The moon was now in her pride. I wandered once more to the quay, and heard for the first time a serenade. A juggler was conjuring in a circle under the walls of my hotel, and an itinerant opera was performing on the bridge. It is by moonlight that Venice is indeed an enchanted city. The effect of the floods of silver light upon the twinkling fretwork of the Moresco architecture, the total absence of all harsh sounds, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produce an effect upon the mind which cannot be experienced in any other city. As I stood gazing upon the broad track of brilliant light that quivered over the lagoon, a gondolier saluted me. I entered his boat, and desired him to row me to the Grand Canal.
The marble palaces of my ancestors rose on each side, like a series of vast and solemn temples. How sublime were their broad fronts bathed in the mystic light, whose softened tints concealed the ravages of Time, and made us dream only of their eternity! And could these great creations ever die! I viewed them with a devotion which I cannot believe to have been surpassed in the most patriotic period of the Republic. How willingly would I have given my life to have once more filled their mighty halls with the proud retainers of their free and victorious nobles!
As I proceeded along the canal, and retired from the quarter of St. Mark, the sounds of merriment gradually died away. The light string of a guitar alone tinkled in the distance, and the lamp of a gondola, swiftly shooting by, indicated some gay, perhaps anxious, youth, hastening to the general rendezvous of festivity and love. The course of the canal bent, and the moon was hid behind a broad, thick arch, which black, yet sharply defined, spanned the breadth of the water. I beheld the famous Rialto.
Was it possible? was it true? was I not all this time in a reverie gazing upon a drawing in Winter’s studio! Was it not some delicious dream? some delicious dream from which perhaps this moment I was about to be roused to cold, dull life? I struggled not to wake, yet, from a nervous desire to move and put the vision to the test, I ordered the gondolier to row to the side of the canal, jumped out, and hurried to the bridge. Each moment I expected that the arch would tremble and part, and that the surrounding palaces would dissolve into mist, that the lights would be extinguished and the music cease, and that I should find myself in my old chamber in my father’s house.
I hurried along; I was anxious to reach the centre of the bridge before I woke. It seemed like the crowning incident of a dream, which, it is remarkable, never occurs, and which, from the very anxiety it occasions, only succeeds in breaking our magical slumbers.
I stood upon the Rialto; I beheld on each side of me, rising out of the waters, which they shadowed with their solemn image, those colossal and gorgeous structures raised from the spoils of the teeming Orient, with their pillars of rare marbles, and their costly portals of jasper, and porphyry, and agate; I beheld them ranged in majestic order, and streaming with the liquid moonlight.
LORD BEACONSFIELD.
ENTERING VENICE AT TWILIGHT
Nothing could exceed Emily’s admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening. As they glided on, the grander features of this city appeared more distinctly: its terraces, crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather than reared by mortal hands.
The sun, soon after, sinking to the lower world, the shadow of the earth stole gradually over the waves, and then up the towering sides of the mountains of Friuli, till it extinguished even the last upward beams that had lingered on their summits, and the melancholy purple of evening drew over them like a thin veil. How deep, how beautiful was the tranquillity that wrapped the scene! All nature seemed to repose; the finest emotions of the soul were alone awake. Emily’s eyes filled with tears of admiration and sublime devotion, as she raised them over the sleeping world to the vast heavens, and heard the notes of solemn music that stole over the waters from a distance. She listened in still rapture, and no person of the party broke the charm by an inquiry. The sounds seemed to grow on the air; for so smoothly did the barge glide along, that its motion was not perceivable, and the fairy city appeared approaching to welcome the strangers. They now distinguished a voice, accompanied by a few instruments, singing a soft and mournful air, and its fine expression, as it sometimes seemed, pleading with the impassioned tenderness of love, and then languishing into the cadence of hopeless grief, declared that it flowed from no feigned sensibility.... The deep twilight that had fallen over the scene admitted only imperfect images to the eye, but at some distance on the sea she thought she perceived a gondola: a chorus of voices and instruments now swelled on the air—so sweet, so solemn! seemed like the hymn of angels descending through the silence of night! Now it died away, and fancy almost beheld the holy choir reascending towards heaven; then again it swelled with the breeze, trembled awhile, and again died into silence.... The gay and busy scene that appeared, as the barge approached St. Mark’s Place, at length roused her attention. The rising moon, which threw a shadowy light upon the terrace, and illumined the porticos and magnificent arcades that crowned them, discovered the various company, whose light steps, soft guitars, and softer voices, echoed through the colonnades.