VI. RED AND WHITE CLOUDS 263

we have of imagining what Christianity was, to people who, without understanding its claims or its meaning, did not doubt for an instant its statements of fact, and used the whole of their childish imagination to realize the acts of their Saviour’s life, and the presence of His angels, let us draw near to the first sandy thresholds of the Venetian’s home.

71. Before you read any of the so-called historical events of the first period, I want you to have some notion of their scene. You will hear of Tribunes-Consuls-Doges:-but what sort of tribes were they tribunes of? what sort of nation were they dukes of? You will hear of brave naval battle,-victory over sons of Emperors: what manner of people were they, then, whose swords lighten thus brightly in the dawn of chivalry?

For the whole of her first seven hundred years of work and war, Venice was in great part a wooden town; the houses of the noble mainland families being for long years chiefly at Heraclea, and on other islands; nor they magnificent, but farm-villas mostly, of which, and their farming, more presently. Far too much stress has been generally laid on the fishing and salt-works of early Venice, as if they were her only businesses; nevertheless at least you may be sure of this much, that for seven hundred years Venice had more likeness in her to old Yarmouth than to new Pall Mall: and that you might come to shrewder guess of what she and her people were like, by living for a year or two lovingly among the herring-catchers of Yarmouth Roads, or the boatmen of Deal or Boscastle, than by reading any lengths of eloquent history.

72. But you are to know also, and remember always, that this amphibious city-this Phocća, or sea-dog of towns,-looking with soft human eyes at you from the sand, Proteus himself latent in the salt-smelling skin of her,¹-

¹ [See Deucalion, i. ch. vii. § 36, where Ruskin refers to “the multitude of seals then in the Mediterranean indicated by the name and coinage of the city Phocća”; and to the passage in the Odyssey (iv. 403), where Proteus is spoken of as shepherding the flocks of seals.]

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