Murano is full of corners where Gothic and Byzantine have combined to beautify portico, pillar and arch. In the Asilo dei Vecchii are two of the most ancient fireplaces known in Venice, and at Venice fireplaces were very early in use. One is a deep square hollowed in the wall, and furnished with doors that shut upon it like a panelling, while two little windows, as usual, open out behind. The other projects into the room, with sloping roof and little seats within on either side. Murano, it is well known, was the pleasure-ground of the Venetians in happier days; it was here that the men of the Great Republic had their gardens elect for solace and for beauty. But with the Republic Murano fell; the patrimonies of the patricians were scattered--gradually their palaces were snatched away, piece by piece, and fell into irrecoverable ruin. One only now retains some image of its former splendour, the famous Cà da Mula, upon the fine sweep of the Grand Canal. The Madonna of San Donato has looked down on the spoliation of her temple; she still looks on its slow decay. She has shared the proud sorrows of the campanile; in colloquy through the night what may he not have told of the passing of Murano? They have little, these solemn guardians of the past, in common with the exuberant Renaissance, but perhaps a common fate, the unifying hand of Time, may have bound their spirits in a confraternity of grief. The heart of the old campanile would be stirred with pity for the fate of those deserted palaces, the sublime Madonna would turn an eye not of scorn but of sorrow on the fading forms of those radiant women, so splendid on the frescoed palace fronts, so alluring in the smooth mirror of the canal. The work of the spoiler, so far as it was a work of violence, of a human spoiler, is done; but the slower work of nature still proceeds.