100 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE

wishing if possible to ascertain the truth, and to clear the character of this great Doge from the accusation, if it proved groundless, I wrote to the Count Carlo Morosini, his descendant, and one of the few remaining representatives of the ancient noblesse of Venice; one, also, by whom his great ancestral name is revered, and in whom it is exalted. His answer appears to me altogether conclusive as to the utter fallacy of the reports of Daru and the English history. I have placed his letter in the close of this volume (Appendix 6), in order that the reader may himself be the judge upon this point; and I should not have alluded to Daru’s report, except for the purpose of contradicting it, but that it still appears to me impossible that any modern historian should have gratuitously invented the whole story, and that, therefore, there must have been a trace, in the documents which Daru himself possessed, of some scandal of this kind raised by Morosini’s enemies, perhaps at the very time of the disputed election with Carlo Zeno. The occurrence of the Virtues upon this tomb, for the first time in Venetian monumental work, and so richly and conspicuously placed, may partly have been in public contradiction of such a floating rumour. But the face of the statue is a more explicit contradiction still; it is resolute, thoughtful, serene, and full of beauty; and we must, therefore, for once, allow the somewhat boastful introduction of the Virtues to have been perfectly just: though the whole tomb is most notable, as furnishing not only the exactly intermediate condition in style between the pure Gothic and its final Renaissance corruption, but, at the same time, the exactly intermediate condition of feeling between the pure calmness of Early Christianity, and the boastful pomp of the Renaissance faithlessness; for here we have still the religious humility remaining in the mosaic of the canopy, which shows the Doge kneeling before the cross, while yet this tendency to self-trust is shown in the surrounding of the coffin by the Virtues.

§ 69. The next tomb by the side of which they appear

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