corridor, little more than a yard wide, and faced with marble, through which escape was impossible. Upon this opened the doors of certain very small cells, marked with Roman numerals, in which, for some reason now impossible to explain, the ‘V’ was always turned upside down. The cells were completely lined with deal, but received air only from the dark corridor through an aperture in the door about eight inches square. The prisons on the other side, towards the harbour, had various names, among which we may mention that of ‘Mosina’ and ‘Liona’; then such names as ‘The Refreshing Joy,’ ‘The Vulcan,’ ‘The Strong,’ ‘The Lightless,’ and other similar epithets, probably suggested by the grim humour of the gaolers. Until 1357 the counsellors of the Doge went down into these places every month; and at that time the heads of the Ten inquired into the state of each individual prisoner, and gave an account thereof to the Doge and to the Council. There also the prisoner was allowed to speak, probably through the little aperture in the door, with his attorney, if he feared lest he should be unable to defend himself when called to justice. To this place came also at night the monk whose duty it was to comfort the last hours of such unfortunates as had received sentence of death, either by hanging between the columns of the Piazzetta, or, as frequently happened, at the place where the crime was committed, or in the cell, if the tribunal had decreed that the prisoner should be strangled. Sometimes, though more rarely, the sentence was this, ‘that to-night So-and-so be conducted to the Orfano Canal, with his hands tied behind his back and weights fastened to his body, and let him be drowned, and let him die.’ I shall have occasion to speak further of the prisons as they were in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. [Illustration: THE ABBAZZIA] VIII ON MANNERS AND CERTAIN CUSTOMS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY In the natural order of things it is now time to say a few words about the manners and customs of the Venetians in the fourteenth century. Owing to lack of documents the subject is by no means an easy one. An ideal history would be a careful account of the daily doings and habits of a nation, concisely told and not out of proportion with the greater events of which an account is due. Such a history would be a fascinating tale, though it might be an almost interminable one. As in an endless gallery, the writer would show his readers an unbroken series of pictures, and the mind would be led without surprise, but without a moment’s dulness or boredom, from the beginning to the end of a people’s career.