So that I now finde by mine owne experience that the speeches of a certaine English Gentleman (with whom I once discoursed before my travels), a man that much vaunted of his observations in Italy, are utterly false.

For when I asked him what principall things he observed in Venice, he answered me that he noted but little of the city, because he rode through it in post.

A fiction, and as grosse and palpable as ever was coyned." From the horses' gallery there is a most interesting view of the Piazza and the Piazzetta, and the Old Library and Loggetta are as well seen from here as anywhere.
Within the church itself two things at once strike us: the unusual popularity of it, and the friendliness.

Why an intensely foreign building of great size should exert this power of welcome I cannot say; but the fact remains that S.Mark's, for all its Eastern domes and gold and odd designs and billowy floor, does more to make a stranger and a Protestant at home than any cathedral I know; and more people are also under its sway than in any other.

Most of them are sightseers, no doubt, but they are sightseers from whom mere curiosity has fallen: they seem to like to be there for its own sake.
The coming and going are incessant, both of worshippers and tourists, units and companies.