244 THE STONES OF VENICE

all, brothers and sisters, whose names are under-written, may have, by His most sacred pity and mercy, remission of our minds, and pardon of our sins.”

(3.) “Born half-way between the mountains and the sea-that young George of Castelfranco-of the Brave Castle: stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was-Giorgione.

“Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on-fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain rocks to the shore; of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city-and became himself as a fiery heart to it?

“A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emeralds. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,-the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable,-every word a fate-sate her senate. In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his name written, and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether, a world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled or

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