secretly denounced, dragged by night from the bosom of his family, examined by torture, and perchance for some slight word dropped in holiday mirth, immured beneath those waters for twenty, thirty, forty years, yea, for half a century. What was all the brightness of the Adriatic to him? what the beauty of his own native Venice? and what must the strength be of a native's love for such a magic city? Think how many suns rose and set on Venice, how the morning lay like a miracle of loveliness upon these fair lagoons, how the evenings came, and music stole over the water, and gilded gondolas, ere yet the sumptuary law prescribed the funereal black, shot here and there with their lamps like dancing fire-flies, and birth and beauty were abroad and busy, and how hundreds of moons rose upon St. Mark's leaded cupolas, and turned Venice into a fairy city, and swathed it in very spells of moonlight, and how everything about the city was very, very pleasant. And is it possible that two worlds should be so near each other, should rest upon each other's confines? the bewildering mirth and oriental life upon the Grand Canal, and that concentrated world, that life which is only life because it is far, far more horrible than death, close by, beneath those few feet of cold, clear, green water: a life without sight, for daylight comes not there: a life without sound, for stone and water muffle every noise, and the booming of the bells and the splash of the canal would be mercies, were they but granted to the ear,

mercies compared to the tingling silentness of those sepulchral dungeons. Let a man think of all this, and exult when he looks round on Venice, beautiful beyond compare, but stricken and decrepid, and wasted, and almost lifeless; let him see even written upon the blighted greatness of these Adriatic lagoons the righteousness of God, "He is the Lord our God: His judgments are in all the earth."

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And why is it that suffering should have a spell to fix the eye above the power of beauty, or of greatness? Is it not because the Cross is a religion of suffering, a faith of suffering, a privilege of suffering, a perfection arrived at by and through suffering only? Half an hour was enough for the Ducal Palace. could gaze for hours upon those dungeon-holes, gaze, and read there, as in an exhaustless volume, histories on histories of silent, weary suffering, as it filed the soft heart of man away, attenuating his reason into a dull instinct; or cracked the stout heart as you would shiver a flint.

Travellers have frequent need of this lesson. There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face, but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stoop not to decypher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the least half of the lesson earth has to give. The power and divinity of suffering should nowhere be more consistently uppermost than in the mind of a traveller. Such a place as Venice at such a season as Passion Week would

not fail to keep it fresh and strong.

People do not

by any means generally acknowledge the power and dignity of suffering. They misapprehend the Church and the temper of Churchmen, because they misapprehend the Humiliation of the Lord as reflected through the temper of His body, which is the Church. That Humiliation is ever working, unfolding itself, and giving lustre in the temper and conduct of the Church and her sons in all ages of the world's eventful history.

The Object of the Church's worship is the Saviour suffering; yet bold, undaunted, unshaken, unhindered in His suffering: submission towards God and boldness towards the world. This is the double temper and disposition, and spirit which passes into the Church, and is her life, and gift, and power. This is the way in which the Humiliation of the Bridegroom works itself out upon the demeanor of the Bride. This is the demeanor by which she has become universal. She has conquered by submission. She has grown by suffering. She has filled the world by emptying herself of all that was worldly within her. Her Martyrs bowed their heads, and the earth was sown with their ashes, and made fruitful by their blood. Yet was she ever bold towards the world. She ceased not to teach or to preach for the command of any sanhedrim, or governor, or emperor: far less at the bidding of dogmatic science, profane literature, or uneasy philosophy; but rejoiced rather in that she was counted worthy to suffer. Such was

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she in primitive times. Later on, when she did not altogether remember her heritage of suffering, when she sat upon her high chair somewhat, it may be, (God only knoweth) somewhat more lordly than beseemed her, when she wore a crown more shining and imperial than her ancient one of thorns, even in that day was she bold towards the great, and yet the servant of the poor. She kept in power, not by courting the royal and the noble, not by clothing in fine linen, and dwelling in kings' courts, but by overawing kings; by keeping their pride, and lust, and wrath under; by breaking thrones down with a rod of iron; yea, even by treating worldly powers with slight and wantonness. Yet even when she thus in a measure forgot herself, or at least by an Englishman will be so judged to have done, there was something unworldly, somewhat wonderful about her conduct. To grow to greatness by despising it; to keep kings true to her by tyrannizing over them; to have princes for her slaves, through fear, and not through flattery; and yet be all the while the blessed advocate of the poor and destitute, the serf, the captive, and all the forlorn ones upon earth! the world had not seen the like before. Later on still, she has been well content in every proud and learned generation to be accounted old and obsolete, and the keeper-back of improvement. She has no novelties. She grows no wiser. Her newest Creed is fourteen hundred years old. She has not improved

or widened her faith since that; and where are the

literatures, philosophies, sciences, and political systems which in every generation have risen up to supersede this old and unimproving faith? Quietly at rest with the worm-eaten skulls of the proud wise men that gave them birth. Surely then they are false and coward Churchmen who fear for their mother's abasement. Surely they are false and coward hearts who would not be cheered by the hope of suffering. Yet mayhap we are not holy enough for such ennobling chastisement. We might fall away. Still let no one be afraid for the Church, whatever her future political fortunes are to be. To her, abasement would be emancipation from chains whose rust is eating into her limbs. It is not the Church, but the State, which would be perilled by such an emancipation. The separation of Church and State would to the State be a most awful excommunication; the effects of which would in a few generations be more terrible than any papal interdict in old time. Yet any thing were better for a branch of the Catholic Church than that she should be delivered up to the pestilence of Erastian moderation.

But it is time to leave our standing-place beneath the Bridge of Sighs. We have sufficiently acknowledged that the mightiest of all consecrations is suffering. Let us pass onward to St. Mark's.

It is scarcely possible to convey an adequate idea of St. Mark's, or, indeed, any building of that style, by mere description. Its characteristic is fantastic