At Mæstre we began to feel the sea breezes, and as the train rushed on to St. Giuliana we caught glimpses of the far-off lights of Venice reflected in the water. And now commences the vast bridge which takes the train over the lagune. This bridge is between three and four miles in length, and contains 222 arches.
Our excitement was great when we reached the lagune, and the train seemed actually rushing through the water.
At first the buildings of the distant city looked like huge black rocks, though the hundreds of lights reflected in the water told one of the approach to habitation. But as we drew near, the churches, towers, campanili, and palaces became almost distinguishable, telling out black against the starlit sky, and seemingly rising from the middle of the sea—an exquisitely poetical scene, with which no one could be disappointed.
Of course, we can understand that approaching Venice by day is quite another matter. Then the shallowness of the lagune (the water is sometimes not more than three feet deep) is realised; then all the ruin, shabby detail, bad restoration, and bizarre Gothic work of the city are seen at a glance. The beautiful moonlight night, however, told us of none of these defects, but emphasised the strange poetry of this singular city, with its wonderful history and associations, built in the middle of the sea.
The approach to Venice by gondola in former times must have been even more romantic, as the puffing and the screeching of a steam-engine brings one’s mind back to the nineteenth century. Though, at the same time, rushing across the lagune in a railway-train at night produces a somewhat remarkable sensation.
The train took about nine minutes to cross the bridge, and then glided quietly into the railway station at Venice. There were only about half a dozen passengers besides ourselves, and there was none of that noise and bustle which is usually so great a nuisance in terminal stations. On alighting from our railway carriage a porter, with true Italian politeness, asked us the name of our hotel, and, conducting us to the side of the canal, handed us over to a gondolier.
Everything helped to make the scene as poetical as possible. The night kept glorious, and there was not a sound to be heard. Our gondolier, a tall, dark man with a thick black beard, was a beau ideal of his class, and the hearse-like gondola being drawn up to the landing-stage, the bachelors determined to see a little of Venice by moonlight before going to their hotel.
THE BRONZE HORSES—ST. MARK’S.
In a few minutes we found ourselves in the Grand Canal—the great marble palaces rising on either bank, brilliantly illuminated here and there by the beams of a full moon, and the lights from the graceful Gothic windows reflected in the still water in long streams of light; the domes and campanili of the almost innumerable churches piercing the sky, and looking gigantic, from their details being shrouded in the deep shadows of night; while their outlines were made still more prominent and more distinctly defined by the clear, sharp moonlight.