Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews’ cemetery. It is a quiet place, where the flat gravestones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian, lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet, knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes. Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and defile these habitations of the dead:
‘Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.’
Some of the gravestones have been used to fence the towing-path; and one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian marble.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE LIDO
Yesterday I set out early with my tutelary genius for the Lido, the tongue of land which shuts in the lagoons, and divides them from the sea. We landed and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur,—it was the sea! I soon saw it: it crested high against the shore, as it retired,—it was about noon, and time of ebb. I have then seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it. I wished the children had been there to gather the shells; childlike, I myself picked up plenty of them.... On the Lido, not far from the sea, is the burial-place of Englishmen, and a little further on, of the Jews: both alike are refused the privilege of resting in consecrated ground. I found here the tomb of Smith, the noble English consul, and that of his first wife. It is to him that I owe my first copy of Palladio; I thanked him for it here in his unconsecrated grave....
The Lido is at best but a sand-bank. But the sea—it is a grand sight! I will try and get a sail upon it some day in a fishing-boat: the gondolas never venture out so far....
A delicious day from morning to night! I have been towards Chioggia, as far as Pelestrina, where are the great structures, called murazzi, which the Republic has caused to be raised against the sea. They are hewn of stone, and properly are intended to protect from the fury of the wild element the Lido, which separates the lagoons from the sea.
The lagoons are the work of old nature. First of all, the land and tide, the ebb and flow, working against each other, and then the gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, together, the causes why, at the upper end of the Adriatic, we find a pretty extensive range of marshes, which, covered by the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the ebb. Art took possession of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice, formed out of a group of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and labour, deep canals have been dug through the marshes, in order that at the time of high water, ships of war might pass to the chief points. What human industry and wit contrived and executed of old, skill and industry must now keep up....