gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor
any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
and VENICE.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this
day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
paths of the sea.

The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
of meadow land.

SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile