Pencillings by the Way / Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek

Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his;

When thy patricians beg their bitter bread," &c.

The church of San Marc is rich to excess, and its splendid mosaic pavement is sunk into deep pits with age and the yielding foundations on which its heavy pile is built. Its pictures are not so fine as those of the other churches of Venice, but its age and historic associations make it by far the most interesting.

LETTER XXXII.

VENICE—SCENES BY MOONLIGHT—THE CANALS—THE ARMENIAN ISLAND—THE ISLAND OF THE INSANE—IMPROVEMENTS MADE BY NAPOLEON—SHADED WALKS—PAVILION AND ARTIFICIAL HILL—ANTIDOTES TO SADNESS—PARTIES ON THE CANALS—NARROW STREETS AND SMALL BRIDGES—THE RIALTO—MERCHANTS AND IDLERS—SHELL-WORK AND JEWELRY—POETRY AND HISTORY—GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY—THE FRIULI MOUNTAINS—THE SHORE OF ITALY—A SILENT PANORAMA—THE ADRIATIC—PROMENADERS AND SITTERS, ETC.

We stepped into the gondola to-night as the shadows of the moon began to be perceptible, with orders to Giuseppe to take us where he would. Abroad in a summer's moonlight in Venice, is a line that might never be written but as the scene of a play. You can not miss pleasure. If it were only the tracking silently and swiftly the bosom of the broader canals lying asleep like streets of molten silver between the marble palaces, or shooting into the dark shadows of the narrower, with the black spirit-like gondolas gliding past, or lying in the shelter of a low and not unoccupied balcony; or did you but loiter on in search of music, lying unperceived beneath the windows of a palace, and listening, half asleep, to the sound of the guitar and the song of the invisible player within; this, with the strange beauty of every building about you, and the loveliness of the magic lights and shadows, were enough to make a night of pleasure, even were no charm of personal adventure to be added to the enumeration.

We glided along under the Rialto, talking of Belvidera, and Othello, and Shylock, and, entering a cross canal, cut the arched shadow of the Bridge of Sighs, hanging like a cobweb in the air, and shot in a moment forth to the full, ample, moonlit bosom of the Giudecca. This is the canal that makes the harbor and washes the stairs of San Marc. The Lido lay off at a mile's distance across the water, and, with the moon riding over it, the bay between us as still as the sky above, and brighter, it looked like a long cloud pencilled like a landscape in the heavens. To the right lay the Armenian island, which Lord Byron visited so often, to study with the fathers at the convent; and, a little nearer the island of the Insane—spite of its misery, asleep, with a most heavenly calmness on the sea. You remember the touching story of the crazed girl, who was sent here with a broken heart, described as putting her hand through the grating at the dash of every passing gondola, with her unvarying and affecting "Venite per me? Venite per me?"

At a corner of the harbor, some three quarters of a mile from San Marc, lies an island once occupied by a convent. Napoleon rased the buildings, and connecting it with the town by a new, handsome street and a bridge, laid out the ground as a public garden. We debarked at the stairs, and passed an hour in strolling through shaded walks, filled with the gay Venetians, who come to enjoy here what they find nowhere else, the smell of grass and green leaves. There is a pavilion upon an artificial hill in the centre, where the best lemonades and ices of Venice are to be found; and it was surrounded to-night by merry groups, amusing themselves with all the heart-cheering gayety of this delightful people. The very sight of them is an antidote to sadness.

In returning to San Marc a large gondola crossed us, filled with ladies and gentlemen, and followed by another with a band of music. This is a common mode of making a party on the canals, and a more agreeable one never was imagined. We ordered the gondolier to follow at a certain distance, and spent an hour or two just keeping within the softened sound of the instruments. How romantic are the veriest, every-day occurrences of this enchanting city.