VIII. THE REQUIEM 279

the Stones of Venice¹ was spoiled, in the very centre of its otherwise good work, by that blunder, which I’ve left standing in all its shame, and with its hat off-like Dr. Johnson repentant in Lichfield Market,²-only putting the note to it “Fool that I was!” (page 11).* I fancied actually that the main function of St. Mark’s was no more than of our St. George’s at Windsor, to be the private chapel of the king and his knights;-a blessed function that also, but how much lower than the other?

91. “Chiesa DUCALE.” It never entered my heart once to think that there was a greater Duke than her Doge, for Venice; and that she built, for her two Dukes, each their palace, side by side. The palace of the living, and of the,-Dead,-was he then-the other Duke?

“VIVA SAN MARCO.”

You wretched little cast-iron gas-pipe of a Cockney that you are, who insist that your soul’s your own (see Punch for 15th March, 1879, on the duties of Lent³), as if anybody else would ever care to have it! is there yet life enough in

* Scott himself (God knows I say it sorrowfully, and not to excuse my own error, but to prevent his from doing more mischief) has made just the same mistake, but more grossly and fatally, in the character given to the Venetian Procurator in the Talisman. His error is more shameful, because he has confused the institutions of Venice in the fifteenth century with those of the twelfth.

¹ [That is, the introductory chapter, “The Quarry.” The reference “page 11” is to the “Travellers’ Edition,” and the note of 1879 there added: see now Vol. IX. p. 25 and n.]

² [“Once,” said he, “I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault. I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time bare-headed in the rain, on the spot where my father’s stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory” (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Croker’s edition, 1831, vol. v. p. 288).]

³ [The reference is to some verses criticising a Lenten Pastoral by Ruskin’s friend, Cardinal Manning:-

“To the faithful, Lord Cardinal Manning has sent

The Church’s instructions how to keep Lent.

How on Monday and Tuesday an egg we may eat,

On Wednesday some butter or lard as a treat ...

Will the great Lord Cardinal kindly make known

On what day, if any, our souls are our own?”]

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