Sundays; and then ye can put your hand i' the plate o' Thursday withouten offence.""Their bread is lovely white.Their meats they spoil with sprinkling cheese over them; O, perversity! Their salt is black;without a lie.In commerce these Venetians are masters of the earth and sea; and govern their territories wisely.Only one flaw I find; the same I once heard a learned friar cast up against Plato his republic: to wit, that here women are encouraged to venal frailty, and do pay a tax to the State, which, not content with silk and spice, and other rich and honest freights, good store, must trade in sin.Twenty thousand of these Jezebels there be in Venice and Candia, and about, pampered and honoured for bringing strangers to the city, and many live in princely palaces of their own.But herein methinks the politic signors of Venice forget what King David saith, 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Also, in religion, they hang their cloth according to the wind, siding now with the Pope, now with the Turk; but aye with the god of traders, mammon hight.Shall flower so cankered bloom to the world's end? But since I speak of flowers, this none may deny them, that they are most cunning in making roses and gilliflowers to blow unseasonably.In summer they nip certain of the budding roses and water them not.Then in winter they dig round these discouraged plants, and put in cloves;and so with great art rear sweet-scented roses, and bring them to market in January.And did first learn this art of a cow.Buds she grazed in summer, and they sprouted at yule.Women have sat in the doctors' chairs at their colleges.But she that sat in St.Peter's was a German.Italy too, for artful fountains and figures that move by water and enact life.And next for fountains is Augsburg, where they harness the foul knave Smoke to good Sir Spit, and he turneth stout Master Roast.But lest any one place should vaunt, two towns there be in Europe, which, scorning giddy fountains, bring water tame in pipes to every burgher's door, and he filleth his vessels with but turning of a cock.One is London, so watered this many a year by pipes of a league from Paddington, a neighbouring city; and the other is the fair town of Lubeck.Also the fierce English are reported to me wise in that they will not share their land and flocks with wolves; but have fairly driven those marauders into their mountains.But neither in France, nor Germany, nor Italy, is a wayfarer's life safe from the vagabones after sundown.I can hear of no glazed house in all Venice; but only oiled linen and paper; and behind these barbarian eyelets, a wooden jalosy.Their name for a cowardly assassin is 'a brave man,' and for an harlot, 'a courteous person,' which is as much as to say that a woman's worst vice, and a man's worst vice, are virtues.But I pray God for little Holland that there an assassin may be yclept an assassin, and an harlot an harlot, till domesday;and then gloze foul faults with silken names who can!"Eli (with a sigh)."He should have been a priest, saving your presence, my poor lass.""January 26.- Sweetheart, I must be brief, and tell thee but a part of that I have seen, for this day my journal ends.To-night it sails for thee, and I, unhappy, not with it, but to-morrow, in another ship, to Rome.
"Dear Margaret, I took a hand litter, and was carried to St.Mark his church.Outside it, towards the market-place, is a noble gallery, and above it four famous horses, cut in brass by the ancient Romans, and seem all moving, and at the very next step must needs leap down on the beholder.About the church are six hundred pillars of marble, porphyry, and ophites.Inside is a treasure greater than either, at St.Denys, or Loretto, or Toledo.
Here a jewelled pitcher given the seigniory by a Persian king, also the ducal cap blazing with jewels, and on its crown a diamond and a chrysolite, each as big as an almond; two golden crowns and twelve golden stomachers studded with jewels, from Constantinople;item, a monstrous sapphire; item, a great diamond given by a French king; item, a prodigious carbuncle; item, three unicorns'
horns.But what are these compared with the sacred relics?
"Dear Margaret, I stood and saw the brazen chest that holds the body of St.Mark the Evangelist.I saw with these eyes and handled his ring, and his gospel written with his own hand, and all my travels seemed light; for who am I that I should see such things?
