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said for them; but though they will recklessly drag their dresses through it, I suppose they would scarcely care to walk, like Greek maids, in that mixed mess of dust and spittle with which modern progressive Venice anoints her marble pavement. Pleasanter to look at, I can assure you, this multitude delighting in their God and their Duke, than these, who have no Paradise to trust to with better gifts for them than a gazette, cigar, and pack of cards; and no better governor than their own wills. You will see no especially happy or wise faces produced in St. Mark’s Place under these conditions.

84. Nevertheless, the next means that the Doge Selvo took for the pleasure of his people on his coronation day savoured somewhat of modern republican principles. He gave them “the pillage of his palace”-no less! Whatever they could lay their hands on, these faithful ones, they might carry away with them, with the Doge’s blessing. At evening he laid down the uneasy crowned head of him to rest in mere dismantled walls; hands dexterous in the practices of profitable warfare having bestirred themselves all the day. Next morning the first Ducal public orders were necessarily to the upholsterers and furnishers for readornment of the palace-rooms. Not by any special grace this, or benevolent novelty of idea in the good Doge, but a received custom, hitherto; sacred enough, if one understands it,-a kind of mythical putting off all the burdens of one’s former wealth, and entering barefoot, bare-body, bare-soul, into this one duty of Guide and Lord, lightened thus of all regard for his own affairs or properties. “Take all I have, from henceforth; the corporal vestments of me, and all that is in their pockets, I give you to-day; the stripped life of me, is yours for ever.” Such, virtually, the King’s vow.

85. Frankest largesse thus cast to his electors (modern bribery is quite as costly and not half so merry), the Doge set himself to refit, not his own palace merely, but much more, God’s house; for this prince is one who has at once

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