The story of Venice and the Crusades forms one of the most interesting pages of her history in relation to the East. The gradual awakening of her consciousness to the fact that the pilgrimages to the Holy Land might be of close significance to herself culminates in her attitude towards the great Fourth Crusade at the opening of the thirteenth century. The Crusades were, in fact, a commercial speculation for Venice, but a speculation into which she infused all the vitality and fulness of her nature. And she became, not merely a place of passage for the East, but a superb depository of relics to detain pilgrims on their outward way; a hostel so royally fitted with food for their senses, their religious cravings and their mystic imaginings, that one and another may well have been beguiled into delaying their departure for more strenuous sanctities. The narratives of the pilgrims, with their enthusiasms, their details of relics, their records of Venetian ceremonies, religious, commercial or domestic, coloured by their quaintly intimate personal impressions, form one of the most picturesque pages of Venetian chronicle. Pietro Casola, a Milanese pilgrim of the late fifteenth century, gives us a picture of a city that is sumptuous and rich in all its dealings, yet pervaded by a harmony and decorum that has stamped itself on the face of each individual citizen. We feel that Pietro Casola has really had a vision of the meaning of Venice, when, among the inventory of wonders of the Mass for the pilgrims on Corpus Christi day, of the velvets, crimson and damask and scarlet, the cloth of gold and togas sweeping the ground, each finer than the last, he pauses to add, “There was great silence, greater than is ever observed at such festivals, even in the gathering of so many Venetian gentlemen, so that you could hear everything. And it seemed to me that everything was ruled by one alone, who was obeyed by each man without resistance. And at this I wondered greatly, for never had I seen so great obedience at such spectacles.” In the record of this arresting impression, more even than in the description of many coloured drapery and white cloths spread on the piazza, of the groves of oak-trees bordering the route of the procession and the candles lit among them, we seem to see before us the rhythmic solemnity of that unique _Procession_ on the Piazza of Gentile Bellini. We need only Casola’s other observant characterisation of the Venetian gentleman to complete the picture. “I have considered,” he says, “the quality of these Venetian gentlemen, who for the most part are fair men and tall, astute and most subtle in their dealings; and you must needs, if you would treat with them, keep your eyes and ears open. They are proud; I think it is on account of their great rule. And when a son is born to a Venetian, they say among themselves, ‘A Signor is born into the world.’ In their way of living at home