Longhi and his school, how at the aristocratic and fashionable convent of
San Zaccaria, the lady nuns received their friends and acquaintances of
this world in the anteroom, where the dames and their cavaliers flirted
and drank coffee, and the gentlemen coquetted with the brides of heaven
through their grated windows.

Among other privileges of the Church, abolished in Venice long ago, was
that ancient right of the monks of St. Anthony, Abbot, by which their
herds of swine were made free of the whole city. These animals, enveloped
in an odor of sanctity, wandered here and there, and were piously fed by
devout people, until the year 1409, when, being found dangerous to
children and inconvenient to every body, they were made the subject of a
special decree, which deprived them of their freedom of movement. The
Republic was always limiting the privileges of the Church! It is known how
when the holy inquisition was established in its dominions in 1249, the
State stipulated that great part of the process against heresy should be
conducted by secular functionaries, and that the sentence should rest with
the Doge and his councillors,--a kind of inquisition with claws clipped
and teeth filed, as one may say, and the only sort ever permitted in
Venice. At present there is no absolute disfavor shown to the clergy; but,
as we have seen, many a pleasant island, which the monks of old reclaimed
from the salty marshes, and planted with gardens and vineyards, now bears
only the ruins of their convents, or else, converted into a fortress or
government depot, is all thistly with bayonets. Anciently, moreover, there
were many little groves in different parts of the city, where the pleasant
clergy, of what Mr. Ruskin would have us believe the pure and religious
days of Venice, met and made merry so riotously together by night that the
higher officers of the Church were forced to prohibit their little
soirees.