"Let us leave Aldo with all his aids about him,--the senators, the schoolmasters, the poor scholars, the learned men who were to live to be cardinals, and those who were to die as poor as they were famous; and his learned Greek Musurus, and his poor student from Rotterdam,--a better scholar perhaps than any {332} of them,--and all his idle visitors coming to gape and admire, while our Sanudo swept round the corner from S. Giacomo dell' Orio, with his vigorous step and his toga over his shoulders, and the young men who were of the younger faction came in, a little contemptuous of their elders and strong in their own learning, to the meeting of the Aldine academy and the consultation on new readings. The Stamperia was as distinct a centre of life as the Piazza, though not so apparent before the eyes of men." It is a singular fact that the Senate of Venice, in 1362, should have thought it worth while to present Petrarch with a palace, that he might in return, "with the good will of our Saviour, and of the Evangelist himself," make Saint Mark the heir of his library, and yet should have postponed the beginning of the building in which the books should be kept nearly two centuries; for it was not until 1536 that Sansovino commenced the Libreria Vecchia, which Aretino considered superlatively beautiful. Meantime the gift of Petrarch, stored in a small chamber of San Marco, was quite forgotten. No one lived who knew its whereabouts; and the legacies of Cardinal Bessarion, of Cardinal Grimani, Contarini, and Nani, were the glory of the library which Petrarch wished to found. Not until 1634 were his precious manuscripts discovered. But a meagre number could be saved from the mass of corruption they had become; and for all time the neglect and destruction of these precious parchments will remain a disgrace to Venice. In 1812 the splendid collection of one hundred and twenty thousand volumes and ten thousand manuscripts was transferred to the more spacious halls of the Ducal Palace, leaving the Great Hall of the Libreria with its paintings by Veronese and Tintoretto, and the row of Greek philosophers which look down from between the windows. Ruskin calls these last the finest paintings of {333} the kind in existence. One of these is the Diogenes, which Tintoretto painted with the greatest care, because Titian had told the Procurators of St. Mark that Tintoretto was not worthy to be employed in the decoration of this hall. But these officials thought this a little severe, and gave Tintoretto his opportunity.