This world of tinted fire?
The glory into whose embrace,
The lady seeks to rise,
Is but reflected from the face
Of these Venetian skies.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
VENICE THE ENCHANTRESS
Venice has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the character of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement; the absence of all those harsh, artificial sounds which vex the air in other towns, but which in her are replaced by harmonies of human voices, and by the liquid tinkle of the waves—all these unusual characteristics combine to make her a wonder and a prodigy. While there are scarcely any who are unmoved by her special charm, there are some who are entirely subdued by it, to whom the sight of her is a continual enchantment, and who never get beyond the sense of something miraculous, the rapture of the first vision. Not only does she ‘shine where she stands,’ which even the poorest cluster of human habitations will do in the light of love: but all those walls, with the mist of ages like a bloom of eternal youth upon them—all those delicate pinnacles and carven-stones, the arches and the pillars and the balconies, the fretted outlines that strike against the sky—shine too as with a light within that radiates into the clear sea-air; and every ripple on the great water-way, and every wave on the lagoon, and each little rivulet of a canal, like a line of light between the piles of masonry, which are themselves built of pearl and tints of ocean shells, shines too with an ever-varied, fantastic, enchanting glimmer of responsive brightness. In the light of summer mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice stands out upon the blue background, the sea that brims upwards to her very doors, the sky that sweeps in widening circles all around, radiant with an answering tone of light. She is all wonder, enchantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. Her own children cannot enough paint her, praise her, celebrate her splendours; and to outdo if possible that patriotic enthusiasm has been the effort of many a stranger from afar....
Where is the poet, where the prophet, the princes, the scholars, the men whom, could we see, we should recognize wherever we met them, with whom the whole world is acquainted? They are not here. In the sunshine of the Piazza, in the glorious gloom of San Marco, in the great council-chambers and offices of State, once so full of busy statesmen, and great interests, there is scarcely a figure recognizable of all, to be met with in spirit—no one whom we look for as we walk, whose individual footsteps are traceable wherever we turn. Instead of the men who made her what she is, who ruled her with so high a hand, who filled her archives with the most detailed narratives, and gleaned throughout the world every particular of universal history which could enlighten and guide her, we find everywhere the great image—an idealisation more wonderful than any in poetry—of Venice herself, the crowned and reigning city, the centre of all their aspirations, the mistress of their affections, for whom those haughty patricians of an older day, with a proud self-abnegation which has no humility or sacrifice in it, effaced themselves, thinking of nothing but her glory....
Though there is no record of that time when Dante stood within the red walls of the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch fuming up to heaven—as all the world may still see them through his eyes—yet a milder scholarly image, a round smooth face, with cowl and garland, looks down upon us from the gallery, all blazing with crimson and gold, between the horses of San Marco, a friendly visitor, the best we could have, since Dante left no sign behind him, and probably was never heard of by the magnificent Signoria. Petrarch stands there, to be seen by the side of the historian-doge, as long as Venice lasts: but not much of him, only a glimpse, as in the Venetian way, lest in contemplation of the poet we should for a moment forget the Republic, his hostess and protector—Venice, the all-glorious mistress of the seas, the first object, the unrivalled sovereign of her children’s thoughts and hearts.