It was so while I was there! The forenoons with Raphael, Angelo, Fra Angelica, Carlo Dolce, Guercino and a few others; the afternoons in long drives among the haunts of Galileo, Mrs. Browning, Landor, and such spirits. Will you ever know the delight of it, the beatitude? I hope so. Don’t put off the coming till you are too old. But now I am in Venice! In Venice in June! And yesterday and to-day have been each the very one described as I have read somewhere: “The day was one of those which can come to the world only in early June at Venice. The heaven was without a cloud, but a blue haze made mystery of the horizon where the lagoon and sky meet. The breath of the sea bathed in freshness the city, at whose feet her tides sparkled and slept.” And to-morrow will be the same; and day after day I feel in all the spirit of a prophetess. Indeed, the weather might have been blown from Paradise. Drifting about in a gondola! The largest, most ecstatic breath you ever drew must come in right here. Even that will not express the exquisite, intangible bliss of such existence. It eludes words as quicksilver eludes the grasp. I am having long mornings, enchanting afternoons, whole days of it. Do you wonder if I feel as if under some magician’s spell? Come, take a drift with me, and find out for yourself. First, the length of the Grand Canal. Your gondolier is behind; you do not see him. There is nothing to save you from your enchanted fate. The blue sky above; the crystal waves beneath; the beautiful, stately old palaces on either side, time-stained, unlike anything you ever saw, a fascination to sight and dreams, that will haunt you the rest of your life; the other gondolas sliding by; now and then a pleasure-boat, with its crowded deck and gay awning, and though moving by steam as noiseless as ours—no smoke; presently another bridge shows its span ahead, and then you slip under it and on; next you are idly noting a pleasant looking party of ladies and cavaliers coming from the cool archway of a palace to their waiting gondola, and you are a little startled by hearing behind the gondolier’s voice, “That is where Lord Beeron lived.” You remember you had meant to ask him to point out that particular one. You rouse, lean forward, give a curious gaze, then drop back into your drift and dreams, powerless to keep from it! Ah!—that is the Rialto. You rouse again, and give another intense look, and then it is left behind. You shoot another bridge and—you give it up. This can not be earth. You know it is not heaven. Where are you? Surely you are at last on the direct way to it. Heaven—the Heaven of not your reading the Sunday-school and catechisms taught, but of your dearest dreams and purest moods—that is awaiting you there in
that dazzling glory of silver radiance where the sky and water meet. You lean forward involuntarily, your very soul in your eyes, striving to pierce that shining veil right to the Great Mystery. You do not feel baffled. You might have done it, only the gondola has curved into a side canal and your vision is shut from sight. Best so. One could not bear such ecstasy longer and live, I think. But you are like one in a trance for the rest of the way. Before you sleep, you open your little day-book to make a record of the day. Here is what will greet you when you turn its pages in the future—“Perfect, Perfect Venice.” That is all. Will you smile over it then? I wonder. Dear me! I hope not, for the experience has come after my head is gray. Earlier you know—
“Little we dream when life is new,
And pleasures fresh and fair to view,
While beats the heart to pleasure true
As if for naught it wanted.
That year by year, ray by ray,
Romance’s sunlight dies away,
And long before the head is gray,
The heart is disenchanted.”
No! no! a thousand times, no! You will droop over it and dream it all over again, and thrill and throb with the remembered rapture as even now—
“For passionate remembrance’ sake.”
You are good to tell me so much of your life. I am glad you had the gracious hours at C—— with your friend. Will his verdict have anything to do with the fate of the “Essays?” But you must never think of me as a judge and critic. I appreciate, enjoy and have a wonderful fund of enthusiasm, once it is set going. As for anything that does not “commend itself to my taste,” I simply turn away from it. Why use the scalpel or scathing tongue? I should be marvelously well-pleased, though, to have a reading of the Essays.