At evening over the face of the waters, fanned by the cooling breezes of the north, glided the “black Tritons” of the lagoons, graced by the wit and fashion and beauty of Venice. Salutation and repartee were winged with laughter from mouth to mouth, and stanza alternating with stanza of Tasso’s noble verse answered each other in song over the rippling sea. Titian’s palace,[117] where the master entertained all who were celebrated in art and literature, stood near the present Fondamenta. While the tables were being laid the guests were taken to see his great collection of pictures, then for a stroll about his beautiful gardens. The banquet was arranged with delightful art; tables were loaded with the most delicate viands and the most precious wines; music of sweet voices and many instruments accompanied the feast. Pleasures and amusements followed, suited to the season and the guests, until midnight closed the revelry. [Illustration: MURANO] There was no brick wall then fencing about the fair island of S. Michele with its beautiful churches, cloisters and gardens; no cloud of coal smoke fouling the atmosphere of Murano, it too adorned with palaces and lovely pleasaunces. We make our way to the ferry steamer for Murano, which leaves the Fondamente Nuove every quarter of an hour. How has the glory of Murano departed--_Muranum delitiae et voluptas civium Venetorum!_ Its palaces and pleasure grounds are said by an anonymous writer of the seventeenth century[118] to be beautiful beyond description. Spacious chambers and banqueting halls were hung with tapestry wrought with scenes from the Punic wars, and furnished with the most precious and ornate productions of Venetian craftsmen. Delicious gardens were traversed by artfully designed paths and provided with arbours of interlaced foliage; fountains, fish-ponds, cool grottos adorned with coral and shells in charming taste, pastures gay with the manifold colours of flowers, and trees bearing choicest fruits. Classic peristyles and _exedræ_, decorated with paintings and arabesques, afforded shelter from the heat of the sun or from rain, and invited to quiet converse. On gaining the island of Murano we follow the Fondamenta Vetrai and soon reach the church of S. Pietro Martire, which possesses Giov. Bellini’s altar-piece (1488), the Virgin and Child, to whom St Mark presents Doge Agostino Barbarigo. Notwithstanding the clumsiness of restorers this remains one of the most precious of Venetian paintings.