The most remarkable circumstance about the fall of the campanile is that no one was hurt.  The Piazza and Piazzetta are by no means empty at half-past nine in the morning, yet these myriad tons of brick and stone sank bodily to the ground and not a human bruise resulted.  Here its behaviour was better than that of the previous campanile of S. Giorgio Maggiore, which, when it fell in 1774, killed one monk and injured two others.  Nor was S. Mark’s harmed, although its sacristan confesses to have been dumb for three days from the shock.  The falling golden angel from the top of the campanile was found in front of the central door as though to protect the church.  Sansovino’s Loggetta, it is true, was crushed and buried beneath the debris, but human energy is indomitable, and the present state of that structure is a testimony to the skill and tenacity which still inhabit Venetian hands and breasts.

What I chiefly miss in the new campanile is any aerial suggestion.  It has actual solidity in every inch of it, apart from the fact that it also conveys the idea of solidity, as any building must which has taken the place of one so misguided as to fall down.  But its want of this intangible quality, together with its newness, have displaced it in my eyes as the king campanile of Venice.  In my eyes the campanile of S. Giorgio Maggiore now reigns supreme, while I am very much attached also to those of the Frari and S. Francesco della Vigna.  But let S. Mark’s campanile take heart:  some day Anno Domini will claim these others too, and then the rivalry will pass.  But as it is, morning, noon, and evening the warm red bricks and rich green copper top of S. Giorgio Maggiore’s bell-tower draw the gaze first, and hold it longest.  It is the most beautiful campanile of all, and its inevitableness is such that did we not know the truth we should wonder if the six days of creation had not included an afternoon for the ordainment of such edifices.

It would need a Hans Andersen to describe the feelings of the other Venetian campaniles when S. Mark’s tall column fell.  S. Giorgio’s I imagine instantly took command, but no doubt there were other claimants to the throne.  I rather fancy that the Frari’s had something to say, and S. Pietro in Castello’s also, on account of his age and his early importance; but who could pay any serious attention at that time to a tower so pathetically out of the perpendicular as he now is?

The new campanile endeavours to reproduce the old faithfully, and it was found possible to utilize a little of the old material.  The figures of Venice on the east wall above the belfry canopy and Justice on the west are the ancient ones pieced together and made whole; the lions on the north and south sides are new.  The golden angel on the summit is the old one restored, with the novelty, to her, as to us, of being set on a pivot to act as a vane.  I made this discovery for myself, after being puzzled by what might have been fancied changes of posture