GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE 165

just opposite the easternmost door of the Café Florian. And there were none of those pompous loggie then, where you walk up and down before the café, but these trim, dainty, happily inhabited houses, mostly in white marble and gold, with disks of porphyry;-and look at the procession coming towards you underneath them-what a bed of moving flowers it is! Not Birnam wood coming,¹ gloomy and terrible, but a very bloom and garland of good and knightly manhood-its Doge walking in the midst of it-simple, valiant, actual, beneficent, magnificent king. Do you see better sights than this in St. Mark’s Place now, in your days of progress?

Now, just to get some little notion how the figures are “put in” by these scrupulous old formalists, take the pains to look closely at the first you come upon, of the procession on the extreme left,-the three musicians,² namely, with the harp, violin, and lute. Look at them as portraits only: you will not find more interesting ones in all the rooms. And then you will do well to consider the picture as a reality for a little while, and so leave the Academy with a vision of living Venice in your heart. We will look at no more painting to-day.

¹ [Macbeth, Act iv. sc. 1.]

² [Referred to again on the next page.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]