The Doge's Palace, Piazetta, Ducal Palace, and the two tall pillars bearing the Winged Lion and the statue of St. Theodore, seen from the water, are such familiar objects from the numerous paintings,—no art collection is complete without one or two,—engravings, and scenic representations, that they seem to be old acquaintances, and at first to lack the charm of novelty. Around the base of the two pillars, when the shade of the buildings falls that way, lay lazzaroni at full length on the flat pavement, while at the edge of the broad platform of stone, that ran out to the water of the canal, were moored groups of gondolas, the gondoliers on the alert for strangers who might wish to visit the Lido, Dogana del Mare, or Rialto.
Rialto! Yes; that is the first place we will visit.
"Many a time and oft upon the Rialto."
"Hey, there, gondolier! Ponte di Rialto."
The gondolier certainly understood English, for he said something about "see, signore," and prepared the cushions of his gondola for us, upon which we straightway reclined, and in a few moments' time were corkscrewing our way through a crowd of market-boats, gondolas, and 'long-shore-men's craft, near the landing at one end of the celebrated Merchants' Exchange of Shylock's time.
After various remarkable curves, twists, and wonderful windings among the water craft, enlivened with shouts, exclamations, a sparkling of black eyes, and play of swarthy features on the part of the gondoliers, we were brought to the dirty landing, and ascended from it, and stood upon the bridge—the Rialto. Much of the poetry of the Rialto bridge is destroyed by some of the guide-books, which state that the land on the left of the canal passing up was called the Rialto, and was considered the city, and distinguished as such from the state of Venice; and upon this Rialto, not the bridge, were the custom-house, various warehouses, and other establishments connected with trade and commerce; that the real "on 'change," where Antonio and Shylock met, was in the square opposite the Church of San Jacope, which, in olden time, was crowded with merchants, who there transacted their business of weight and consequence.
However, when I was a boy, I always, in my mind, made the rendezvous of the merchant and the Jew on the bridge; but it must have been sadly changed since the time Shakespeare wrote of, unless Shylock came to buy some old clothes, and Antonio to obtain grapes, figs, or onions for dinner. This we thought while standing on the bridge. The view of it from the water, where its single arch of ninety-one feet span, twenty-five feet from the current, lifts up the six arches on each side, rising to the open or central arcade at the top, with the rail and swelled balusters at their base, is so familiar, that, as we looked at it from the gondola, it seemed as if some old scene at the theatre had just been slid together at the sound of the prompter's whistle, or that we were looking at an old engraving through a magnifying-glass.
The romantic imagination of him who fancies that he shall pace over this old structure, and muse on Shylock, Antonio, and Othello undisturbed upon its broad platform, is dispelled when he finds that its seventy-two feet of breadth is divided into three or four passages or streets, and two rows of shops, devoted to the sale of every conceivable thing in the way of provisions, fruit, vegetables, macaroni, clothing, cheap ornaments, beads, dry goods, and china, absolutely crowded with hucksters of every description, giving an amusing panorama of the Venetian retail business in its various departments.
Hard by our hotel was the Doge's Palace, another familiar edifice; and, as we stood within its great court-yard, we could realize something of the luxury and art of Venice in former days.
The marble front of the palace, looking into this enclosure, was a wilderness of elegant carving, armorial bearings, statues, wreaths, elaborate cornices, elegant columns, wrought balustrades, graceful arches, and beautiful bass-reliefs. Here, in the centre of the marble pavement, are the great bronze openings of cisterns, nearly breast high, richly wrought, and five or six feet in diameter. Standing upon this pavement, we look up at the celebrated Giant's Staircase—a superb ascent, and architecturally simple and grand. At its top stand two colossal statues of Mars and Neptune on either side; and it was here, upon this upper step between the two colossi, that the doges were crowned; and here Byron locates the last scene of Marino Faliero, where, when the citizens rush in,