We were
not shewn the treasury, and it was impossible to get a sight of the
manuscript in St. Mark's own hand-writing, carefully preserved here, and
justly esteemed even beyond the jewels given as votive offerings to his
shrine, which are of immense value.
The pictures in the Doge's house are a magnificent collection; and the
Noah's Ark by Bassano would doubtless afford an actual study for natural
historians as well as painters, and is considered as a model of
perfection from which succeeding artists may learn to draw animal life:
scarcely a creature can be recollected which has not its proper place in
the picture; but the pensive cat upon the fore-ground took most of my
attention, and held it away from the meeting of the Pope and Doge by the
other brother Bassano, who here proves that his pencil is not divested
of dignity, as the connoisseurs sometimes tell us that he is. But it is
not one picture, or two, or twenty, that seizes one's mind here; it is
the accumulation of various objects, each worthy to detain it. Wonderful
indeed, and sweetly-satisfying to the intellectual appetite, is the
variety, the plenty of pleasures which serve to enchain the imagination,
and fascinate the traveller's eye, keeping it ever on this _little
spot_; for though I have heard some of the inhabitants talk of its
vastness, it is scarcely bigger than our Portman Square, I think, not
larger at the very most than Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.
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