My first visit to Torcello was sad and sombre enough to begin with. We started early from Venice in a thick mist, making our way first to the cemetery, where there is a good tall campanile, then to Murano, and through its shabby water streets, passing the end of San Donato (which shall be described later), and then on through long canals edged on either side by miles of green mud, and thronged with market boats and noisy boatmen. Here and there across the lagoon we saw a tall campanile marking the position of each settlement or island in this waste of sea and mud, and, last of all, that of the cathedral of Torcello, some five minutes’ walk among decaying walls and unmown grass from the half-ruined landing-place to which our gondolier tied his boat. All that remains of the city is before us in small compass. On the left a fourteenth-century building, said to have been the Palazzo Publico; in front a stone seat or throne in the centre of what was once the market-place; on the right, the Byzantine church of Sta. Fosca; and beyond, and connected with Sta. Fosca by a cloister, the modernized-looking cathedral, plain, bare, and uninteresting on the outside, with a detached campanile near the east end. This is all Torcello has to shew; but, forlorn and decayed as everything in the place is, it is precious in the highest degree to the architect who cares about the growth of his art. The cathedral is full of interest, though much damaged by extensive repairs, carried on in a reckless mood by the Austrians, not long before they lost Venetia, when new roofs were put on, and the mosaics were so much damaged that I remember collecting a handful of fragments from a barrow of rubbish before it was shot into the canal; at the same time a scaffold was erected for a proposed restoration of the great western mosaic which, though threatened and indeed commenced in 1857, had not in 1872 been proceeded with. The exterior has been completely modernized. In plan the cathedral consists of three parallel naves of ten bays, all finished with apses. The columns dividing the nave from the aisles are of veined marble, with capitals of exquisite workmanship, founded, indeed, on Corinthian examples, but modified by Byzantine influence and by study of nature. The arches are stilted and high; above them is a small clerestory of very simple windows. The central apse retains its raised rows of seats, though their brickwork alone is left; the throne for the bishop is placed in the centre, and retains some of its marble inlay. Under this raised east end a descending passage is formed, connecting the two smaller apses, and with a small apse formed in the thickness of the east wall opening into it. Three bays of the church are given to the choir, which is fenced round with richly sculptured marble screens. On the west the screen has marble columns carrying a flat entablature, and below them is a solid portion some four feet high covered with panels of