I refreshed myself, after my admiration at the Academy of Fine Arts, with an admiration of a different kind at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, even as one rests one's mind by a change of reading. This church, whose unknown architect followed in the foot-steps of Niccola Pisano, is rich and spacious. The apse into which the high altar retires represents a kind of erect shell; two other sanctuaries accompany this shell laterally: they are tall and narrow, with many-centred vaultings, and are separated from the apse by rabbeted channels. The ashes of the Doges Mocenigo[106], Morosini[107], Vendramin[108] and several other heads of the Republic[109] rest here. Here also is the skin of Antonio Bragadino[110], the defender of Famagusta, to whom Tertulliano expression may be applied: "a living skin." Those illustrious remains inspire a great and painful sentiment: Venice herself, the magnificent catafalco of her warlike magistrates, the two-fold coffin of their ashes, is now no more than a living skin. Stained-glass windows and red curtains, while veiling the light in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, increase the religious effect. The numberless columns brought from the East and from Greece have been planted in the basilica, like avenues of exotic trees. A storm rose while I was roaming in the church: when will the trumpets sound that shall rouse all these dead? I said as much under Jerusalem, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Returning to my hotel after those visits, I thanked God for having transported me from the porkers of Waldmünchen to the pictures of Venice. VENICE, _September_ 1833. After my discovery of the prisons in which material Austria tries to stifle Italian intellects, I went to the Arsenal. No monarchy, however powerful it be or have been, has presented a similar nautical compendium. An immense space, enclosed by crenellated walls, contains four docks for large ships, yards for building those ships, establishments for all that concerns the military and merchant navy, from the rope-yard to the gun-foundry, from the work-shop where they carve the oar of the gondola to that where they square the keel of a seventy-four, from the rooms devoted to the old armour captured in Constantinople, in Cyprus, in the Morea, at Lepanto to the rooms in which modern armour is exhibited: the whole mingled with galleries, columns, works of architecture raised and designed by the chief masters. In the naval arsenals of Spain, England, France, Holland, one sees only that which is connected with the objects of those arsenals; in Venice, the arts are allied to industry. The monument to Admiral Emo[111], by Canova, awaits you beside the carcass of a ship; rows of guns meet your eye through long porticoes: the two colossal lions from the Piræus keep the gate of the dock from which a frigate is about to issue for a world which Athens did not know and which was discovered by the genius of modern Italy. [Sidenote: The Arsenal.]