quality would like to adopt; yet surely the Venetians are not behind-hand in the art of gaining admirers; and they do not, like their painters, depend upon colouring to ensure it.
Nothing can be a greater proof of the little consequence which dress gives to a woman, than the reflection one must make on a Venetian lady's mode of appearance in her zendalet, without which nobody stirs out of their house in a morning. It consists of a full black silk petticoat, sloped just to train, a very little on the ground, and flounced with gauze of the same colour. A skeleton wire upon the head, such as we use to make up hats, throwing loosely over it a large piece of black mode or persian, so as to shade the face like a curtain, the front being trimmed with a very deep black lace, or souflet gauze infinitely becoming. The thin silk that remains to be disposed of, they roll back so as to discover the bosom; fasten it with a puff before at the top of their stomacher, and once more rolling it back from the shape, tie it gracefully behind, and let it hang in two long ends.
The evening ornament is a silk hat, shaped like a man's, and of the same colour, with a white or worked lining at most, and sometimes one feather; a great black silk cloak, lined with white, and perhaps a narrow border down before, with a vast heavy round handkerchief of black lace, which lies over neck and shoulders, and conceals shape and all completely. Here is surely little appearance of art, no craping or frizzing the hair, which is flat at the top, and all of one length, hanging in long curls about the back or sides as it happens. No brown powder, and no rouge at all. Thus without variety does a Venetian lady contrive to delight the eye, and without much instruction too to charm, the ear. A source of thought fairly cut off beside, in giving her no room to shew taste in dress, or invent new fancies and disposition of ornaments for to-morrow. The government takes all that trouble off her hands, knows every pin she wears, and where to find her at any moment of the day or night.
Mean time nothing conveys to a British observer a stronger notion of loose living and licentious dissoluteness, than the sight of one's servants, gondoliers, and other attendants, on
the scenes and circles of pleasure, where you find them, though never drunk, dead with sleep upon the stairs, or in their boats, or in the open street, for that matter, like over-swilled voters at an election in England. One may trample on them if one will, they hardly can be awakened; and their companions, who have more life left, set the others literally on their feet, to make them capable of obeying their master or lady's call. With all this appearance of levity, however, there is an unremitted attention to the affairs of state; nor is any senator seen to come late or negligently to council next day, however he may have amused himself all night.
The sight of the Bucentoro prepared for Gala, and the glories of Venice upon Ascention-day, must now put an end to other observations. We had the honour and comfort of seeing all from a galley belonging to a noble Venetian Bragadin, whose civilities to us were singularly kind as well as extremely polite. His attentions did not cease with the morning show, which we shared in common with numbers of fashionable people that filled his ship, and partook of his pro
fuse elegant refreshments; but he followed us after dinner to the house of our English friends, and took six of us together in a gay bark, adorned with his arms, and rowed by eight gondoliers in superb liveries, made up for the occasion to match the boat, which was like them white, blue and silver, a flag of the same colours flying from the stern, till we arrived at the Corso; so they call the place of contention where the rowers exert their skill and ingenuity; and numberless oars dashing the waves at once, make the only agitation of which the sea seems capable; while ladies, now no longer dressed in black, but ornamented with all their jewels, flowers, &c. display their beauties unveiled upon the water; and covering the lagoons with gaiety and splendour, bring to one's mind the games in Virgil, and the galley of Cleopatra, by turns.
Never was locality so subservient to the purposes of pleasure as in this city; where pleasure has set up her airy standard, and which on this occasion looked like what one reads in poetry of Amphitrite's court; and I ventured to tell a nobleman who was kindly attentive in shewing us every possible
politeness, that had Venus risen from the Adriatic sea, she would scarcely have been tempted to quit it for Olympus. I was upon the whole more struck with the evening's gaiety, than with the magnificence in which the morning began to shine. The truth is, we had been long prepared for seeing the Bucentoro; had heard and read every thing I fancy that could have been thought or said upon the subject, from the sullen Englishmen who rank it with a company's barge floating up the Thames upon my Lord Mayor's day, to the old writers who compare it with Theseus's ship; in imitation of which, it is said, this calls itself the very identical vessel wherein Pope Alexander performed the original ceremony in the year 1171; and though, perhaps, not a whole plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their
own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty years before—when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would not know him again now; though while she lived, he was never out of her arms.