The feeling of sympathy with Italy and all things Italian
which has characterised England since our Elizabethan poets based their plots on Italian novels, and no Englishman thought himself a man of the world unless he had "swum in a gondola "—a feeling maintained by our Virtuosi and Dilettante in the eighteenth century, and increased first by the devotees of Byron and Shelley, and then by the friends of Italian liberty and union—was most emphatically illustrated when the news reached London on Monday that the in- comparable Campanile of St. Mark was no more, but lay a mass of ruins 80 ft. high on the floor of the Piazza. People spoke and felt as if they had sustained a personal loss. Truly, it is a loss to the world. There was nothing more magnifi- cently graceful than the great ribbed Campanile of light. brown brick which soared aloft in its majesty and apparent strength. We are glad to say that the Campanile in its fall did not injure St. Mark's or the Doge's Palace, and that the only important building hurt, but that not seripusly, is the Royal Palace. It has been determined to rebuild the tower. There is no reason against such a course, as the building depended for its beauty, not upon ornament, but on effects which can be repeated without difficulty as long as the old plan, as it of course will be, is exactly followed. We trust that sufficient money will be subscribed throughout Europe and America to make the execution of the work worthy of Venice.
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