PICTURE OF VENICE.
(From Contarini Fleming, a Psychological Autobiography.)
An hour before sunset, I arrived at Fusina, and beheld, four or five miles out at sea, the towers and cupolas of Venice suffused with a rich golden light, and rising out of the bright blue waters. Not an exclamation escaped me. I felt like a man, who has achieved a great object. I was full of calm exultation, but the strange incident of the morning made me serious and pensive.
As our gondolas glided over the great Lagune, the excitement of the spectacle reanimated me. The buildings, that I had so fondly studied in books and pictures, rose up before me. I knew them all; I required no Cicerone. One by one, I caught the hooded Cupolas of St. Mark, the tall Campanile red in the sun, the Moresco Palace of the Doges, the deadly Bridge of Sighs, and the dark structure to which it leads. Here my gondola quitted the Lagune, and, turning up a small canal, and passing under a bridge which connected the quays, stopped at the steps of a palace.
I ascended a staircase of marble, I passed through a gallery crowded with statues, I was ushered into spacious apartments, the floors of which were marble, and the hangings satin. The ceilings were painted by Tintoretto and his scholars, and were full of Turkish trophies and triumphs over the Ottomite. The furniture was of the same rich material as the hangings, and the gilding, although of two hundred years' duration, as bright and burnished, as the costly equipment of a modern palace. From my balcony of blinds, I looked upon the great Lagune. It was one of those glorious sunsets which render Venice, in spite of her degradation, still famous. The sky and sea vied in the brilliant multiplicity of their blended tints. The tall shadows of her Palladian churches flung themselves over the glowing and transparent wave out of which they sprang. The quays were crowded with joyous groups, and the black gondolas flitted, like sea serpents, over the red and rippling waters.
I hastened to the Place of St. Mark. It was crowded and illuminated. Three gorgeous flags waved on the mighty staffs, which are opposite the church in all the old drawings, and which once bore the standards of Candia and Cyprus, and the Morea. The coffee-houses were full, and gay parties, seated on chairs in the open air, listened to the music of military bands, while they refreshed themselves with confectionary so rich and fanciful, that it excites the admiration, and the wonder of all travellers, but which I have since discovered in Turkey to be Oriental. The variety of costume was also great. The dress of the lower orders in Venice is still unchanged: many of the middle classes yet wear the cap and cloak. The Hungarian and the German military, and the bearded Jew, with his black velvet cap and flowing robes, are observed with curiosity. A few days also before my arrival, the Austrian squadron had carried into Venice a Turkish ship and two Greek vessels which had violated the neutrality. Their crews now mingled with the crowd. I beheld, for the first time, the haughty and turbaned Ottoman, sitting cross-legged on his carpet under a colonnade, sipping his coffee and smoking a long chiboque, and the Greeks, with their small red caps, their high foreheads, and arched eyebrows.
Can this be modern Venice, I thought? Can this be the silent, and gloomy, and decaying city, over whose dishonourable misery I have so often wept? Could it ever have been more enchanting? Are not these indeed still subjects of a Doge, and still the bridegroom of the ocean? Alas! the brilliant scene was as unusual as unexpected, and was accounted for by its being the feast day of a favourite saint. Nevertheless, I rejoiced at the unaccustomed appearance of the city at my entrance, and still I recall with pleasure the delusive moments, when strolling about the place of St. Mark the first evening that I was in Venice, I for a moment mingled in a scene that reminded me of her lost light-heartedness, and of that unrivalled gaiety that so long captivated polished Europe.