The church of the Miracoli seems to belong peculiarly to Venice in the light of these stories of its birth. It is itself one of the miracles, this little Roman temple; with its quadrangular-domed choir, raised high above the nave, its marble ambones, its dark painted roof, and walls lined with marbles, it impresses us with a sense of sublimity. All here is perfectly proportioned and decorated with simple and absolute fitness. It is impossible to mount the flight of marble steps leading from nave to choir, past the wonderful little figures of St. Clare and St. Francis with his profound contemplative smile, past the Annunciation Angel and the Virgin draped like a Roman matron, into the choir where the great cross of porphyry and serpentine hangs in the apse, without feeling that we are mounting to sacrifice in a temple full of the Deity. But what part has that marvellous little company of sea youths and maidens in the tale of the Passion? They are the offspring of some delicate fantasy careless of all save itself, yet they seem to need no other passport than beauty to their place in the temple. Work of the same imaginative quality is to be seen on a pillar in the nave: not here a dream of mermaids with delicate breasts and arms and glittering tails, but a purely naturalistic subject. The artist has conspired with the stone to sing his delight in the life of the fields, and he has achieved his purpose so that the very spirit of the wild creatures lives again. A lizard with smooth scales and lithe, restless tail, ears of corn, a serpent holding a bird by its look as it rears itself for a spring, birds fighting and birds preening their breasts,--all these delicate beings, that move amid a design of admirable grace, are a field pilgrim’s scrip laid open for all who will read. These old artists were not afraid. To them all things of nature appeared symbols worthy to lay on the altar. And it is because of this permeating imaginative vision that the Church of the Miracoli is one of the jewels of Venice, instinct with life, from the grave mystery of its marble-lined walls, slab alternating with slab, Carrara cream and white, paonazetto, marmo greco, marbles of Verona red and almond, to lizard and serpent, siren and infant, from the dusky gold and colour of the ceiling to the eloquent figures that stand in constant ministration on the ambones.