THE GARDENS OF VENICE 
the remembrance of many lovers of Venice. Close to 
the Public Gardens, on the little island of Sant’ Elena, 
there stood an ancient church and convent with a 
graveyard, where the ashes of the Empress Helena, 
mother of Constantine the Great, were said to rest, and 
where many noble Venetian families had their burying- 
place. It was the most romantic spot in the world. 
Violets and periwinkles carpeted the grassy glades 
under the elms and pine groves, tall cypresses and 
slender marble columns framed in the cloister garden, 
where pomegranates and oleanders blossomed, and roses 
hung in profusion over the low red wall. 
Far away to the north-west, across the open sea, we 
could see the mountains of Cadore, and beyond the 
spires of Venice rose the long range of Euganean hills. 
But campanile and convent garden, marble columns 
and cypress grove, have alike vanished before the 
relentless march of civilisation. An iron foundry has 
now taken their place, the smoke of furnaces blackens 
the pure atmosphere, and this once lovely isle, hallowed 
by the worship and memories of past ages, has been 
utterly ruined. 
In the golden days of Venice, when Casola and De 
Commines wrote of her glories, the gardens of the 
patricians were as numerous as those of the religious 
orders. Thirty or forty years later, Sansovino counted 
above a hundred palaces which had gardens of their 
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