they came to, at Venice they strove to accelerate the ruin of the palaces, removed every kind of public office to Verona, and seemed actuated by a wish to wipe the very name of Venice from the forehead of Italy.

So also we may see how commercial powers subserve missionary purposes. Indeed all purely commercial powers hitherto seem not to have had the Cross given them to advance, but to have waited upon it, pioneering or following. Their greatness is not for themselves, but for God's people. It is not they, but Zebulun, whose border comes nigh them, who really "suck of the abundance of the sea, and of treasures hid in the sand." It is a great thing to stand, as we do, with Revelation before us, where we can see the inward, true, providential meaning of a city or a nation, as well as the colored, outward, carnal seeming. Conceive a wealthy Tyrian merchant, looking out from his counting-house, or stores filled with "blue cloths and broidered work, and chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar," upon one of his gallant ships, setting forth with the evening sun upon her, and the evening wind in her sails, passing out of the port of Tyre, then the great gate of the Mediterranean. There she passes in all her glory, her ship-boards of the tall fir-trees of Senir, a kingly and straight cedar from Lebanon for her mast, her strong oars of old oak of Bashan, her benches and hatches of best Chittim ivory, wrought by the company of the Ashurites, her sails of broid

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ered Egyptian linen, bellying with the cool breeze, and her officers clad in blue and purple from the isles of Elishah. There goes his galley, beautiful and costly, a type of the various magnificence, the various art, the various wealth, of famous Tyre. Well may he stand wrapped in thought till the last tint of evening has passed from the sea; well may he gaze on the deep, lordly basin of the harbor, one day to be nearly filled up with broken columns; and we may conceive what his thoughts might be of Tyrian greatness. He would not think, what we know, that it was all for "them that dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing." Tyre is an allegory of commercial powers.

It was just sunset as I mounted the sand-hills of the Lido to gain my gondola. Sunset from the Lido! It is only surpassed by sunset from the front steps of the Parthenon. The poet who saw it from the Lido years ago described it with minutest fidelity, What I saw, he saw; and it is never to be forgotten.

"As those who pause on some delightful way,
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, I stood,
Looking upon the evening and the flood,
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar
And aery Alps, towards the north, appear'd,
Through mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, rear'd
Between the east and west; and half the sky
Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue

Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many-folded hills-they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido through the harbor piles
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-
And then, as if the earth and sea had been
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
Those mountains tow'ring, as from waves of flame,
Around the vap'rous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent."

We spent the morning of Easter Monday in seeing a very beautiful procession at the Arsenal, and afterwards the blessing of the sea. It was a very interesting ceremony; and as we rode in our gondola, the crowded Schiavoni, the banners of the procession, the figure of the priest lifting up the Host over the sea, which was perfectly calm and clear, presented a picture which could not easily be equalled. In the afternoon we went to the Armenian convent. Our guide through the building was the simple-mannered Father Aucher, the translator of Paradise Lost, the Night Thoughts, and Rasselas, into Armenian. It was a little annoying, in a place so quiet and Christian as that delightful convent is, to hear the name of Byron so much dwelt upon, and the kind of summer parlor, where he used to compose, shown with a good deal of noise and parade. It was not, of course, the mere mention of an infidel

poet's name which could desecrate the house of the

tranquil and studious Armenians; but it was brought forward in such a way as to show that our good cicerone had found that that name hallowed the convent more to English travellers than its own sacred character and beautiful propriety of arrangement.

We will rest awhile in that pleasant panelled common-room, hung round with pictures of benefactors, and of some of the more literary of the brethren. That one on the left hand of the door is Father Aucher himself. No one can mistake it. The windows look into a quiet little garden; and the whole room is filled with the fragrance of a bunch of yellow jonquils, in a little vase upon the table. How quiet it is, after the holy-day mirth and holyday crowds upon the Schiavoni! It was here the stranger visited me once more. I had not seen him since we left Padua, and his appearance was doubly welcome in such a place as that common-room.

Now that all is over," said he, "do you not repent of not having gone to Rome during the Holy Week?" "Not at all," replied I. "You may now visit it in tranquillity," said he: "the play is over, and the theatre broken up. It will be nearly empty by the end of the week." "No," I answered, "we "Eastward!-whither?" re

shall go eastward."

joined he.

"To the Lord's Tomb," said I, "if it be

possible."
der that a hazardous journey."

"I fear," said he,

"the plague will ren

"Of that," I replied, and I would fain

"we can hear further at Smyrna: see Jerusalem before I visit Rome."

"It is even a

I

more awful place than Rome," said he, devoutly crossing himself:-" Europe, if ever outward unity be vouchsafed her again, will turn her eyes thither once more. There will be another crusade, though after a different sort from what has been heretofore. But it is not well to travel thither as you would to other lands, in a literary way, or in the spirit of an artist. It is the land which the Lord environed with His blessed feet.'" "I would fain," replied I, "leave such a spirit behind me in visiting any land. I wish to regard the earth as a volume, where God's judgments and His mercies are luminously recorded. would strive to become a more earnest and intelligent catholic by interpreting what I see, and constrain each famous locality to give a voice and a soul to my dumb and spiritless recollections of history. Unfortunately, I loathe books and the in-doors pursuit of knowledge. I cannot profit in that school. I toil irksomely, and yet toil vainly. The restraints of scholarship are not sweet restraints to me. What I read seems but a bewildering mass of ill-strung facts. I would put life into it all, by making for myself a sacred geography of this very fearful earth. Dumb cities should speak to me, interpreting the past, and put threads into my hands whereby I might guide myself a little way, and with a timid soberness, into the profitable labyrinth of prophecy. The earth surely has a catholic geography as well as a moral and physical one, and no less scientific; and if physical geography be one of the most alluring