I then hired a gondola for four days successively and visited every canal and every part of the city. Almost every family of respectability keeps a gondola, which is anchored at the steps of the front door of the house. After the Piazza di San Marco, of which I shall speak presently, the finest buildings and Palaces of the nobility are on the banks of the Canale grande, which, from its winding in the shape of an S, has all the appearance of a river. The Rialto is the only bridge which connects the opposite banks of the Canale grande; but there are four hundred smaller bridges in Venice to connect the other canals.
The Rialto, the resort of the money changers and Jews, is a very singular and picturesque construction, being of one arch, a very bold one. On each side of this bridge is a range of jewellers' shops. A narrow Quai runs along the banks of the Canale grande.
I have visited several of the Palazzi, particularly those of the families Morosini, Cornaro, Pisani, Grimani, which are very rich in marbles of vert and jaune antique; but they are now nearly stripped of all their furniture, uninhabited by their owners, or let to individuals, mostly shopkeepers; for since the extinction of the Venetian Republic almost all the nobility have retired to their estates on the terra firma, or to their villas on the banks of the Brenta; so that Venice is now inhabited chiefly by merchants, shopkeepers, chiefly jewellers and silk mercers, seafaring people, the constituted authorities, and the garrison of the place.
Tho' Venice has fallen very much into decay, since the subversion of the Republic, as might naturally be expected, and still more so since it has been under the Austrian domination, yet it is still a place of great wealth, particularly in jewellery, silks and all articles of dress and luxury. In the Merceria you may see as much wealth displayed as in Cheapside or in the Rue St Honoré.
I have had the pleasure of witnessing a superb regatta or water féte, given in honour of the visit of the Archduke Rainier to this city, in his quality of Viceroy of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. There were about one hundred and fifty barges, each fitted up by some department of trade and commerce, with allegorical devices and statues richly ornamented, emblematical of the trade or professions to which the barge belonged. Each barge bore an appropriate ensign, and the dresses of the crew were all tasteful, and thoroughly analogous to the profession they represented. These barges are richly gilded, and from the variety of the costumes and streamers, I thought it one of the most beautiful sights I ever beheld. Here were the bankers' barge, the jewellers', the mercers', the tailors', the shoe-makers', and, to crown all, the printers' barge, which showered down from the masthead sonnets in honor of the féte, printed on board of the barge itself. Every trade or profession, in short, had a barge and appropriate flag and costumes. A quantity of private barges and gondolas followed this procession. The Archduke and his staff occupied the Government barge, which is very magnificent and made in imitation of the Bucentaur. Musicians were on board of many of the barges, and the houses on both banks of the Canale Grande were filled with beautiful women and other spectators waving their handkerchiefs. Guns were fired on the embarkation of the Viceroy from the Piazzetta di San Marco, and on his return. The Piazza itself was splendidly illuminated, and the cafés which abound there, and which constitute one half of the whole quadrangle, were superbly and tastefully decorated.
The Piazza di San Marco is certainly the most beautiful thing of the kind in the world. It is a good deal in the style of the Palais Royal at Paris, and tho' not so large, is far more striking, from the very tasteful and even sumptuous manner in which the cafés are fitted up, both internally and externally; they have spacious rooms with mirrors on all sides, some in the shape of Turkish tents, others in that of Egyptian temples. The Piazza, forming an oblong rectangle, is arcaded on the two long sides, and of the two short ones, one presents a superb modern palace built by Napoleon, and richly adorned with the statues of all the heathen Gods on the top, which Palace was usually occupied by Eugene Napoléon; the other presents the church of St Marco and the old palace of Government, where in the time of the Republic the Doge used to reside. The church of St Mark is unique as a temple in Europe, for it is neither Grecian nor Gothic, but in a style completely Oriental, from the singularity of its structure, its many gilded cupolas and the variety of its exterior ornaments. At first sight it appears a more striking object than either St Peter's in Rome or St Paul's in London. On the top of the façade, which is singularly picturesque, stand the four bronze horses which have been brought back from Paris to their old residence.
I ascended the top of the façade in order to examine them. They are beautifully formed, in very good cast and have not at all been damaged by the journey. The Piazza is paved with broad flagged stones. The Doge's palace is a vast building, very picturesque withal, and seems a mélange of Gothic and Moorish architecture. At right angles to it and facing the Piazzetta, which issues from the Piazza and forms a quai to the Canale Grande, stands the famous state prison and Ponte de 'Sospiri. On the Piazzetta and fronting the landing place stand two columns of white marble, on one of which stands the winged Lion of St Marco and on the other a crocodile, emblematical of the foreign commerce and possessions of the Republic. The space between these two columns was allotted for the execution of State criminals. Not far from the church of St Marco, and near to that angle of the Piazza which connects it with the Piazzetta, stands the famous Campanile or Steeple of San Marco. It is a square building 800 feet in height, from the top of which one has the best view of Venice and its adjacent isles, the distant Alps and the marina dove il Po discende. A Quai, if Quai it may be called, which has a row of houses on each side, one row of which is on the water's edge, leads from the Piazzetta to some gardens, which terminate on a point of land. This Quai is very broad and well paved, and is the only thing that can be called a street in all Venice. The Piazza di San Marco, therefore, this Quai and the garden before mentioned form the only promenades in Venice. This garden moreover has trees, and these are the only trees that are to be met with in this city. In this garden are two Cafés.
The variety of costume is another very agreeable spectacle at Venice. Here you meet with Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Moors, Sclavonians and Armenians, all in their respective national costumes. The first Armenian I met with here was sitting on a stone bench on the Piazza di San Marco, and this brought forcibly to my recollection the Armenian in Schiller's Ghost-seer.
These Cafés and Casinos on the Piazza are open day and night. Ices and coffee superiorly made and other refreshments of all kinds at very low prices are to be had. Some of these casinos are devoted to gaming. The first families in Venice repair to the Piazza in the evening after the Opera, female as well as male. They promenade up and down the Piazza or sit down and converse in the Cafés and Casinos till a late hour. Few go to bed in Venice in the summer time before six In the morning, so that sleep seems for ever banished from the Piazza. Music and singing goes forward in these casinos, and the ear is often charmed with the sound of those delightful Venetian airs, whose simple melody ravishes the soul. The Venetian dialect is very pleasing, and scarcely yields in harmony to the Tuscan. It contains a great many Sclavonic words. It is the only dialect of Italy that is at all pleasing to my ear, for I do not at all relish the nasal twang and truncated terminations of the Piedmontese and Lombard dialects, nor the semi-barbarous jargon of the Genoese and the Neapolitan and, least of all, the execrable cacophony of the Bolognese.
I visited of course the Arsenal and the Doge's Palace. The apartments in the latter are very spacious and ornamented in the Gothic taste of grandeur. The chamber of the Council is peculiarly magnificent. There is a good deal of tapestry and some fine paintings and statues: among the former I particularly noticed an allegorical picture, representing the triumph of Venice over the league of Cambray. Venice is represented by the winged Lion, and the powers of the Coalition are pourtrayed by various other beasts. Among the latter is a beautiful group in marble representing Ganymede and the Eagle. The terror depicted in the countenance of the beautiful boy, and the passion that seems to agitate the Eagle, are surprizingly well pourtrayed.