We soon reach San Michele, the cemetery of Venice, to which the boats with black flags, so often seen, are always going. The sight of it reminds us of Mr. Howells and his "Venetian Life:"-- "As we go by the cemetery of San Michele, Piero the gondolier and Giovanna improve us with a little solemn pleasantry. "'It is a small place,' says Piero, 'but there is room enough for all Venice in it.' "'It is true,' asserts Giovanna; 'and here we poor folks become landowners at last.'" We stay here long enough to see the handsome church built by Moro Lombardo in 1466; to examine the statues by Bernini, which, to say truth, do not seem to strike the Venetian key-note; and to read the name of Fra Paolo Sarpi in the pavement, beneath which lies this brave {122} defender of Venice against Pope Paul V. From the Carmelite convent of San Michele went Placido Zurla to be made a cardinal, and that Cappelari who ascended the papal throne, in our own century, as Gregory XVI. Here also lived Frate Mauro, who made in 1457 the celebrated Mappa-Mondo for Alphonso V. of Portugal. It is now in the library of St. Mark, and is a geographical encyclopædia of all that was known about our planet at that time. It would be folly to attempt a new description of the panorama before us when we can quote a sentence from Ruskin which thus outlines the scene between Venice and Murano:-- "The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another, rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet them, and are lost in them, barred across by the gray terraces of those cloud foundations, and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial, greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the mainland, fringed with low trees; and then the wide waving surface of the burnished lagoon trembling slowly, and shaking out into forked bands of lengthening light the images of the towers of cloud above. To the north, there is first the great cemetery wall, then the long stray buildings of Murano, and the inland villages beyond, glittering in intense crystalline vermilion, like so much jewelry scattered on a mirror, their towers poised apparently in the air a little above the horizon, and their reflections, as sharp and vivid and substantial as themselves, thrown on the vacancy between them and the sea. And thus the villages seem standing on the air; and to the east there is a cluster of ships that seem sailing on the land; for the sandy line of the Lido stretches itself between us and them, and we can see the tall white sails moving beyond it, but not the sea; {123} only there is a sense of the great sea being indeed there, and a solemn strength of gleaming light in the sky above."