Ruskin, of course, stigmatises this “as one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish Church”—how he does love that expression! He goes on to say that the body of St. Mark had, doubtless, perished in the conflagration of 976, but since St. Mark’s was not burned to the ground in 976, but merely damaged, it is not difficult to see upon what he bases the suggestion. Because the site was forgotten? There is not the slightest doubt that it was. Even if they had wished to, the clergy could not have deceived any one then, for all had had access to the spot formerly. It was not a secret at all. Besides, the stone pillar was solid. It had been in place for a long time. To insert a bronze coffin into solid stone is no light task, while to do it unobserved and to replace the marble afterwards well enough to escape detection, in a church whose doors are open from the early hours of the morning until late into the night, savours of the impossible. The story is perfectly true, for the record of it is to be found, as Ruskin tells us, in a mosaic of the North Transept. In the histories of all states and countries there are names that stand, as it were, as the very pillars upon which those histories are built; and, of these, some are solid and practical, some light and ornamental. Venice has had her share—Carmagnola, Pisani, Carlo Zeno, Marco Polo, Andrea Contarini, and many others. Two, at least, of these served together—namely, Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno—during that incident in the almost ceaseless state of war between Venice and her maritime and business rival, Genoa, which is known as the War of Chioggia. So like the accounts which we read in our time of quarrels between great corporations, is that of the origin of this particular war, that it is worth explaining, if only to illustrate the unchanging quality of our human nature. The long, long struggle that culminated in the War of Chioggia had its origin in an alliance—what is known in our day as a “gentlemen’s agreement”—between the two States, to boycott the Crimean Peninsula, in revenge for the murder of some Venetian and Genoese traders there by a certain Chief of the name of Zani Bey. To be sure, very little incitement was needed on either side, at that juncture, for affairs at Constantinople had been spurring Genoese ill-feeling for some time past, and Venice, not to be taken by surprise, had been pushing her preparations—just as the great monetary powers are doing to-day—to a point where they were a threat and a menace to every state in her neighbourhood. Each was hiring bravi and condottieri in every direction, each was hard at work forming alliances—the story of our own time all over again—and when Venetians discovered that the Genoese were flirting with the trade of the Crimea, in spite of their pledged word, and vice versa, the trouble came to a head, and both Carlo Zeno and Pisani were set to work.