Our visit to the Doge's Palace was full of the deepest interest. Mounting the beautiful fretwork marble staircase, just at the rear of St. Mark's, we entered the great colonnade, and ascended to the rooms above, which are all heavily decorated and adorned on wall and ceiling with paintings by the great masters. The Hall of the Great Council is esteemed one of the finest rooms in Europe. It is indeed a magnificent apartment: but perhaps a more particular interest centres in the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci, or Hall of the Inquisition, as it was sometimes appropriately called. Here the chairs of the terrible Ten still remain, as though for some impending solemn conclave. Awful pictures of bloodshed and death frown down from some of the walls in this Palace of council chambers, and in one hall may still be seen two slits in the wall, once lions' mouths, where secret information was lodged against conspirators, or those suspected of being so, and by which the lives of innocent people were sworn away. But there was a painful contrast between the gorgeous chambers above and those noisome dungeons below.
We were greatly interested in the Archæological Museum, especially in the library, which contains 120,000 volumes, and some 10,000 valuable manuscripts, among which are many rare and beautifully illuminated literary treasures: Cicero's "Epist. ad Familiaries," the first book printed in Venice, 1465; a Florence "Homer," on vellum, 1483; Marco Polo's Will, 1323; a Herbary, painted by A. Amadi, 1415; Cardinal Guinani's Breviary, with Hemling's beautiful miniatures; and the manuscript of the "Divina Commedia,"--are only a sample of the treasures here contained, over which we could have lingered with great enjoyment for a far longer time than we could well spare. Many of these books were the loving work of devoted monks, who lived before the age of printing, and wished to hand down to posterity the books they themselves had loved. Such was their idea of the value of these religious books, and more especially of the New Testament, that they were bound in costly covers, adorned with precious stones--the labour of transcribing and illuminating them being almost incalculable. The invention of machinery, alas! in these latter days has banished for ever such conscientious labours of love, and neither books nor anything else are impressed with men's minds, hearts, and handiwork as they used to be. It is an age of mechanism, sensational, æsthetical, and artificial devotion, and very little is sacred but Self. Though it is good, in one sense, that sacred books have been thrown broadcast on the world; it has, to a certain extent, divested them of much of their peculiar value in the minds of the multitude. This was strangely exemplified to me some few years ago, when engaged in the suppression of the slave trade, on the east coast of Africa. There was a sale of European effects at Zanzibar, and amongst other articles was an Arab Bible--_i.e._ the Koran, translated into English. British residents bid high for this prize; but the Arabs, determined that their sacred book should not fall into the hands of those whom they deemed as infidels, bid still higher, and eventually carried it off. By-and-by there was an English Bible put up, and, in a spirit of tit-for-tat, the Arabs bid high for this, supposing the religious zeal of the British would have compelled them to bid still higher. They, however, did nothing of the kind, and it was knocked down to the disgusted Arabs, who now considered us a nation of infidels indeed. It may be, that even in this way it was a good thing that a copy of our Bible should fall into the hands of the zealous Mohammedans.