For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors, and gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds. An American republican woman, lately, describes a child which “like cherubim and seraphim continually did cry;”[1] such their feminine learning of the European fashions of ‘Te Deum’! And, as I tell [[119]]you, Venice in like manner taught us, when she and we were honest, our marketing, and our manners. Then she began trading in pleasure, and souls of men, before us; followed that Babylonish trade to her death,—we nothing loth to imitate, so plausible she was, in her mythic gondola, and Chariot of the Night! But where her pilotage has for the present carried her, and is like to carry us, it may be well to consider. And therefore I will ask you to glance back to my twentieth letter, giving account of the steam music, the modern Tasso’s echoes, practised on her principal lagoon. That is her present manner, you observe, of “whistling at her darg.” But for festivity after work, or altogether superseding work—launching one’s adorned Bucentaur for collation—let us hear what she is doing in that kind.
From the Rinnovamento (Renewal, or Revival,) “Gazette of the people of Venice” of 2nd July, 1872, I print, in my terminal notes, a portion of one of their daily correspondent’s letters, describing his pleasures of the previous day, of which I here translate a few pregnant sentences.
“I embarked on a little steamboat. It was elegant—it was vast. But its contents were enormously greater than its capacity. The little steamboat overflowed[2] with men, women, and boys. The Commandant, a proud young man, cried, ‘Come in, come in!’ and the [[120]]crowd became always more close, and one could scarcely breathe” (the heroic exhortations of the proud youth leading his public to this painful result). “All at once a delicate person[3] of the piazza, feeling herself unwell, cried ‘I suffocate.’ The Commandant perceived that suffocation did veritably prevail, and gave the word of command, ‘Enough.’
“In eighteen minutes I had the good fortune to land safe at the establishment, ‘The Favourite.’ And here my eyes opened for wonder. In truth, only a respectable force of will could have succeeded in transforming this place, only a few months ago still desert and uncultivated, into a site of delights. Long alleys, grassy carpets, small mountains, charming little banks, châlets, solitary and mysterious paths, and then an interminable covered way which conducts to the bathing establishment; and in that, attendants dressed in mariners’ dresses, a most commodious basin, the finest linen, and the most regular and solicitous service.
“Surprised, and satisfied, I plunged myself cheerfully into the sea. After the bath, is prescribed a walk. Obedient to the dictates of hygiene, I take my returning way along the pleasant shore of the sea to ‘The Favourite.’ A châlet, or rather an immense salon, is become a concert [[121]]room. And, in fact, an excellent orchestra is executing therein most chosen pieces. The artists are all endued in dress coats, and wear white cravats. I hear with delight a pot-pourri from Faust. I then take a turn through the most vast park, and visit the Restaurant.
“To conclude. The Lido has no more need to become a place of delights. It is, in truth, already become so.
“All honour to the brave who have effected the marvellous transformation.”
Onori ai bravi!—Honour to the brave! Yes; in all times, among all nations, that is entirely desirable. You know I told you, in last Fors, that to honour the brave dead was to be our second child’s lesson. None the less expedient if the brave we have to honour be alive, instead of long dead. Here are our modern Venetian troubadours, in white cravats, celebrating the victories of their Hardicanutes with collection of choicest melody—pot-pourri—hotch-potch, from Faust. And, indeed, is not this a notable conquest which resuscitated Venice has made of her Lido? Where all was vague sea-shore, now, behold, “little mountains, mysterious paths.” Those unmanufactured mountains—Eugeneans and Alps—seen against the sunset, are not enough for the vast mind of Venice born again; nor the canals between her palaces mysterious enough paths. Here are mountains to our perfect mind, and more [[122]]solemn ways,—a new kingdom for us, conquered by the brave. Conquest, you observe also, just of the kind which in our ‘Times’ newspaper is honoured always in like manner, ‘Private Enterprise.’ The only question is, whether the privacy of your enterprise is always as fearless of exposure as it used to be,—or even, the enterprise of it as enterprising. Let me tell you a little of the private enterprise of dead Venice, that you may compare it with that of the living.
You doubted me just now, probably, when I told you that Venice taught you to be sailors. You thought your Drakes and Grenvilles needed no such masters. No! but a hundred years before Sir Francis’s time, the blind captain of a Venetian galley,—of one of those things which the Lady Mary saw built in an hour,—won the empire of the East. You did fine things in the Baltic, and before Sebastopol, with your ironclads and your Woolwich infants, did you? Here was a piece of fighting done from the deck of a rowed boat, which came to more good, it seems to me.
“The Duke of Venice had disposed his fleet in one line along the sea-wall (of Constantinople), and had cleared the battlements with his shot (of stones and arrows); but still the galleys dared not take ground. But the Duke of Venice, though he was old (ninety) and stone-blind, stood, all armed, at the head of his galley, and had the gonfalon of St. Mark before him; and he called to his people to ground his ship, or [[123]]they should die for it. So they ran the ship aground, and leaped out, and carried St. Mark’s gonfalon to the shore before the Duke. Then the Venetians, seeing their Duke’s galley ashore, followed him; and they planted the flag of St. Mark on the walls, and took twenty-five towers.”