Yes, here is Venice rising above the surface like a water nymph, and floating like a sea fowl on the ocean wave. She was once the ruler of the waters and their powers. Those days are past, but beauty is still here. “States fall, arts fade, but nature doth not die.” There was never a horse, carriage, or wheel-barrow in the city. I presume there are half grown persons here who never saw any of these. The Venetians go visiting in boats, they go to market, to church, to the theatre, to the grave, in boats.
The houses rise up out of the water; the gondola, graceful in its motion as a serpent, glides up to the door, the people step in, and off they go. The gondola is a contrivance peculiar to Venice. It is twenty-five or thirty feet long, and is deep and narrow like a canoe. Its sharp bow and stern sweep upwards from the water like the horns of a crescent, with the abruptness of the curve slightly modified. The bow, which rises some six feet above the water, is ornamented with a steel comb and a broad battle ax. In the centre of the boat is a little house something like the body of a carriage. This is elegantly fitted up with cushioned seats, silk curtains, and glass windows. The gondolier, who is usually a picturesque rascal, stands erect in the stern of the boat, and with one oar he manages to guide and propel his boat with an accuracy and a speed that are truly surprising. Almost every moment you expect your gondola to collide with some other; but by some timely turn the two glide gracefully by each other without touching. All the gondolas are painted black—the color of mourning. Well may Venice mourn. Her glory has departed. She is great only in history.
The chief industry of Venice is glass manufacture. The first glass mirror that was ever made was manufactured here about the year 1,300. The Venetians are yet ahead in this kind of work. They now make men and monkeys, horses and houses, doves and donkeys, of glass. I saw them spinning glass; and without handling the thread one could not tell it from silk. They fashion glass into buds and blossoms which need little else than perfume to make them as perfect as those wrought by Nature’s hand. Perhaps the most delicate glass work I saw going on was the manufacture of human eyes. This, you may rest assured, requires skilled workmen. It is a large and remunerative business. God and Venice furnish eyes for the world. In bargaining with the glass dealers, one soon finds that now, as in the days of Shakespeare, many Shylocks live in Venice, and each one contends for his “pound of flesh.”
If I had time to write another chapter concerning this “Ocean Queen,” I would tell you something about the Bridge of Sighs “with a palace and a prison on each hand,” about St. Mark’s Cathedral, which “looks more like the work of angels than of men,” about the granite columns, one surmounted by “the winged lion and the other by St. Theodore, the protector of the republic.” Of course it is a great pity (?) that you can not read what I would write on these subjects if I had time, but, as this is impossible, perhaps the next best thing you could read would be “Childe Harold,” “Stones of Venice,” and “St. Mark’s Rest.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.