90 BR OWN : 



bell all their lives and not notice it, but who would miss it if 

 it stopped. 



"A hundred cities of Italy, ' ' says the Secolo, "mark events sad 

 or joyful, as the case may be, by the sound of the public bells. 

 Down from those towers and out from those bronze mouths 

 cities and villages receive a common thought and hear a lan- 

 guage which every man can understand. Try what it is to 

 tear out from those bosoms that common thought, from those 

 bronze mouths that tongue which speaks at one and the same 

 time the words of thousands upon thousands of human lips. 



" Fasts, vigils, guard mounting, the opening of the Arsenal 

 and the closing of its gates ; return from victorious war and 

 the sad honors paid to the worthy dead — all were told of from 

 day to day by the bells of San Marco. The Campanile person- 

 ified ten centuries of a Republic's histoiy and of a cit3''s life." 



Just now the city of Venice is most like a stranded jelly 

 fish. " How is the gold become dim — how is the most fine 

 gold changed ! ' ' The Rialto where Shylock was rated by the 

 lordly Bassanio about his monies and his usances is an ill 

 smelling fish market. I ate there, in open day, before the 

 public and without the aid of table gear of any kind, what 

 looked like a small octopus. It was boiled, it tasted like lob- 

 ster and was only a little tougher. But what did it all matter ? 

 There was the gi'eat Square of St. Mark looking at night like 

 an enormous well lighted ball room and even by day like fairy 

 land. We could go to Florian's, never shut night or day for 

 forty years, and fail by the hour together to imagine or recall 

 what had been passing on the pavement before us six hundred 

 years ago. And there was the Tower to climb. No stairs, 

 but a smooth, even stone pathway round and round and up 

 and up. The view from the top wholly disappointing. One 

 roof is so ridiculously like another, the canals are too small to 

 be seen, and the far-off landscape has imprinted nothing what- 

 ever upon my recollection. So I came down and left the 

 Tower to its fate. It had but fifty years to live. 



Saj'S the writer in the Secolo: "All gossipping controversy 



