The frieze of the portraits of the Doges is concluded in this hall, where the forty-one nobles were chosen who afterwards elected these rulers. It is now the repository of the manuscripts, the early printed books, and the Aldine editions of the Library. The Sala dello Scudo is rich in a very different sort of decoration from that of the halls we have described. It is hung with maps, many of which represent the discoveries made by Venetian navigators. Here is the famous _Mappamondo_ of Fra Mauro, dating from 1457 to 1459, which is of great value in connection with mediæval history, showing as it does the geographical knowledge or ignorance of that era. There is a class of pictures in the Ducal Palace so numerous that we have not space to speak justly of them. They are those of which Rio says:-- {353} "It was no doubt the passage of the Psalmist--_Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_--which was so often repeated by the Venetians in the Crusades, which suggested to the Doges and naval commanders the idea of being represented in a kneeling attitude before the infant Christ or the Holy Virgin, in the pictures destined to transmit their names or the recollection of their exploits to future generations. This mode of pious commemoration, which offers the touching contrast of an humble attitude with great dignity or glory, continued in use during the whole of the sixteenth century, in spite of the paganism so universally triumphant elsewhere. After Giovanni Bellini and Catena, came the celebrated artists who adorned the second period of the Venetian school, and who also paid the tribute of their pencils to this interesting subject. It is on this account that pictures representing the Madonna seated, with a doge or a general kneeling before her, are so frequently to be met with in private collections, in the churches, and above all in the Ducal Palace, in which these allegorical compositions, intended to express the close alliance between Religion and the State, seem to have been purposely multiplied." In no other place in all Venice does the atmosphere of the Middle Ages linger as it does in the Palazzo Ducale. The atmosphere of the days when the scroll in the hand of Venice enthroned bore this inscription, "Fortis, justa, trono furias, mare sub pede, pono" (Strong and just, I put the furies beneath my throne, and the sea beneath my foot). Emerging from this palace, with one's brain full of more thoughts than it can hold, it is restful to find a part of them so happily expressed as in these words of Taine:--