"The Goth and the Arab, different in character and mission, alike in magnificence and energy, they came from the north and the south, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman Empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is Venice." - Ruskin's Stones of Venice, Vol. 1. pp. 18, 19.

I SEE her sitting calm amid the dash

Of waves which ever lap her sunlit walls,

'Mid differing races and with varying calls

To honor, profit, safety, never rash,

But standing graceful as a mountain ash

Which bends before the blast, but never falls.

So did she stand amid the ceaseless broils

Of Goth and Saracen, hearing the crash

Of war, in calm, gaining from east and west

Not gold alone, but all the treasury

Of art, and moulding to one lovely whole

The arch, the pillar, and the arabesque,

Roman, Greek, Arab, breathing with one soul

In the sweet chords of tunal unity.

B.W.W.