Henry James : " . . . and the delightful little Palazzo Dario, intimately familiar . . . picks itself out in the foreshortened brightness. The Dario is covered with the loveliest little marble plates and sculptured circles: it is made up of exquisite pieces -- as if there had been only enought to make it small -- so that it looks, in its extreme antiquity, a good deal like a house of cards that hold together by a tenure it would be fatal to touch. An old Venetian house dies hard indeed, and I should add that this delicate thing, with submission in every feature, continues to resist the contact of generations . . . under how many fleeting dispensations have we not known and loved it?"