"The gorgeous East with richest hand
Showered upon her barbaric pearl and gold."
Then arose on all her islands and her waters those structures which are to this day the wonder of Europe. The Grand Canal, which is nearly two miles long, is lined with palaces, such as no modern capital can approach in costliness and splendor.
And Venice used her power for a defence to Christendom and to civilization, the former against the Turks, and the latter against Northern barbarians. When Frederick Barbarossa came down with his hordes upon Italy, he found his most stubborn enemy in the Republic of Venice, which kept up the contest for more than twenty years, till the fierce old Emperor acknowledged a power that was invincible, and here in Venice, in the church of St. Mark, knelt before the Pope Alexander III. (who represented, not Rome against Protestantism, but Italian independence against German oppression), and gave his humble submission, and made peace with the States of Italy which, thanks to the heroic resistance of Venice, he could not conquer.
Hardly was this long contest ended before the power of Venice was turned against the Turks in the East. Venetians, aided by French crusaders, and led by a warrior whose courage neither age nor blindness could restrain ("Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!"), captured Constantinople, and Venetian ships sailing up and down the Bosphorus kept the conquerors of Western Asia from crossing into Europe. The Turks finally passed the straits and took Constantinople; but the struggle of the Cross and the Crescent, as in Spain between the Spaniard and the Moor, was kept up over a hundred years longer, and was not ended till the battle of Lepanto in 1571. In the Arsenal they still preserve the flag of the Turkish admiral captured on that great day, with its motto in Arabic, "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." We can hardly realize, now that the danger is so long past, how great a victory, both for Christendom and for civilization, was won on that day when the scattered wrecks of the Turkish Armada sank in the blood-dyed waters of the Gulf of Corinth.
These are glorious memories for Venice, which fully justify the praises of historians, and make the splendid eulogy of Byron as true to history as it is beautiful in poetry. In Venice, as on the Rhine, I have found Childe Harold the best guide-book, as the poet paints a picture in a few immortal lines. Never was Venice painted, even by Canaletto, more to the eye than in these few strokes, which bring the whole scene before us:
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand,
I saw from out the waves her structures rise,
As by the stroke of the enchanter's wand,