other passages describing the neglect or ill-usage of the Tintorets, see Vol. IV. pp. 40, 395; Vol. X. p. 437.]

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