The Duomo is a cold, unattractive church--said, however, to have been designed by Michael Angelo--and rather bold in the treatment of the pendentives under its dome. By its side stands a Lombard baptistery, the interior of which I did not succeed in getting a sight of; and I believe that I missed some valuable examples of fresco-painting with which its walls and domed roof are covered. We wandered about the melancholy streets of Padua, searching in vain for objects of any interest to our antiquarian eyes. It is true that the columns and arcades which support the houses are, many of them, ancient; but they are of a character very common throughout the north of Italy, and were not sufficiently novel or striking to draw off our attention from the melancholy and dilapidated look of the houses and shops which they half concealed and half supported. We saw also one or two old monuments at the corners of streets--one of them called the tomb of Antenor--similar in their idea to those which are so frequent in Verona. The next morning, therefore, saw us making our way to the railway station for Venice, sad only in leaving Padua that we could not spend more time there for the study, more quietly and carefully, of the lovely little Arena Chapel and the paintings of Giotto. CHAPTER VIII. “Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.” _Tennyson._ Padua and Venice Railway--Venice: Piazza and Church of S. Mark--Torcello--The Lagoon--Murano--Sta. Maria dei Frari--SS. Giovanni e Paolo--Sta. Maria dell’ Orto--Other Churches--Domestic Architecture--Fondaco de’ Turchi--Other Byzantine Palaces--The Ducal Palace--Foscari Palace--Ca’ d’Oro--Other Gothic Palaces--Balconies--Venetian Architecture--A Festival--Paintings. Little is to be seen as one leaves Padua to distinguish the city at all vividly, save the oriental-looking cupolas of Sant’ Antonio, and the great roof of the Sala della Ragione, looking like the inverted hull of some great ship, with its convex sides towering up above the otherwise not remarkable-looking city.