Of wild free song have left her silver streets;
Her blazoned banner now no longer floats
In aureate folds, no more the sunrise greets;
She lives but in a past so strong and brave
It serves alike for monument and grave.
ALAN SULLIVAN.
GEORGE ELIOT’S IMPRESSION OF VENICE
From Padua to Venice! It was about ten o’clock on a moonlight night—the 4th of June—that we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea: we were on the bridge across the lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What stillness! What beauty! Looking out from the high window of our hotel on the Grand Canal, I felt that it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was more beautiful than romances had feigned.
And that was the impression that remained, and even deepened, during our stay of eight days. That quiet which seems the deeper because one hears the delicious dip of the oar (when not disturbed by clamorous church bells), leaves the eye in full liberty and strength to take in the exhaustless loveliness of colour and form.
We were in our gondola by nine o’clock the next morning, and of course the first point we sought was the Piazza di San Marco. I am glad to find Ruskin calling the Palace of the Doges one of the two most perfect buildings in the world.... This spot is a focus of architectural wonders: but the palace is the crown of them all. The double tier of columns and arches, with the rich sombreness of their finely outlined shadows, contrast satisfactorily with the warmth and light and more continuous surface of the upper part. Even landing on the Piazzetta, one has a sense, not only of being in an entirely novel scene, but one where the ideas of a foreign race have poured themselves in without yet mingling indistinguishably with the pre-existent Italian life. But this is felt yet more strongly when one has passed along the Piazzetta and arrived in front of San Marco, with its low arches and domes and minarets. But perhaps the most striking point to take one’s stand on is just in front of the white marble guard-house flanking the great tower—the guard-house with Sansovino’s iron gates before it. On the left is San Marco, with the two square pillars from St. Jean d’Acre, standing as isolated trophies; on the right the Piazzetta extends between the Doge’s palace and the Palazzo Reale to the tall columns from Constantinople; and in front is the elaborate gateway leading to the white marble Scala dei Giganti, in the courtyard of the Doge’s palace. Passing through this gateway and up the staircase, we entered the gallery which surrounds the court on three sides, and looked down at the fine sculptured vase-like wells below. Then into the great Sala, surrounded with the portraits of the Doges: the largest oil-painting here—or perhaps anywhere else—is the ‘Gloria del Paradiso’ by Tintoretto, now dark and unlovely. But on the ceiling is a great Paul Veronese—the ‘Apotheosis of Venice’—which looks as fresh as if it were painted yesterday, and is a miracle of colour and composition—a picture full of glory and joy of an earthly, fleshly kind, but without any touch of coarseness or vulgarity. Below the radiant Venice on her clouds is a balcony filled with upward-looking spectators; and below this gallery is a group of human figures with horses. Next to this Apotheosis, I admire another Coronation of Venice on the ceiling of another Sala, where Venice is sitting enthroned above the globe with her lovely face in half-shadow—a creature born with an imperial attitude. There are other Tintorettos, Veroneses, and Palmas in the great halls of this palace; but they left me quite indifferent, and have become vague in my memory. From the splendours of the palace we crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons, and saw the horrible dark damp cells that would make the saddest life in the free light and air seem bright and desirable.