The vestibule was vast, vaulted, and massive.

The stairs, rich in marbles, heavy and grand.

The apartments were imposing in their gildings and sculpture, while the walls sustained countless works on which the highest geniuses of Italy had lavishly diffused their power.

Among these relics of an age more happy in this respect than that of which we write, the connoisseur would readily have known the pencils of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto--the three great names in which the subjects of St.Mark so justly prided themselves.

Among these works of the higher masters were mingled others by the pencils of Bellino, and Montegna, and Palma Vecchio--artists who were secondary only to the more renowned colorists of the Venetian school.