VIII. THE REQUIEM 295

loudly impudent, incredulity, in any modern guide-book. I will not pause to speak of it here, nor dwell, yet, on this mosaic, which is clearly later than the story it tells by two hundred years. We will go on to the picture which shows us things as they were, in its time.

112. You must go round the transept gallery, and get the door opened into the compartment of the eastern aisle, in which is the organ. And going to the other side of the square stone gallery, and looking back from behind the organ, you will see opposite, on the vault, a mosaic of upright figures in dresses of blue, green, purple, and white, variously embroidered with gold.

These represent, as you are told by the inscription above them-the Priests, the Clergy, the Doge, and the people of Venice; and are an abstract, at least, or epitome of those personages, as they were, and felt themselves to be, in those days.

I believe, early twelfth-century-late eleventh it might be-later twelfth it may be,-it does not matter: these were the people of Venice in the central time of her unwearied life, her unsacrificed honour, her unabated power, and sacred faith. Her Doge wears, not the contracted shell-like cap, but the imperial crown. Her priests and clergy are alike mitred-not with the cloven, but simple, cap, like the conical helmet of a knight. Her people are also her soldiers, and their Captain bears his sword, sheathed in black.

So far as features could be rendered in the rude time, the faces are all noble-(one horribly restored figure on the right shows what ignobleness, on this large scale, modern brutality and ignorance can reach); for the most part, dark-eyed, but the Doge brown-eyed and fair-haired, the long tresses falling on his shoulders, and his beard braided like that of an Etruscan king.

The Doge ordered a solemn triduan fast and prayer. Then, as the people knelt in silence, S. Mark made known his tomb by thrusting forth his arm from a pillar in whose shaft he had been hid, and by filling the church with a most delicious odour. The sacred body was deposited afresh in the crypt of the Basilica” (H.F. Brown’s Venice, p. 78). Compare Vol. X. p. 75.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]