A VENETIAN FISHER BOY.
All who have done so will recollect those fetid cells, slimy with dampness, shrouded in darkness, and stifling from the exhausted air which filters to them through the narrow corridors. They will remember the iron grating through which was passed the scanty food that for a time prolonged the prisoner's life; the grooves of the old guillotine, by means of which, after excruciating torture, he was put to death; and then the narrow opening through which the body was removed at night and rowed out to a distant spot, where it was death to cast a net. Here, unillumined even by a torch, it sank, freighted with heavy stones, into the sea, whose gloomy depths will guard all secrets hidden in its breast until its waters shall give up their dead.
BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
ST. MARK'S CATHEDRAL.
Connected with the Ducal residence is the world-renowned St. Mark's Cathedral. The old Venetians built not only palaces for men; they made their shrines to God palatial. I looked on this one with bewilderment. There is no structure like it in the world. Its bulbous domes and minaret-like belfries remind one of the Orient. It seems more like a Mohammedan than a Christian temple. If the phrase be permitted, it is a kind of Christian mosque. The truth is, the Venetians brought back from their victories in the East ideas of Oriental architecture which had pleased them, and were thus able to produce a wonderful blending of Moorish, Arabic, and Gothic art.