Venice, which has no counterpart in the world, is a city of all others in which one can linger on in a dream taking no count of time. The days run into weeks, these spread themselves into months, and it becomes more and more difficult to tear oneself away from the entrancing "Mistress of the Seas," from her Cathedral and all her other marvellous buildings; from her seductive gondolas and silent canals; from her picture galleries, and alas! from the fragrant coffee we sip idling away the time under the colonnade outside Florian's in the Piazza.
Well, the seductive cup is drained and while our cigarette is alight let us look round. Directly opposite to us, on the north side of this grand square, stretches the long colonnade of the Procuratie Vecchie, built early in the sixteenth century as a habitation for the procurators of S. Mark. It is one of the best examples of early Renaissance architecture in Italy; nobler, simpler than the Procuratie Nuove where we sit, which was built in the last quarter of the same century. An arcaded building in the classical style erected by Napoleon in 1810 connects the western extremities of the two Procuratie. It is a pity that this great Renaissance Piazza should be completed by an inferior bit of modern work instead of such a brilliant gem of the Renaissance style as Sansovino's Libreria Vecchia--at present invisible to us round the corner. To this building, which faces the Doge's Palace, no higher tribute could be given than to say that its perfection fairly distracts the admiration of the onlooker from the wonderful Gothic pile before it.
But all this is _Hamlet_ without the Prince. It is time to leave the shadow of the arches, to step out into the open, and to surrender ourselves to the spell of the great church which draws one with an irresistible fascination from the first moment we set foot in the Piazza. S. Mark's rises bounding the vision at the eastern end of the great square with its gorgeous façade and cool grey domes. So rich is the colouring and so strange the outline that one wonders almost whether architecture has not passed here into the sister art of painting.
Yes, there stands a building surpassingly fascinating, unique and outside all comparison with any other church in the country. Planned as a Greek Cross, like S. Sophia at Constantinople, it is reminiscent of the East far more than any building in the peninsula, or even in Sicily where some with direct Arab influence still exist. The great traders of Venice who lavished their wealth on its decoration, and whose every homeward bound ship brought back from the Orient a choice column, a rare piece of marble, or some such thing as a contribution towards its making, helped to raise it bit by bit until the wonderful church grew to be what we find it to-day, the most seductive ecclesiastical fabric in Italy.