Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval!
There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead
of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the
bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle
among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their
living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less
lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? You
may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St.
Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance
brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and
poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the
porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them
that sell doves"[156] for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and
caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the
middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the
sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its
will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it.
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