The best of the S. Salvatore monuments is that by Sansovino of Doge Francesco Venier (1554-1556), with beautiful figures in the niches from the same hand—­that of Charity, on the left, being singularly sweet.  When Sansovino made these he was nearly eighty.  Sansovino also designed the fine doorway beneath the organ.  The most imposing monuments are those of Caterina Cornaro (or Corner) the deposed queen of Cyprus, in the south transept; of three Cardinals of the Corner family; and of the Doges Lorenzo and Girolamo Priuli, each with his patron saint above him.  The oddity of its architecture, together with its situation at a point where a little silence is peculiarly grateful, makes this church a favourite of mine, but there are many buildings in Venice which are more beautiful.

Opposite, diagonally, is one of the depressing sights of Venice, a church turned into a cinema.

Leaving S. Salvatore by the main door and turning to the left, we soon come (past a hat shop which offers “Rooswelts” at 2.45 each), to the Goldoni Theatre.  Leaving San Salvatore by the same door and turning to the right, we come to Goldoni himself, in bronze, in the midst of the Campo S. Bartolommeo:  the little brisk observant satirist upon whom Browning wrote the admirably critical sonnet which I quote earlier in this book.

The comedies of Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) still hold the Italian stage, but so far as translations can tell me they are very far from justifying any comparison between himself and Moliere.  Goldoni’s Autobiography is not a very entertaining work, but it is told with the engaging minuteness which seems to have been a Venetian trait.

The church of S. Bartolommeo contains altar pieces by Giorgione’s pupil, Sebastian del Piombo, but there is no light by which to see them.

It was in this campo that Mr. Howells had rooms before he married and blossomed out on the Grand Canal, and his description of the life here is still so good and so true, although fifty years have passed, that I make bold to quote it, not only to enrich my own pages, but in the hope that the tastes of the urbane American book which I give now and then may send readers to it.  The campo has changed little except that the conquering Austrians have gone and Goldoni’s statue is now here.  Mr. Howells thus describes it:  “Before the winter passed, I had changed my habitation from rooms near the Piazza to quarters on the Campo San Bartolommeo, through which the busiest street in Venice passes, from S. Mark’s to the Rialto Bridge.  It is one of the smallest squares of the city, and the very noisiest, and here the spring came with intolerable uproar.  I had taken my rooms early in March, when the tumult under my windows amounted only to a cheerful stir, and made company for me; but when the winter broke, and the windows were opened, I found that I had too much society.