56 THROUGH THE DOLOMITES the place, but gave employment to many of their poorer neighbours. Longarone has over a thousand inhabitants, and, with its Piazza Margherita and Piazza Maggiore, with its old palaces, its shops, its theatre, its municipality, its post-office, its Savings-bank, its schools and church, has quite a town-like appearance. Unfortunately it has next its Savings-bank a National Lottery office, which is a for midable rival. In Italy ,£9,000,000 sterling, drawn chiefly from the
pockets of the poor, is gambled away annually. The church in the Piazza Maggiore has no pictures of note, but it has some good carved seats and chairs, and a wealth of priests' robes. Some of these were ancient and some were modern, the former easily distinguishable by their superior colouring and workmanship, and by their weight, owing to the great amount of solid gold wrought into them. As we passed out of Longarone we saw a Teatro sociale. It is a small place in Italy that has not such