CESARE MORANDI.
NIGHT IN VENICE
How beautiful is night in Venice! Then music and the moon reign supreme; the glittering sky reflected in the waters, and every gondola gliding with sweet sounds! Around on every side are palaces and temples, rising from the waves which they shadow with their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city, too, is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, the sighs of serenaders, and the responsive chorus of gondoliers. Now and then a laugh—light, joyous, and yet musical—bursts forth from some illuminated coffee-house, before which a buffo disports, a tumbler stands on his head, or a juggler mystifies; and all for a sequin!
The Place of St. Mark ... is distinguished for elegance, luxury, and enjoyment.... Under a Venetian moon it is the hour of love and of faro; now is the hour to press your suit and to break a bank; to glide from the apartment of rapture into the chamber of chance. For [other] tastes there is the minstrel, the conjurer, and the story-teller, goblets of Cyprus wine, flasks of sherbet, and confectionery that dazzle like diamonds. And for every one, from the grave senator to the gay gondolier, there is an atmosphere in itself a spell, and which, after all, has more to do with human happiness than all the accidents of fortune and all the arts of government.
LORD BEACONSFIELD.
GONDOLA AND GONDOLIER
The gondola is one of the great charms of Venice: it alone, without art, without the genius of artists which arrests one at every step, would be enough to fascinate the stranger. In that gentle swinging like the swinging of a hammock, that light plash of the oar which caresses the ear, that incredible sensibility of the boat itself, which seems to move like a living being, in these and in the surrounding silence there is from the first moment a charm which no one can escape.
CHARLES YRIARTE.
Let me this gondola boat compare to the slumberous cradle,
And to a spacious bier liken the cover demure;