Gifford.
Addison tells us, that, in his travels through Italy, he witnessed an annual exhibition that is peculiar to the Venetians. “A set of artisans, by the help of poles, which they laid across each others’ shoulders, built themselves up in a kind of pyramid; so that you saw a pile of men in the air, of four or five rows, rising one above another. The weight was so equally distributed that every man was well able to bear his part of it; the stories, if they might be so called, growing less and less as they advanced higher and higher. A little boy presented the top of the pyramid, who, after a short space, leaped off, with a great deal of dexterity, into the arms of one who caught him at the bottom.” But this was only the revival of an ancient feat, which, as we learn from the following verses of the poet Claudian, was formerly practised among the Romans:—
“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras,
Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu,
Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcem
Emicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens,
Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.”
De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.
“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise,
And build the breathing fabric to the skies;