city has conceded to me for my dwelling, several vessels have passed the winter, exceeding with the height of their masts and spars the two towers which flank my house.  The larger of the two was at this moment—­though the stars were all hidden by the clouds, the winds shaking the walls, and the roar of the sea filling the air—­leaving the quay and setting out upon its voyage.  Jason and Hercules would have been stupefied with wonder, and Tiphys, seated at the helm, would have been ashamed of the nothing which won him so much fame.  If you had seen it, you would have said it was no ship but a mountain, swimming upon the sea, although under the weight of its immense wings a great part of it was hidden in the waves.  The end of the voyage was to be the Don, beyond which nothing can navigate from our seas; but many of those who were on board, when they had reached that point, meant to prosecute their journey, never pausing till they had reached the Ganges or the Caucasus, India and the Eastern Ocean.  So far does love of gain stimulate the human mind.’—­Quoted from Petrarch’s Lettere Senili in Oliphant, Makers of Venice (1905), p. 349; the whole of this charming chapter, ’The Guest of Venice’, should be read.  Another famous description of Venice occurs in a letter written by Pietro Aretino, a guest of Venice during the years 1527 to 1533, to Titian, quoted in E. Hutton, Pietro Aretino, the Scourge of Princes (1922), pp. 136-7; compare also his description of the view from his window on another occasion, quoted ibid., pp. 131-3.  The earliest of all is the famous letter written by Cassiodorus to the Venetians in the sixth century, which is partly translated in Molmenti, op. cit., I, pp. 14-15.

9.  The account of the march of the gilds occupies cc.  CCLXIII-CCLXXXIII of Canale’s Chronicle, op. cit., pp. 602-26.  It has often been quoted.

10.  Canale, op. cit., c.  CCLXI, p. 600.

11.  This account of Hangchow is taken partly from Marco Polo, op. cit., bk.  II, c.  LXVIII:  ‘Of the noble and magnificent city of Kinsai’; and partly from Odoric of Pordenone, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed.  Yule, pp. 113-20.

12.  Oderic of Pordenone, who was a man before he was a friar, remarks:  ’The Chinese are comely enough, but colourless, having beards of long straggling hair like mousers, cats I mean.  And as for the women, they are the most beautiful in the world.’  Marco Polo likewise never fails to note when the women of a district are specially lovely, in the same way that that other traveller Arthur Young always notes the looks of the chambermaids at the French inns among the other details of the countryside, and is so much affronted if waited on by a plain girl.  Marco Polo gives the palm for beauty to the women of the Province of Timochain (or Damaghan) on the north-east border of Persia, of which, he says, ’The people are in general a handsome race, especially the women, who, in my opinion, are