THE CHARM OF VENICE

THE

CHARM OF VENICE

AN ANTHOLOGY

COMPILED BY
ALFRED H. HYATT

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908

All rights reserved

EDITOR’S NOTE

It is always delightful to read about Venice. This city, so exceptionally situated, and to which belongs so fascinating a history, has inspired almost countless authors to extol its many beauties, to retell its historic episodes, and to recount the treasures of its art and architecture.

The praise of London is sung by the Londoner, that of Paris by the Parisian, and so on, city by city. But of the beauty of Venice members of every nation have written, and perhaps in a greater measure than the Venetians themselves. It is from these eulogies that I have endeavoured to place before the reader those prose passages and poems that paint in a few words some of the varied charms belonging to Venice.

A. H. H.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the following publishers and authors for having so kindly allowed the inclusion of copyright poems and extracts in this volume:

To Lady Ritchie and Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. for an extract from ‘Miss Angel’; to Lady Lindsay for two poems contained in ‘From a Venetian Balcony’ (Messrs. Kegan Paul); to Messrs. George Bell and Sons for extracts from Charles Yriarte’s ‘Venise’ (translated by Mr. F. J. Sitwell); to Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons for an extract from ‘The Life of George Eliot’; to Mr. Arthur Symons for poems from his ‘Collected Poems’ (Mr. W. Heinemann) and an extract from ‘The Cities of Italy’ (Messrs. Dent); to Mr. W. Heinemann for an extract from Gabriele D’Annunzio’s ‘The Flame of Life’; to Mr. Horatio F. Brown and Messrs. Smith, Elder for extracts from J. Addington Symonds’s ‘A Venetian Medley,’ and a poem from this same author’s volume, ‘Old and New’; to Messrs. Gay and Bird and Mr. Percy Pinkerton for poems from ‘Adriatica’; to Messrs. Maclehose and Sons for ‘A Vision of Venice’ from David Gray’s ‘Poems’; to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., for extracts from Mrs. Oliphant’s ‘Makers of Venice’ and Mr. F. Marion Crawford’s ‘Gleanings from Venetian History’; to the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke for poems from his volume published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd.; to Messrs. Duckworth and Co. for extracts from the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke’s ‘The Sea Charm of Venice’; to Miss Braddon for an extract from ‘The Venetians’ (Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall); to Messrs. George Newnes, Ltd., for an extract from Mr. F. Eden’s ‘A Garden in Venice’; to Mr. W. D. Howells for extracts from ‘Venetian Life’; to Messrs. Rivingtons for an extract from Mr. Horatio F. Brown’s ‘Life on the Lagoons’; to Mrs. Lee-Hamilton for a poem by Eugene Lee-Hamilton; to Miss Margaret Newett for an extract from her translation of ‘Casola’s Pilgrimage’ (the Clarendon Press); to Madame Duclaux (Mary A. F. Robinson) for ‘A Venetian Nocturne’ from her ‘Collected Poems’ (Mr. T. Fisher Unwin); to Vernon Lee for extracts from ‘The Enchanted Woods’ and ‘The Sentimental Traveller’ (Mr. John Lane), and ‘Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy’; to Mr. S. Rosen, of Venice, for an extract from Pompeo Molmenti’s ‘The Renaissance in Venice,’ published by the Liberia Rosen, Venice; to Mr. Lloyd Mifflin for various poems; to Mrs. Moulton for an extract from ‘Random Rambles’; to the Baroness Swift for a poem; to Mr. Fred G. Bowles for the use of his translation of Hélène Vacaresco’s poem; to Messrs. Chatto and Windus for extracts from Ouida’s ‘Santa Barbara,’ Beryl de Sélincourt and May Sturge Henderson’s ‘Venice,’ and Edith Seeley’s translation of Vasari’s ‘Stories of the Italian Artists’; and to Mr. Mackenzie Bell for a sonnet from ‘Collected Poems’ (the Kingsgate Press).

CONTENTS

There goes a swallow to Venice—the stout seafarer!

Seeing those birds fly, makes one wish for wings.

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE CHARM OF VENICE

The charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm ... which no artist or poet ever can resist.

OUIDA.

I do not know how this should be, but Venice seems made to prove that ‘La Vita è un sogno.’ What the Venice dream is all the world knows. Motion that is almost imperceptible, colour too deep and gorgeous to strike the eye, gilding so massive and ancient as to wear a mist of amber brown upon its brightness, white cupolas that time has turned to pearls, marble that no longer looks like stone, but like blocks cut from summer clouds, a smooth sea that is brighter and more infinite than the sky it reflects—these are some of the ingredients of the dream which are too familiar for description. Nothing can describe the elemental warmth of the days, the sea-kisses of the wind at evening, the atmosphere of breathless tepid moonlight in the night.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

Venice is among cities what Shakespeare is among men.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice:

Vinegia, Vinegia,

Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.

SHAKESPEARE.

In this enchanted Venice, it seems to you, no one is ever sad, or cross, or weary. You think that here, at least, you could be reconciled to an earthly immortality.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

This enchanting city of Venice has always the same charm and the same glamour.... Sun, moon, and stars shed all they have of glory and of glamour over the romantic city, painting the smooth lagoons with a rare splendour of colouring which changes city and sea into something supernal, unimaginable, dreamlike.

M. E. BRADDON.

SALVE VENETIA!

Venice is the most personal of all cities in the world, the most feminine, the most comparable to a woman, the least dependent, for her individuality, upon her inhabitants, ancient or modern. What would Rome be without the memory of the Cæsars? What would Paris be without the Parisians? What was Constantinople like before it was Turkish? The imagination can hardly picture a Venice different from her present self at any time in her history. Where all is colour, the more brilliant costumes of earlier times could add but little; a general exodus of her inhabitants to-day would leave almost as much of it behind. In the still canals the gorgeous palaces continually gaze down upon their own reflected images with placid satisfaction, and look with calm indifference upon the changing generations of men and women that glide upon the waters. The mists gather upon the mysterious lagoons and sink away again before the devouring light, day after day, year after year, century after century; and Venice is always there herself, sleeping or waking, laughing, weeping, dreaming, singing or sighing, living her own life through ages, with an intensely vital personality which time has hardly modified, and is altogether powerless to destroy. Somehow, it would not surprise those who know her, to come suddenly upon her and find that all human life was extinct within her, while her own went on, strong as ever; nor yet, in the other extreme, would it seem astonishing if all that has been should begin again, as though it had never ceased to be, if the Bucentaur swept down the Grand Canal to the beat of its two hundred oars, bearing the Doge out to wed the sea with gorgeous train; if the Great Council began to sit again in all its splendour; if the Piazza were thronged once more with men and women from the pictures of Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Titian; if Eastern shipping crowded the entrance to the Giudecca, and Eastern merchants filled the shady ways of the Merceria. What miracle could seem miraculous in Venice, the city of wonders?...

Venice was Venice from the first, and is Venice still, a person in our imagination, almost more than a place.... ‘Venice’ calls up a dream of colour, of rich palaces and of still water, and at the name there are more men who will think of Shylock and Othello than of Enrico Dandolo, or Titian, or Carlo Zeno, or Vittor Pisani....

Who seeks true poetry, said Rossi, writing on Venice, will find it most abundantly in the early memories of a Christian nation; and indeed the old chronicles are full of it, of idyls, of legends, and of heroic tales. Only dream a while over the yellow pages of Muratori, and presently you will scent the spring flowers of a thousand years ago, and hear the ripple of the blue waves that lent young Venice their purity, their brilliancy, and their fresh young music. You may even enjoy a pagan vision of maiden Aphrodite rising suddenly out of the sea into the sunshine, but the dream dissolves only too soon; grace turns into strength, the lovely smile of the girl-goddess fades from the commanding features of the reigning queen, and heavenly Venus is already earthly Cleopatra.

It is better to open our arms gladly to the beautiful when she comes to us, than to prepare our dissecting instruments as soon as we are aware of her presence.... And so with Venice; she is a form of beauty, and must be looked upon as that and nothing else; not critically, for criticism means comparison, and Venice is too personal and individual, and too unlike other cities to be fairly compared with them; not coldly, for she appeals to the senses and to the human heart, and craves a little warmth of sympathy; above all, not in a spirit of righteous severity, for he who would follow her story must learn to forgive her almost at every step.

She has paid for her mistakes with all save her inextinguishable life; she has expiated her sins of ill-faith, of injustice and ingratitude, by the loss of everything but her imperishable charm.

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.

WRITTEN AT VENICE

Not only through the golden haze

Of indistinct surprise.

With which the Ocean-bride displays

Her pomp to stranger eyes;—

Not with the fancy’s flashing play,

The traveller’s vulgar theme,

Where following objects chase away

The moment’s dazzling dream;

Not thus art thou content to see

The City of my love,—

Whose beauty is a thought to me

All mortal thoughts above;—

And pass in dull unseemly haste,

Nor sight nor spirit clear,

As if the first bewildering taste

Were all the banquet here!

When the proud sea, for Venice’ sake,

Itself consents to wear

The semblance of a land-locked lake,

Inviolably fair;

And, in the dalliance of her isles,

Has levelled his strong waves,

Adoring her with tenderer wiles

Than his own pearly caves....

Surely may we delight to pause

On our care-goaded road,

Refuged from Time’s most bitter laws

In this august abode.

Come out upon the broad lagoon,

Come for the hundredth time,

Our thoughts shall make a pleasant tune,

Our words a worthy rhyme;

And thickly round us we will set

Such visions as were seen,

By Titian and by Tintoret,

And dear old Gian Bellin,—

And all their peers in art, whose eyes,

Taught by this sun and sea,

Flashed on their works whose burning dyes,

That fervent poetry;

And wove the shades so thinly-clear

They would be parts of light

In northern climes, whose frowns severe

Mar half the charms of sight.

Did ever shape Paolo drew

Put on such brilliant tire,

As Nature, in this evening view,

This world of tinted fire?

The glory into whose embrace,

The lady seeks to rise,

Is but reflected from the face

Of these Venetian skies.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

VENICE THE ENCHANTRESS

Venice has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the character of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement; the absence of all those harsh, artificial sounds which vex the air in other towns, but which in her are replaced by harmonies of human voices, and by the liquid tinkle of the waves—all these unusual characteristics combine to make her a wonder and a prodigy. While there are scarcely any who are unmoved by her special charm, there are some who are entirely subdued by it, to whom the sight of her is a continual enchantment, and who never get beyond the sense of something miraculous, the rapture of the first vision. Not only does she ‘shine where she stands,’ which even the poorest cluster of human habitations will do in the light of love: but all those walls, with the mist of ages like a bloom of eternal youth upon them—all those delicate pinnacles and carven-stones, the arches and the pillars and the balconies, the fretted outlines that strike against the sky—shine too as with a light within that radiates into the clear sea-air; and every ripple on the great water-way, and every wave on the lagoon, and each little rivulet of a canal, like a line of light between the piles of masonry, which are themselves built of pearl and tints of ocean shells, shines too with an ever-varied, fantastic, enchanting glimmer of responsive brightness. In the light of summer mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice stands out upon the blue background, the sea that brims upwards to her very doors, the sky that sweeps in widening circles all around, radiant with an answering tone of light. She is all wonder, enchantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. Her own children cannot enough paint her, praise her, celebrate her splendours; and to outdo if possible that patriotic enthusiasm has been the effort of many a stranger from afar....

Where is the poet, where the prophet, the princes, the scholars, the men whom, could we see, we should recognize wherever we met them, with whom the whole world is acquainted? They are not here. In the sunshine of the Piazza, in the glorious gloom of San Marco, in the great council-chambers and offices of State, once so full of busy statesmen, and great interests, there is scarcely a figure recognizable of all, to be met with in spirit—no one whom we look for as we walk, whose individual footsteps are traceable wherever we turn. Instead of the men who made her what she is, who ruled her with so high a hand, who filled her archives with the most detailed narratives, and gleaned throughout the world every particular of universal history which could enlighten and guide her, we find everywhere the great image—an idealisation more wonderful than any in poetry—of Venice herself, the crowned and reigning city, the centre of all their aspirations, the mistress of their affections, for whom those haughty patricians of an older day, with a proud self-abnegation which has no humility or sacrifice in it, effaced themselves, thinking of nothing but her glory....

Though there is no record of that time when Dante stood within the red walls of the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch fuming up to heaven—as all the world may still see them through his eyes—yet a milder scholarly image, a round smooth face, with cowl and garland, looks down upon us from the gallery, all blazing with crimson and gold, between the horses of San Marco, a friendly visitor, the best we could have, since Dante left no sign behind him, and probably was never heard of by the magnificent Signoria. Petrarch stands there, to be seen by the side of the historian-doge, as long as Venice lasts: but not much of him, only a glimpse, as in the Venetian way, lest in contemplation of the poet we should for a moment forget the Republic, his hostess and protector—Venice, the all-glorious mistress of the seas, the first object, the unrivalled sovereign of her children’s thoughts and hearts.

MRS. OLIPHANT.

VENICE

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest

So wonderfully built among the reeds

Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,

As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!

White water-lily, cradled and caressed

By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds

Lifting thy golden pistils with their seeds.

Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!

White phantom city, whose untrodden streets

Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting

Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;

I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets

Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting

In air their unsubstantial masonry.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

VENETIAN ENCHANTMENT

Can you fancy a city without a horse in it, or a carriage, where not even a van or a truck disturbs the stillness, where your household possessions are moved on the witching first of May in boats, and you drift along in a gondola to your merry-makings or your funerals? Such a city is Venice, where, as Browning wrote, ‘the sea the street is.’ I went out of the railroad-station into a gondola, and the enchantment began. I felt the spell, at once, of this unique city,—this one only Venice in all the world. Everywhere were gondolas,—gondolas moored at the quay, waiting for passengers; gondolas drawn up in front of palaces, waiting for their freight of dark-eyed Venetian girls; gondolas threading the mazes of the little canals, or sweeping down the Grand Canal, and drawing near each other now and then for a chat between the occupants.

All these gondolas are painted black. This is in accordance with an ancient law of the Republic, passed once upon a time when the decorations of the fascinating water-carriages were becoming too sumptuous for Republican morals. But even now many of the gondolas are very elegant. They are long and slender in shape, with a high beak pointed with steel; they are often superb in carving. Inside the little house in which you sit are soft cushions, and gilt-framed mirrors in which the piquant, dark-eyed faces of the Italian girls behold themselves in fascinating reflection....

Venice is a city of palaces. Three-quarters of them are unoccupied now, save by the stranger within her gates, who hires them for a season. But they are wonderfully beautiful, with their superb architecture and their great variety of colouring. Nothing could be more delightful than a sail down the Grand Canal at sunset, unless it be one by moonlight.

At sunset, after the warmest day, the air is cool. The sky is crimson above you, and the water which laps around your black keel is crimson also. Everybody has come out to enjoy the delicious coolness and shadow. You meet your friends, and exchange greetings with them as you would in the Casino at Florence or the Central Park in New York. The old palaces catch the sunset glory, and glow in it with a splendour as radiant as their memories. Busy waiters are arranging the out-of-door tables in front of the cafés in the grand piazza of San Marco for their evening custom. You drift on and on, till the sunset glory fades, and a new glory, purer and paler, has arisen,—the glory of the moon.

Everybody raves about moonlight in Venice, and well they may, for there is nothing on earth so enchanting. You forget the far-off world,—that old, hard world, where waggons rattle, and horses stumble and fall, and people are tired, and duns harass you, and time and tide wait for no man. In this enchanted Venice, it seems to you, no one is ever sad, or cross, or weary. You think that here, at least, you could be reconciled to an earthly immortality. The feeling is universal. A rich Englishman, while I was there, leased one of the old palaces for twenty-five years to come, and was busily adorning it with gems of art. He put into it old Venetian glasses, strange mirrors with nymphs and roses painted on them, such as were the glory of Venice long ago. His silver was wrought by the men of Benvenuto Cellini’s time. In his hall were marble statues sculptured by long-forgotten hands. His chairs and tables were carved by cunning workmen who had turned to dust. Everything was of the past, except the flowers, which everywhere ran riot. Marble vases, rifled from tombs, were full of glowing crimson roses. Bright-hued blossoms filled the windows, vines trailed over the walls, fragrance as of a thousand gardens flooded the rooms.

‘Twenty-five years!’ cried a friend, who was looking on at the lavish adornment of the old palace. ‘Are you sure you will be contented here so long?’

‘If not, it is hopeless,’ was the answer, ‘for I’ve tried the rest of the world, and found it wanting. Year after year Venice has drawn me back again with her charm, always new, though so old. If she fails to content me, there is nothing left but to go to heaven.’

And there are those who think, having reached Venice, that they have gone very nigh to heaven. At least, let us fancy it is that Island of the Blest which the old voyageurs used to seek....

There are few places more prolific of temptations to the purse than this city by the sea. You could spend a small fortune in photographs; and no photographs are so beautiful as those of Venice, with her water-ways, her sumptuous architecture, and her picturesque gondolas. You go a few steps from the photographer’s, and pause before the window of a shop for the sale of antiquities. If you have any imagination at all, you are fascinated at once. You find here quaint rings, as old as the days of the Doges; lace which generations of by-gone marquises have worn, and which time has turned to the hue of amber; fans behind which the dear, dead women, with their red-gold hair that Titian painted, blushed and bloomed and sighed and flirted. Here are shoe-buckles glittering with diamonds; here, in short, are a thousand relics of a beauty-loving and luxurious past; and you cannot turn away from them until you have bought something by way of talisman, wherewith to conjure back the shades of dead days and faded glories.

You see long lines of shops, full of the Venetian mosaic, and of the Venetian gold-work, which is the daintiest that you can imagine. Here is Salviati’s priceless glass. It is Salviati who has rediscovered the secrets of the old glass-makers. He will tell you that there can be no such thing as a lost art, while the human brain retains its former power; and in this matter of glass-making, at least, he has proved his own theories. Such wonderful colours, such wonderful shapes, such exquisite designs, can be found nowhere else. It almost converts one to Spiritualism, this exceptional success of Salviati’s, and makes you think that the ghosts of some of the old glass-makers have been whispering their long-forgotten secrets into his ears. You have fingered all the morning round this captivating piazza of San Marco, with its shops full of temptations, and now the bronze Vulcans of the clock-tower march out and strike the hour of two, and retire again; and just as they beat their retreat you see one of the prettiest sights in Venice. Long ago—at the beginning of the thirteenth century, so the story runs,—Admiral Dandolo, while besieging Candia, received intelligence by means of carrier-pigeons which greatly aided him. He then sent the birds to Venice with the news of his success; and since that period their descendants have been carefully cherished and greatly prized by the Venetians. Every day, at two o’clock the doves are fed at the expense of the city.... Venice! You can pass your dreamy days there in the luxury of an absolute repose. No other place is like it for beauty, and certainly no other is like it for restfulness.... Gay belles, who have tired themselves out by a busy winter in Rome or Florence, betake themselves to this City of the Sea, and win back their roses in its quiet. Its spell is on you from the first moment you arrive. It seems to me no one could ever leave it willingly; and if only the post could be abolished, and no letters would come to call you back to the world outside, you might stay there for ever without knowing it,—like the monk who laid his ear so close to heaven that he heard in his dream the songs of Paradise, and awoke to find that he had been listening to them for a thousand years.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

A VISION OF VENICE

Behold! a waking vision crowns my soul

With beatific radiance, and the light

Of shining hope;—a golden memoried dream

That clings unto my youth, as clung the strange

Leonine phantom to that mystic man,

Lean Paracelsus. It has grown with me

Like destiny, or that which seems to be

My destiny, ambition: and its glow

Inflames my fancy, as if some clear star

Had burst in silvery light within my brain.

From the smooth hyaline of that far sea

The pictured Adriatic rises, fair

As dream, a kingly-built and tower’d town;

Column and arch and architrave instinct

With delicatest beauty; overwrought

With tracery of interlacèd leaves

For ever blooming on white marble, hush’d

In everlasting summer, windless, cold:

The city of the Doges!

From the calm

Transparent waters float some thrilling sounds

Of Amphionic music, and the words

Are Tasso’s, where he passions for his love,

That lady Florentine so lily-smooth,

Clothed on with haughtiness!

At the black stair

Of palace rising shadowy from the wave,

Two singing gondolieri wait a freight

Of loveliness. A tremulous woman, robed

In dazzling satin, and whose dimpled arms

Shine through their veil diaphanous, floats down

From the wide portal; and the ivory prow

Of the soft-cushion’d gondola (as she

Steps lightly from the marble to her place)

Dips, rises, dips again; and through the blue

Swift glides into the sunset.

Oh, the glow

Of that rich sunset dims whate’er I see

In this my own dear valley! O’er the hills—

Those craggy Euganean hills, whose peaks

Wedge the clear crystalline—a blazonry

Of clouds pavilion’d, folded, interwound

Inextricably, load the breezeless west

With awe and glory. The effulgence gleams

Upon a vision’d Belmont, home of her

Who loved as Shakespeare’s women do; and gleams

Upon those walls wherein Othello’s spear

Stabb’d clinging innocence; where the poor wife,

The lone Cassandra Belvidera, gave

Her soul in martyrdom to love and woe.

And shall I never that far town behold,

Crested with sparkling columns, fiery towers,

Praxitelean masonry?—behold

Venice, the mart of nations, ere I die?

By Heaven! her common merchants princes were

Unto two continents; her traffickers

The honourable of the earth! she stood

A crownèd city, and the fawning sea

Licked her white feet; and the eternal sun

Kissed with departing beam her brow of snow!

Woe to this Venice, with her crown of pride!

The Lady of the kingdoms, the perfection

Of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth!

Through her pavilions shall the crannying winds

Whistle, and all her borders in the sea

Crumble their Parian wonder. Woe to her,

Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower!

Her sober-suited nightingales, with notes

Of smooth liquidity and softened stops,

Solace the brakes; and ’mid her ancient streets

Tawny, the gleaming and harmonious sea

Makes silvery melody of by-gone days.

Oh, white Enchantment! Ocean-spouse of old!

When thy high battlements and bulging domes,

By sunset purpled, trembled in the wave!

Now o’er thy towers the Lord hath spread His hand,

And as a cottage shalt thou be removed;

Like Nineveh, or cloudy Babylon!

DAVID GRAY.

SPECTRAL VENICE

‘I know another sight,’ said the Moon, ‘the spectre of a city. Whenever the jetty fountains splash into the marble basins, they seem to me to be telling the story of the floating city. Yes, the spouting water may tell of her, the waves of the sea may sing of her fame! On the surface of the ocean a mist often rests, and this is her widow’s veil. The Bridegroom of the Sea is dead; his palace and his city are his mausoleum. Dost thou know this city? She has never heard the rolling of wheels or the hoof-tread of horses in her streets, through which the fish swim, while the black gondola glides spectrally over the green water. I will show you the place,’ continued the Moon, ‘the largest square in it, and you will fancy yourself transported into the city of a fairy-tale. The grass grows rank among the broad flag-stones, and in the morning twilight thousands of tame pigeons flutter around the solitary lofty tower. On three sides you find yourself surrounded by cloistered walks. In these the silent Turk sits smoking his long pipe; the handsome Greek leans against the pillar, and gazes at the upraised trophies and lofty masts, memorials of power that is gone. The flags hang down like mourning scarves. A girl rests there; she has put down her heavy pails filled with water, the yoke with which she has carried them rests on one of her shoulders, and she leans against the mast of victory. This is not a fairy-palace you see before you yonder, but a church; the gilded domes and shining orbs flash back my beams; the glorious bronze horses up yonder have made journeys, like the bronze horse in the fairy-tale; they have come hither, and gone hence, and have returned again. Do you notice the variegated splendour of the walls and windows? It looks as if Genius had followed the caprices of a child, in the adornment of these singular temples. Do you see the winged lion on the pillar? The gold glitters still, but his wings are tied; the lion is dead, for the King of the Sea is dead; the great halls stand desolate, and where gorgeous painting hung of yore, the naked wall now peers through. The lazzaroni sleeps under the arcade, whose pavement in old times was to be trodden only by the feet of the high nobility. From the deep wells, and perhaps from the prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the mandolino was heard in gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the Queen of the Seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of thy bridegroom—the marble, spectral Venice!’

HANS ANDERSEN.

A REVERIE IN VENICE

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;

A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise

As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand

Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O’er the far times when many a subject land

Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was; her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.

In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,

And silent rows the songless gondolier;

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,

And music meets not always now the ear:

Those days are gone—but beauty still is here.

States fall, arts fade—but Nature doth not die,

Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,

The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond

Her name in story, and her long array

Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond

Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;

Ours is a trophy which will not decay

With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,

And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away—

The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er.

For us repeopled were the solitary shore....

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;

And annual marriage now no more renewed,

The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,

Neglected garment of her widowhood!

St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood

Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,

Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,

And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour

When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns—

An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;

Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains

Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt

From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt

The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt:

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,

Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;

But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?

Are they not bridled?—Venice, lost and won,

Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,

Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!

Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,

Even in Destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,

From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

In youth she was all glory,—a new Tyre,—

Her very byword sprung from victory,

The ‘Planter of the Lion,’ which through fire

And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea;

Though making many slaves, herself still free,

And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite:

Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye

Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight!

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

Statues of glass—all shivered—the long file

Of her dead doges are declined to dust;

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile

Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;

Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,

Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,

Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must

Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,

Have flung a desolate cloud o’er Venice’ lovely walls.

When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,

And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,

Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,

Her voice their only ransom from afar:

See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car

Of the o’ermastered victor stops, the reins

Fall from his hands—his idle scimitar

Starts from his belt—he rends his captive’s chains,

And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,

Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,

Thy choral memory of the bard divine,

Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot

Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot

Is shameful to the nations,—most of all,

Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not

Abandon Ocean’s children: in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

I loved her from my boyhood: she to me

Was as a fairy city of the heart,

Rising like water-columns from the sea,

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;

And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s art,

Had stamped her image in me, and e’en so,

Although I found her thus, we did not part,

Perchance e’en dearer in her day of woe,

Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

I can repeople with the past—and of

The present there is still for eye and thought,

And meditation chastened down, enough;

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;

And of the happiest moments which were wrought

Within the web of my existence, some

From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:

There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,

Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

LORD BYRON.

IN PRAISE OF VENICE

Though the incomparable and most decantated majestie of this citie doth deserve a farre more elegant and curious pensill to paint her out in her colours then mine. For I ingenuously confess mine owne insufficiency and unworthiness, as being the unworthiest of ten thousand to describe so beautiful, so renowned, so glorious a Virgin (for by that title doth the world most deservedly stile her), because my rude and unpolished pen may rather staine and eclipse the resplendent rays of her unparalleled beauty, then adde any lustre unto it; yet since I have hitherto contrived this slender and naked narration of my observations of five moneths travels in forraine countries, this noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my journey, partly because shee gave me most loving and kinde entertainment for the space of sixe weeks, which was the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) for so much that ever I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered unto me more variety of remarkable and delicious objects then mine eyes ever survayed in any citie before, or ever shall, if I should with famous Sir John Mandevil our English Ulysses spend thirty whole yeares together in travelling over most places of the Christian and Ethnicke world. Therefore omitting tedious introductions, I will descend to the description of this thrise worthie citie: the fairest Lady, yea the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome. (I call her not thus in respect of any soveraignty that she hath over other nations, in which sense Rome was in former times called Queene of the world, but in regard of her incomparable situation, surpassing wealth, and most magnificent buildings.) Such is the rareness of the situation of Venice, that it doth even amaze and drive into admiration all strangers that upon their first arrivall behold the same. For it is built altogether upon the water in the innermost gulfe of the Adriatique Sea which is commonly called Gulfo di Venetia, and is distant from the maine sea about the space of three miles.... The city is divided in the middest by a goodly faire channel, which they call Canal il Grande. The same is crooked, and made in the form of a Roman S. It is in length a thousand and three hundred paces, and in breadth at least forty, in some places more. The sixe parts of the City whereof Venice consisteth, are situate on both sides of this Canal il Grande. The names of them are these, St. Marco, Castello, Canareio, that lie on one side of it, and those on the other side are called St. Polo, St. Croce, Dorso Duro. Also both sides of this channel are adorned with many sumptuous and magnificent Palaces that stand very neare to the water, and make a very glorious and beautifull shew. For many of them are of a great height, three or foure stories high, most being built with bricke, and some few with faire free stone. Besides, they are adorned with a great multitude of stately pillars made partly of white stone, and partly of Istrian marble.... There is only one bridge to go over the great channell, which is the same that leadeth from St. Marks to the Rialto, and joyneth together both the banks of the channell. This bridge is commonly called Ponte de Rialto, and is the fairest bridge by many degrees for one arch that ever I saw, read, or heard of. For it is reported that it cost about fourescore thousand crownes, which doe make foure and twenty thousand pounds sterling. Truely, the exact view hereof ministered unto me no small matter of admiration to see a bridge of that length (for it is two hundred foote long, the channell being at the least forty paces broade as I have before written) so curiously compacted together with only one arch; and it made me presently call to minde that most famous bridge of the Emperour Trajan, so celebrated by the auncient historians, especially that worthy Greeke Authour Dion Cassius, which he built over the river Danubius, to enter the country of Dacia.... But this incomparable one-arched bridge of the Rialto doth farre excell the fairest arch of Trajans both in length and breadth. For this is both forty foote longer than the arch of his bridge was, and a hundred foote brooder, as I will anon declare in the more particular description thereof. But in height I believe it is a little inferiour to the other. I will proceede with the description of this peereless bridge of Venice. It was first built but with timber (as I heard divers Venetian gentlemen report), but because that was not correspondent to the magnificence of the other parts of the City, they defaced that, and built this most sumptuous bridge with squared white stone, having two faire rowes of pretty little houses for artificers, which are only shops, not dwelling houses. Of these shops there are two rowes in each side of the bridge till you come to the toppe. On that side of this bridge which is towards St. Marks, there are ten severall ascents of staires to the toppe, on the other side towards the Rialto twelve ascents. Likewise, behind these shops there are very faire staires to the toppe, which doe reach in length from the back of them to the farthest edge of the bridge.... At the toppe of the bridge directly above these rowes of buildings that I have spoken of, wherein the artificers shops are, there are advanced two faire arches to a prety convenient height which doe greatly adorne the bridge. In these arches I saw the portraiture of the heads of two Hunnicall Gyants that came into Italy with King Attila, very exactly made in the inside of the toppe. There are in Venice thirteen ferries or passages, which they commonly call Traghetti, where passengers may be transported in a Gondola to what place of the City they will.... Certaine little boates which they call Gondolas [are] the fayrest that ever I saw in any place. For none of them are open above, but fairly covered, first with some fifteene or sixteen little round peeces of timber that reach from one end to the other, and make a pretty kinde of Arch or vault in the Gondola; then with faire blacke cloth which is turned up at both ends of the boate, to the end that if the passenger meaneth to be private, he may draw downe the same, and after row so secretly that no man can see him: in the inside the benches are finely covered with blacke leather, and the bottomes of many of them together with the sides under the benches are very neatly garnished with fine linnen cloth, the edge whereof is laced with bonelace: the ends are beautified with two pretty and ingenious devices. For each end hath a crooked thing made in the forme of a Dolphins tayle, with the fins very artifically represented, and it seemeth to be tinned over. The water-men that row these never sit as ours do in London, but alwaies stand, and that at the further end of the Gondola, sometimes one, but most commonly two; and in my opinion they are altogether as swift as our rowers about London.... The fairest place of all the citie (which is indeed of that admirable and incomparable beauty, that I thinke no place whatsoever eyther in Christendome or Paganisme may compare with it) is the Piazza, that is, the Market place of St. Marke, or (as our English merchants commorant in Venice, doe call it) the place of S. Marke, in Latin Forum, or Platea Di Marci. Truely such is the stupendious (to use a strange Epitheton for so strange and rare a place as this) glory of it, that at my first entrance thereof it did even amaze or rather ravish my senses. For here is the greatest magnificence of architecture to be seene, that any place under the sunne doth yeelde. Here you may both see all manner of fashions of attire, and heare all the languages of Christendome, besides those that are spoken by the barbarous Ethnickes; the frequencie of people being so great twise a day, betwixt sixe of the clocke in the morning and eleven, and againe betwixt five in the afternoon and eight, that (as an elegant writer saith of it) a man may very properly call it rather Orbis then Urbis forum, that is, a market place of the world, not of the citie.... But I will descend to the particular description of this peerelesse place, wherein if I seeme too tedious, I crave pardon of thee (gentle Reader) seeing the variety of curious objects which it exhibiteth to the spectator is such, that a man shall much wrong it to speake a little of it. The like tediousenesse thou art like to finde also in my description of the Duke’s Palace, and St. Markes Church, which are such glorious workes, that I endeavoured to observe as much of them as I might, because I knew it was uncertaine whether I should ever see them againe, though I hoped for it. This street of St. Marke seemeth to be but one, but if the beholder doth exactly view it, he will finde that it containeth foure distinct and severall streetes in it, which I will thus divide: The first is that which reacheth from the front of St. Markes Church to the opposite front of St. Geminians Church. The second from that notable clocke at the cumming into St. Markes from the Merceria to the two lofty marble pillars neare to the shore of the Adriatique Gulfe. These two streetes doe seeme to contend for the superiority, but the first (in my opinion) is the fairest of them. The third reacheth from the bridge neare to the prison, along by the South side of the Dukes Palace, and so by the Sea shore, to the end of that stately building a little beyond the foresaid pillars. The fourth and the last from one side of St. Markes Church to the Canons houses. The first of these is beyond all comparison the fairest of all Europe. For it hath two such magnificent fronts or rowes of buildings on the North and South sides opposite each other, especially that on the North side, that they drove me into great admiration, and so I thinke they doe all other strangers that behold the same.... The fairest streete of all Venice saving Sainte Markes, which I have already described, is that adjoyning to St. Markes place which is called the Merceria, which name it hath because many Mercers dwell there, as also many Stationers, and sundry other artificers. This streete reacheth from almost the hither side of the Rialto bridge to Saint Markes, being of goodly length, but not altogether of the broadest, yet of breadth convenient enough in some places for five or sixe persons to walke together side by side; it is paved with bricke, and adorned with many faire buildings of a competent height on both sides; there is a very faire gate at one end of this street even as you enter into St. Markes place when you come from the Rialto bridge, which is decked with a great deale of faire marble, in which gate are two pretty conceits to be observed, the one at the very top, which is a clocke with the images of two wilde men by it made in brasse, a witty device and very exactly done.... The other conceit that is to be observed in this gate is the picture of the Virgin Mary made in a certaine dore above a faire Dial, neare to whom on both sides of her are painted two Angels on two little dores more. These dores upon any principall holiday doe open themselves, and immediately there come forth two Kings to present themselves to our Lady, unto whom, after they have done their obeysance by uncovering of their heads, they returne, againe into their places: in the front of this sumptuous gate are presented the twelve celestial signes, with the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, most excellently handled.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

BEAUTIFUL VENICE

Beautiful Venice,

Fair City of Song!

What memories of old

To thy regions belong:

What sweet recollections

Cling to my heart

As thy fast-fading shores

From my vision depart!

Oh, sweet poesie’s home

Is thy light colonnades,

Where winds gently sigh

As the sweet twilight fades.

I have known many homes,

But the dwelling for me

Is beautiful Venice,

The bride of the sea!

Beautiful Venice,

Queen of the earth!

Where dark eyes shine bright

Amid music and mirth;

Where gay serenaders

By light of the star

Oft mingle their songs

With the dulcet guitar.

All that’s lovely in life,

All that’s deathless in song,

Venetia’s fair isles,

To thy regions belong.

J. E. CARPENTER.

THAT GLORIOUS CITY IN THE SEA

There is a glorious City in the Sea.

The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,

Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed

Clings to the marble of her palaces.

No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,

Lead to her gates. The path lies o’er the sea,

Invisible; and from the land we went

As to a floating city—steering in,

And gliding up her streets as in a dream,

So smoothly, silently—by many a dome,

Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,

The statues ranged along an azure sky;

By many a pile in more than Eastern pride,

Of old the residence of merchant-kings;

The fronts of some, though time had shattered them,

Still glowing with the richest hues of art,

As though the wealth within them had run o’er....

Gliding on,

At length we leave the river for the sea.

At length a voice aloft proclaims ‘Venezia!’

And, as called forth, She comes.

A few in fear,

Flying away from him whose boast it was[1]

That the grass grew not where his horse had trod,

Gave birth to Venice. Like the water-fowl,

They built their nests among the ocean-waves;

And where the sands were shifting, as the wind

Blew from the north or south—where they that came

Had to make sure the ground they stood upon,

Rose, like an exhalation from the deep,

A vast Metropolis, with glistering spires,

With theatres, basilicas adorned;

A scene of light and glory, a dominion,

That has endured the longest among men.

And whence the talisman, whereby she rose,

Towering? ’Twas found there in the barren sea.

What led to Enterprise; and, far or near,

Who met not the Venetian?—now among

The Ægean Isles, steering from port to port,

Landing and bartering; now, no stranger there,

In Cairo, or without the eastern gate

Ere yet the cafila came, listening to hear

Its bells approaching from the Red Sea coast;

Then on the Euxine, and that smaller Sea

Of Azoph, in close converse with the Russ

And Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving

Pearls from the Persian Gulf, gems from Golconde;

Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love,

From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round,

When in the rich bazaar he saw, displayed,

Treasures from climes unknown, he asked and learnt,

And, travelling slowly upward, drew ere long

From the well-head, supplying all below;

Making the Imperial City of the East,

Herself, his tributary.—If we turn

To those black forests, where, through many an age,

Night without day, no axe the silence broke,

Or seldom, save where Rhine or Danube rolled;

Where o’er the narrow glen a castle hangs,

And, like the wolf that hungered at his door,

The baron lived by rapine—there we meet,

In warlike guise, the caravan from Venice;

When on its march, now lost and now beheld,

A glittering file (the trumpet heard, the scout

Sent and recalled), but at a city-gate

All gaiety, and looked for ere it comes;

Winning regard with all that can attract,

Caegs, whence every wild cry of the desert,

Jugglers, stage-dancers. Well might Charlemain

And his brave peers, each with his visor up,

On their long lances lean and gaze awhile,

When the Venetian to their eyes disclosed

The wonders of the East! Well might they then

Sigh for new conquests!

Thus did Venice rise.

Thus flourish.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

[1] Attila.

THE FAIRY DAYS OF VENICE

The absence of horses and carriages and the resonance of the canal make Venice the most delightful city for unceasing songs and serenading. One must be an enthusiast indeed to fancy that the gondolier choruses are better than those of the opera at Paris, as I have heard asserted by some individuals of a particularly happy temperament, but it is quite certain that one of those choruses, heard from afar under the arcades of these Moorish palaces, looking so white in the moon’s rays, gives more pleasure even than better music executed under a colonnade formed of painted canvas. These rough uncultivated dilettanti shout in tune and time; and the calm marble echoes prolong these rude and grave harmonies, like the winds over the sea. The magic of acoustic effect, and the desire to hear some sort of harmony in the silence of these enchanted nights, make one listen with indulgence, and almost I may say with gratitude, to the humblest melody which floats by, and is lost in the distance.... Fairy days of Venice.... No one has ever said enough of the beauty of the heavens, and the delights of the night at Venice. The lagoon is so calm, that in fine evenings, the stars do not even tremble on its surface. When you are in the midst, it is so blue, so quiet that the outline of the horizon cannot be distinguished, and the waves and the heavens form an azure veil, where reverie loses itself and sleeps. The atmosphere is so transparent, so pure that thousands more stars may be seen, than in our North of France. I have seen here, nights, when the silvery lustre of the stars occupied more space in the firmament than the blue of the atmosphere. It was a galaxy of diamonds giving almost as good a light as the moon at Paris.... Here Nature, more powerful in her influence, perhaps, imposes too much silence on the mind; she sends all thought to sleep, but agitates the heart, and dominates the senses. One must not even dream, unless one is a man of genius, of writing poems during these voluptuous nights: one must love or sleep.

As for sleeping, there is a most delicious spot: the platform of white marble which descends from the Viceroy’s gardens to the canal. When the ornamented gate is shut on the garden-side, one can go in a gondola to these steps, still warm from the rays of the setting sun, and remain without being interrupted by any inopportune stroller, unless he be endowed with the faith so much needed by St. Peter. Many hours have I passed there alone, thinking of nothing, whilst Catullo and his gondola slumbered in the midst of the waters, within call.

When the breath of midnight passes over the linden-trees, and scatters their blossoms over the waters, when the perfume of wallflowers and geraniums rises in gusts, as though the earth gave forth her sighs of fragrance to the moon; when the cupolas of St. Mary raise towards heaven their alabaster hemispheres and their turban-crowned minarets; when all is white, the water, the sky, the marble, the three elements of Venice, and when from the tower of St. Mark a giant sound hovers over my head, then I begin to feel life through every pore, and evil be to him who should then come to make an appeal to my soul! I vegetate, I repose, I forget. Who would not do the same in my place?... I defy anyone, no matter who, to prevent me from sleeping happily when I see Venice, so impoverished, so oppressed, so miserable, still so beautiful, so calm, in spite of men and of time. Behold her, round me, admiring herself in the lagoons with the air of a sultana; and this populace of fishermen, sleeping on the pavement, winter as well as summer, with no other pillow than one of granite, no other mattress than a tattered cloak; is not such a populace a great example of philosophy? When it has no longer wherewithal to purchase a pound of rice, it sings a chorus to drive away the pangs of hunger; thus braving masters and misery, as it used to brave cold, heat, and the sudden tempest. It would require many years of slavery to imbrute entirely this careless frivolous character, so accustomed for many years to be nourished with fêtes and diversions. Existence is still so easy at Venice!

GEORGE SAND.

VENICE THE PROUD

Venice exult! and o’er thy moonlight seas,

Swell with gay strains each Adriatic breeze!

What though long fled those years of martial fame,

That shed romantic lustre o’er thy name:

Though to the winds thy streamers idly play,

And the wild waves another Queen obey;

Though quenched the spirit of thine ancient race,

And power and freedom scarce have left a trace;

Yet still shall Art her splendours round thee cast,

And gild the wreck of years for ever past.

Again thy fanes may boast a Titian’s dyes,

Whose clear soft brilliance emulates thy skies,

And scenes that glow in colouring’s richest bloom,

With life’s warm flush Palladian halls illume,

From thy rich dome again th’ unrivalled steed

Starts to existence, rushes into speed,

Still for Lysippus claims the wreath of fame,

Panting with ardour, vivified with flame.

Proud Racers of the Sun! to fancy’s thought,

Burning with spirit, from his essence caught,

No mortal birth ye seem—but formed to bear

Heaven’s car of triumph through the realms of air;

To range uncurbed the pathless fields of space,

The winds your rivals in the glorious race;

Traverse empyreal spheres with buoyant feet,

Free as the zephyr, as the shot-star fleet;

And waft through worlds unknown the vital ray,

The flame that wakes creations into day.

Creatures of fire and ether! winged with light,

To track the regions of the Infinite!

From purer elements whose light was drawn,

Sprung from the sunbeam, offspring of the dawn,

What years on years, in silence gliding by,

Have spared those forms of perfect symmetry!

Moulded by Art to dignify alone,

Her own bright deity’s resplendent throne,

Since first her skill their fiery grace bestowed,

Meet for such lofty fate, such high abode,

How many a race, whose tales of glory seem

An echo’s voice—the music of a dream,

Whose records feebly from oblivion save,

A few bright traces of the wise and brave:

How many a state, whose pillared strength sublime,

Defied the storms of war, the waves of time,

Towering o’er earth majestic and alone,

Fortress of power—has flourished and is gone!

And they, from clime to clime by conquest borne,

Each fleeting triumph destined to adorn,

They, that of powers and kingdoms lost and won,

Have seen the noontide and the setting sun,

Consummate still in every grace remain,

As o’er their heads had ages rolled in vain!

Ages, victorious in their ceaseless flight,

O’er countless monuments of earthly might!

While she, from fair Byzantium’s lost domain,

Who bore those treasures to her ocean-reign,

’Midst the blue deep, who reared her island-throne,

And called th’ infinitude of waves her own;

Venice the proud, the Regent of the sea,

Welcomes in chains the trophies of the Free!

MRS. HEMANS.

THIS LOVELY VENICE!

St. Mark’s Place, after all I had read and all I had heard of it, exceeded expectation; such a cluster of excellence, such a constellation of artificial beauties, my mind had never ventured to excite the idea of within herself.... Whoever sees St. Mark’s Place lighted up of an evening, adorned with every excellence of human art and pleasure, expressed by intelligent countenances sparkling with every grace of nature; the sea washing its walls, the moonbeams dancing on its subjugated waves, sport and laughter resounding from the cafés, girls with guitars skipping about the square, masks and merry-makers singing as they pass you, unless a barge with a band of music is heard at some distance upon the water, and calls attention to sounds made sweeter by the element over which they are brought—whoever is led suddenly, I say, to this scene of seemingly perennial gaiety, will be apt to cry out of Venice, ...

‘With thee conversing, I forget all time,

All seasons and their change—all please alike.’

For it is sure there are in this town many astonishing privations of all that are used to make other places delightful; and as poor Omai, the savage, said, when about to return to Otaheite: ‘No horse there, no ass, no cow, no golden pippins, no dish of tea.... I am always so content there, though.’ It is really just so one lives at this lovely Venice. One has heard of a horse being exhibited there, and yesterday I watched the poor people paying a penny a-piece for the sight of a stuffed one.... The view of Venice from the Zuecca would invite one never more to stray from it, farther, at least, than to St. George’s Church, on another little opposite island, whence the prospect is surely wonderful.... On Saturday next I am to forsake—but I hope not for ever—this gay, this gallant city, so often described, so certainly admired—seen with rapture, quitted with regret. Seat of enchantment! head-quarters of pleasure, farewell!

MRS. PIOZZI (1785).

TO VENICE

‘Questi palazzi, e queste logge or colte.’

These marble domes, by wealth and genius graced,

With sculptured forms, bright hues, and Parian stone,

Were once rude cabins ’midst a lonely waste,

Wild shores of solitude, and isles unknown.

Pure from each vice, ’twas here a venturous train

Fearless in fragile barks explored the sea;

Not theirs a wish to conquer or to reign,

They sought these island-precincts—to be free.

Ne’er in their souls ambition’s flame arose,

No dream of avarice broke their calm repose;

Fraud, more than death, abhorred each artless breast;

Oh! now, since Fortune gilds their brightening day,

Let not those virtues languish and decay,

O’erwhelmed by luxury, and by wealth opprest!

MRS. HEMANS.

From the Italian of ‘Della Casa.’

VENICE: THAT RARE CITY

I have now a good while since taken footing in Venice, this admired maiden city, so called because she was never deflowered by any enemy since she had a being, nor since her Rialto was first erected, which is now above twelve ages ago.

I protest unto you at my first landing I was for some days ravished with the high beauty of this maid, with her lovely countenance. I admired her magnificent buildings, her marvellous situation, her dainty smooth neat streets, whereon you may walk most days in the year in a silk stocking and satin slippers, without soiling them, nor can the streets of Paris be so foul, as these are fair....

Give me leave to salute you first in these sapphics.

‘Insulam tendens iter ad Britannam

Charta, de paucis volo, siste gressum,

Verba Mansello, bene noscis illum,

Talia perfer.

‘Finibus longe patriis Hoellus

Dimorans, quantis Venetum superba

Civitas leucis Doroberniensi

Distat ab urbe;

‘Plurimum mentis tibi vult salutem,

Plurimum cordis tibi vult vigorem,

Plurimum sortis tibi vult favorem

Regis et Aulæ.’

These wishes come to you from Venice, a place where there is nothing wanting that heart can wish; renowned Venice, the admiredst city in the world, a city that all Europe is bound unto, for she is her greatest rampart against that huge eastern tyrant the Turk by sea, else I believe he had overrun all Christendom by this time. Against him this city hath performed notable exploits, and not only against him, but divers other. She hath restored emperors to their throne, and popes to their chairs, and with her galleys often preserved Saint Peter’s barque from sinking: for which, by way of reward, one of his successors espoused her to the sea, which marriage is solemnly renewed every year in solemn profession by the Doge and all the Clarissimos, and a gold ring cast into the sea out of the great galleasse, called the Bucentoro, wherein the first ceremony was performed by the Pope himself, above three hundred years since, and they say it is the self-same vessel still, though often put upon the careen and trimmed. This made me think on that famous ship at Athens; nay, I fell upon an abstracted notion in philosophy, and a speculation touching the body of man, which being in perpetual flux, and a kind of succession of decays, and consequently requiring ever and anon a restoration of what it loseth of the virtue of the former ailment, and what was converted after the third concoction into blood and fleshly substance, which, as in all other sublunary bodies that have internal principles of heart, uses to transpire, breathe out, and waste away through invisible pores by exercise, motion, and sleep to make room still for a supply of new nourriture. I fell, I say, to consider whether our bodies may be said to be of like condition with this Bucentoro, which, though it be reputed still the same vessel, yet I believe there’s not a foot of that timber remaining which it had upon the first dock, having been, as they tell me, so often planked and ribbed, caulked and pierced. In like manner our bodies may be said to be daily repaired by new sustenance, which begets new blood, and consequently new spirits, new humours, and I may say new flesh, the old by continual deperdition and insensible transpirations evaporating still out of us, and giving way to stress; so that I make a question, whether by reason of these perpetual preparations and accretions the body of man may be said to be the same numerical body in his old age that he had in his manhood, or the same in his manhood that he had in his youth, the same in his youth that he carried about him in his childhood, or the same in his childhood which he wore first in the womb. I make a doubt whether I had the same identical individually numerical body when I carried a calf-leather satchel to school in Hereford, as when I wore a lambskin hood in Oxford, or whether I have the same mass of blood in my veins, and the same flesh now in Venice which I carried about me three years since up and down London streets, having in lieu of beer and ale drunk wine all this while, and fed upon different viands; now the stomach is like a crucible, for it hath a chemical kind of virtue to transmute one body into another, to transubstantiate fish and fruits into flesh within, and about us; but though it be questionable whether I wear the same flesh which is fluxible, I am sure my hair is not the same, for you may remember I went flaxen-haired out of England, but you shall find me returned with a very dark brown, which I impute not only to the heat and air of those hot countries I have ate my bread in, but to the quality and difference of food; but you will say that hair is but an excrementitious thing, and makes not to this purpose; moreover, methinks I hear you say that this may be true, only in the blood and spirits, or such fluid parts, not in the solid and heterogeneal parts; but I will press no further at this time this philosophical notion which the sight of Bucentoro infused into me, for it hath already made me exceed the bounds of a letter, and I fear me to trespass too much upon your patience. I leave the further disquisition of this point to your own contemplations, who are a far riper philosopher than I, and have waded deeper into, and drunk more of Aristotle’s Well; but ... though it be doubtful whether I carry about me the same body or no, in all points that I had in England, I am well assured I bear still the same mind, and therein I verify the old verse—

‘Cœlum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt.’

‘The air but not the mind they change,

Who in outlandish countries range.’ ...

She [Venice] was built of the ruins of Aquileia and Padua, for when those swarms of tough northern people overran Italy under the conduct of that scourge of heaven Attila, with others, and that this soft voluptuous nation, after so long a desuetude from arms, could not repel their fury, many of the ancient nobility and gentry fled into these lakes and little islands, amongst the fishermen for their security, and finding the air good and commodious for habitation, they began to build upon those small islands, whereof there are in all three-score; and in tract of time, they conjoined and leagued them together by bridges, whereof there are now above eight hundred, and this makes up the city of Venice, who is now above twelve ages old, and was contemporary with the monarchy of France; but the signiory glorieth in one thing above the monarchy, that she was born a Christian, but the monarchy not. Though this city be thus hemmed in with the sea, yet she spreads her wings far wide upon the shore; she hath in Lombardy six considerable towns—Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, Crema, and Bergamo; she hath in the Marquisat, Bassan and Castlefranco; she hath all Friuli and Istria; she commands the shores of Dalmatia and Slavonia; she keeps under the power of Saint Mark, the islands of Corfu (anciently Corcyria), Cephalonia, Zant, Cerigo, Lucerigo, and Candy (Jove’s Cradle); she had a long time the kingdom of Cyprus, but it was quite rent from her by the Turk, which made that high-spirited Bassa, being taken prisoner at the Battle of Lepanto, where the grand signior lost above 200 galleys, to say, ‘That that defeat to his great master was but like the shaving of his beard or the paring of his nails; but the taking of Cyprus was like the cutting off of a limb, which will never grow again.’ This mighty potentate being so near a neighbour to her, she is forced to comply with him and give him an annual present in gold: she hath about thirty galleys most part of the year in course to scour and secure the gulf; she entertains by land in Lombardy and other parts 25,000 foot, besides some of the cantons of Suisses whom she gives pay unto; she hath also in constant pay 600 men of arms, and every one of these must keep two horses a-piece, for which they are allowed 120 ducats a year, and they are for the most part gentlemen of Lombardy. When they have any great expedition to make, they have always a stranger for their general, but he is supervised by two proveditors, without whom he cannot attempt anything.

Her great Council consists of above 2,000 gentlemen, and some of them meet every Sunday and holiday to choose officers and magistrates, and every gentleman being past twenty-five years of age is capable to sit in this Council. The Doge or Duke (their sovereign magistrate) is chosen by lots, which would be too tedious here to demonstrate, and commonly he is an aged man who is created, like that course they hold in the popedom. When he is dead there be inquisitors that examine his actions, and his misdemeanours are punishable in his heirs. There is a superintendent council of ten, and six of them may dispatch business without the Doge, but the Doge never without some of them, not as much as open a letter from any foreign state, though addressed to himself, which makes him to be called by other princes, Testa di legno, a head of wood.

The wealth of this republic hath been at a stand, or rather declining, since the Portugal found a road to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; for this city was used to fetch all those spices and other Indian commodities from the grand Cairo down the Nile, being formerly carried to Cairo from the Red Sea upon camels’ and dromedaries’ backs, three score days’ journey; and so Venice used to dispense those commodities through all Christendom, which not only the Portugal, but the English and Hollander, now transport, and are masters of the trade. Yet there is no outward appearance at all of poverty, or any decay in this city, but she is still gay, flourishing, and fresh, and flowing with all kind of bravery and delight, which may be had at cheap rates....

I have now enough of the maiden city, and this week I am to go further into Italy; for though I have been a good while in Venice, yet I cannot say I have been hitherto upon the continent of Italy: for this city is nought else but a knot of islands in the Adriatic Sea, joined in one body by bridges, and a good way distant from the firm land. I have lighted upon very choice company, your cousin Brown and Master Web, and we all take the road of Lombardy, but we made an order amongst ourselves that our discourse be always in the language of the country, under penalty of a forfeiture, which is to be indispensably paid. Randal Symns made us a curious feast lately, where in a cup of the richest Greek we had your health, and I could not tell whether the wine or the remembrance of you was sweeter; for it was naturally a kind of aromatic wine, which left a fragrant perfuming kind of farewell behind it. I have sent you a runlet of it in the ship Lion, and if it come safe, and unpricked, I pray bestow some bottles upon the lady (you know) with my humble service.... Before I conclude I will acquaint you with a common saying that is used of this dainty city of Venice:

‘Venetia, Venetia, chi non te vede non te pregia,

Ma chi t’ha troppo veduto te dispreggia.’

Englished and rhymed thus (though I know you need no translation, you understand so much of Italian):

‘Venice, Venice, none thee unseen can prize,

Who hath seen too much will thee despise.’

I will conclude with that famous hexastic which Sannazaro made of this rare city, which pleaseth me much better:

‘Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis

Stare urbem, et toti ponere jura Mari;

Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantum vis, Jupiter, Arces

Objice, et illa tui mænia Martis ait,

Sic Pelago Tibrim præfers, urbem aspice utramque,

Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse Deos.’

‘When Neptune saw in Adrian surges stand

Venice, and gave the sea laws of command:

Now Jove, said he, object thy Capitol,

And Mars’ proud walls: this were for to extol

Tyber beyond the main; both towns behold;

Rome, men thou’lt say, Venice the Gods did mould.’

Sannazaro had given him by Saint Mark a hundred zecchins, for every one of these verses, which amounts to about 300 pounds. It would be long before the city of London would do the like. Witness that cold reward, or rather those cold drops of water which were cast upon my countryman, Sir Hugh Middleton, for bringing Ware River through her streets, the most serviceable and wholesomest benefit that ever she received.

JAMES HOWELL (1621).

VENISE

Dans Venise la rouge,

Pas un bateau qui bouge,

Pas un pêcheur dans l’eau,

Pas un falot.

Seul, assis à la grève,

Le grand lion soulève,

Sur l’horizon serein,

Son pied d’airain.

Autour de lui, par groupes,

Navires et chaloupes,

Pareils à des hérons

Couchés en ronds,

Dorment sur l’eau qui fume,

Et croisent dans la brume,

En légers tourbillons

Leurs pavillons.

La lune qui s’efface

Couvre son front qui passe

D’un nuage étoilé

Demi-voilé.

Ainsi, la dame abbesse

De Sainte-Croix rabaisse

Sa cape aux vastes plis

Sur son surplis,

Et les palais antiques,

Et les graves portiques,

Et les blancs escaliers

Des chevaliers,

Et les ponts, et les rues,

Et les mornes statues,

Et le golfe mouvant

Qui tremble au vent,

Tout se tait, fors les gardes

Aux longues hallebardes,

Qui veillent aux créneaux

Des arsenaux.

—Ah! maintenant plus d’une

Attend, au clair de lune,

Quelque jeune muguet,

L’oreille au guet.

Pour le bal qu’ou prépare,

Plus d’une qui se pare,

Met devant son miroir

Le masque noir....

Et qui, dans l’Italie,

N’a son grain de folie?

Qui ne garde aux amours

Ses plus beaux jours?

Laissons la vieille horloge,

Au palais du vieux doge,

Lui compter de ses nuits

Les longs ennuis.

Comptons plutôt, ma belle,

Sur ta bouche rebelle,

Tant de baisers donnés.

Ou pardonnés.

Comptons plutôt tes charmes,

Comptons les douces larmes

Qu’à nos yeux a coûtè

La volupté!

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

A PEERLESS CITY

Safe at Venice. A place whose strange and passing beauty is well known to thee by report of our mariners. Dost mind too how Peter would oft fill our ears withal, we handed beneath the table, and he still discoursing of this sea-enthroned and peerless city, in shape a bow, and its great canal and palaces on piles, and its watery ways plied by scores of gilded boats; and that market-place of nations, orbis, non urbis, forum, St. Mark his place? And his statue with the peerless jewels in his eyes, and the lion at his gate? But I, lying at my window in pain, may see none of these beauties as yet, but only a street, fairly paved, which is dull, and houses with oiled paper and linen, in lieu of glass, which is rude; and the passers-by, their habits and their gestures, wherein they are superfluous. Therefore, not to miss my daily comfort of whispering to thee, I will e’en turn mine eyes inward, and bind my sheaves of wisdom reaped by travel. For I love thee so, that no treasure pleases me not shared with thee; and what treasure so good and enduring as knowledge? This then have I, Sir Footsore, learned, that each nation hath its proper wisdom, and its proper folly; and methinks, could a great king, or duke, tramp like me, and see with his own eyes, he might pick the flowers, and eschew the weeds of nations, and go home and set his own folk on Wisdom’s hill....

The Italians are a polished and subtle people. They judge a man, not by his habits, but his speech and gesture. Here Sir Chough may by no means pass for falcon gentle, as did I in Germany, pranked in my noble servant’s feathers. Wisest of all nations in their singular temperance of food and drink. Most foolish of all to search strangers coming into their borders, and stay them from bringing much money in. They should rather invite it, and like other nations, let the traveller from taking of it out. Also here in Venice the dames turn their black hair yellow by the sun and art, to be wiser than Him who made them. Ye enter no Italian town without a bill of health, though now is no plague in Europe. This peevishness is for extortion’s sake. The innkeepers cringe and fawn, and cheat, and in country places, murder you. Yet will they give you clean sheets by paying therefor. Delicate in eating, and abhor from putting their hand in the plate; sooner they will apply a crust or what not. They do even tell of a cardinal at Rome, which armeth his guest’s left hand with a little bifurcal dagger to hold the meat, while his knife cutteth it. But methinks this, too, is to be wiser than Him, who made the hand so supple and prehensile....

Their bread is lovely white. Their meats they spoil with sprinkling cheese over them; O, perversity! Their salt is black; without a lie. In commerce these Venetians are masters of the earth and sea; and govern their territories wisely.... Also, in religion, they hang their cloth according to the wind, siding now with the Pope, now with the Turk; but aye with the god of traders, mammon hight. Shall flower so cankered bloom to the world’s end? But since I speak of flowers, this none may deny them, that they are most cunning in making roses and gilliflowers to blow unseasonably. In summer they nip certain of the budding roses and water them not. Then in winter they dig round these discouraged plants, and put in cloves; and so with great art rear sweet-scented roses, and bring them to market in January....

Sweetheart, I must be brief, and tell thee but a part of that I have seen, for this day my journal ends. To-night it sails for thee, and I, unhappy, not with it, but to-morrow, in another ship, to Rome.

Dear Margaret, I took a hand litter, and was carried to St. Mark his church. Outside it, towards the market-place, is a noble gallery, and above it four famous horses, cut in brass by the ancient Romans, and seem all moving, and at the very next step must needs leap down on the beholder. About the church are six hundred pillars of marble, porphyry, and ophites. Inside is a treasure greater than either at St. Denys, or Loretto, or Toledo. Here a jewelled pitcher given the seigniory by a Persian king, also the ducal cap blazing with jewels, and on its crown a diamond and a chrysolite, each as big as an almond; two golden crowns and twelve golden stomachers studded with jewels, from Constantinople; item, a monstrous sapphire; item, a great diamond given by a French king; item, a prodigious carbuncle; item, three unicorns’ horns. But what are these compared with the sacred relics?

Dear Margaret, I stood and saw the brazen chest that holds the body of St. Mark the Evangelist. I saw with these eyes and handled his ring, and his gospel written with his own hand, and all my travels seemed light; for who am I that I should see such things? Dear Margaret, his sacred body was first brought from Alexandria by merchants in 810, and then not prized as now; for between 829, when this church was builded, and 1094, the very place where it lay was forgotten. Then holy priests fasted and prayed many days seeking for light, and lo! the Evangelist’s body brake at midnight through the marble and stood before them. They fell to the earth; but in the morning found the crevice the sacred body had burst through, and peering through it saw him lie. Then they took and laid him in his chest beneath the altar, and carefully put back the stone with its miraculous crevice, which crevice I saw, and shall gape for a monument while the world lasts. After that they showed me the Virgin’s chair, it is of stone; also her picture, painted by St. Luke, very dark, and the features now scarce visible. This picture, in time of drought, they carry in procession, and brings the rain. I wish I had not seen it. Item, two pieces of marble spotted with John the Baptist’s blood; item, a piece of the true cross, and of the pillar to which Christ was tied; item, the rock struck by Moses, and wet to this hour; also a stone Christ sat on, preaching at Tyre; but some say it is the one the patriarch Jacob laid his head on, and I hold with them, by reason our Lord never preached at Tyre. Going hence, they showed me the state nursery for the children of those aphrodisian dames, their favourites. Here in the outer wall was a broad niche, and if they bring them so little as they can squeeze them through it alive, the bairn falls into a net inside, and the state takes charge of it, but if too big, their mothers must even take them home again, with whom abiding ’tis like to be mali corvi mali ovum. Coming out of the church we met them carrying in a corpse, with the feet and face bare. This I then first learned is Venetian custom, and sure no other town will ever rob them of it.... But what I most admired was to see over against the Duke’s palace a fair gallows in alabaster, reared express to bring him, and no other, for the least treason to the state; and there it stands in his eye whispering him memento mori. I pondered, and owned these signors my masters, who will let no man, not even their sovereign, be above the common weal.

CHARLES READE.

‘VENICE, WHOSE NAME DID ONCE ADORN THE WORLD’

Venice, whose name did once adorn the world,

Thou mightst have been all that thou ever wert,

In form and feature and material strength,

Up from the sea, which is thy pedestal,

Unto thy Campanile’s golden top,

And yet have never won the precious crown,

To be the loved of human hearts, to be

The wise man’s treasure now and evermore.

The ingenious boldness, the creative will,

Which from some weak uncertain plots of sand,

Cast up among the waters, could erect

Foundations firm as on the central ground;

The art which changed thy huts to palaces,

And bade the God of Ocean’s temples rise

Conspicuous far above the crystal plain,

The ever-active nerve of industry,

That bound the Orient to the Occident

In fruitful commerce, till thy lap was filled

With wealth, the while thy head was girt with power,

Each have their separate palm from wondering men ...

Prime model of a Christian commonwealth!

Thou wise simplicity, which present men

Calumniate, not conceiving; joy is mine,

That I have read and learnt thee as I ought,

Not in the crude compiler’s painted shell,

But in thine own memorials of live stone,

And in the pictures of thy kneeling princes,

And in the lofty words on lofty tombs,

And in the breath of ancient chroniclers,

And in the music of the outer sea.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

THE BRIDE OF THE SEA

There are cities high over Orion

That jasper and sardonyx be;

Whose streets it were joy but to lie on,

Whose walls it were bliss but to see;

Many sumptuous cities fair Dian

Beholds over mountain and lea,

But the Bride, ’neath the wings of her Lion,—

Where is one such as she?

She is crowned with her triumphs and towers,

And blue run the veins in her arms;

Like the lotus, afloat with her flowers,

Her whiteness hath wonderous charms;

Delicious her lips are, with powers

Circean, yet void of alarms;

And the mortal that dreams of her bowers

Leaves his soul in her arms.

Yet should time, ever eager, though olden,

Her fairness despoil and depose;

Should her domes, which at evening are golden,

Dissolve as her Apennine snows;

Should the sceptre, which long she hath holden,

Depart, and the crown from her brows,

And the robes of her splendour be rolled in

The gray dust of her woes;

Should the glory grow dim of her Titians,

Her gondolas drift ’neath the moon;

Should her marbles, mosaics, Venetians,

Evanish and pass as a swoon;

Should her forehead, the fairest of visions,

Sink under the silent lagoon,

And the sea, tombing all her traditions,

Leave a waste for the loon;

Should she melt as a mist evanescent,

Or fade as a myth from a scroll,—

Yet her wraith would arise juvenescent,

Aglow with a great aureole;

Still her glamour eternally crescent,

Supreme o’er the spirit would roll;

And her Name, as a star iridescent,

Light the sky of the soul.

Though in regions celestial there are lands—

Bright lands it were bliss but to see,

Whose towers, built high over star lands,

Of beryl and sardonyx be:

Though cities in fabulous far lands

Loom fair over mountain and lea,—

Yet on earth, in her gloom, or her garlands,

Who so comely as she!

LLOYD MIFFLIN.

BROWNING’S VENICE

This is the loggia Browning loved,

High on the flank of the friendly town;

These are the hills that his keen eye roved,

The green like a cataract leaping down

To the plain that his pen gave new renown.

There to the West what a range of blue!—

The very background Titian drew

To his peerless Loves! O tranquil scene!

Who than thy poet fondlier knew

The peaks and the shore and the lore between!

See! yonder’s his Venice—the valiant Spire,

Highest one of the perfect three,

Guarding the others: the Palace choir

The Temple flashing with opal fire—

Bubble and foam of the sunlit sea.

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.

VENICE

If you would see Venice as she is,

Wander by night in silence and alone

Among her towers and sculptured palaces

And read the story she has writ in stone;

Then, as you read, she will upon you cast

The fascination of her wondrous past.

Muse on, and let the silent gondolier

Wind at his will ’mid tortuous, twisting ways

And broad lagoons, with waters wide and clear,

On whose unruffled breast the moonbeam plays;

And move not, speak not, for the mystery

Of Venice is with you on the sea.

Pass, if you will, beneath the five great domes

Of old Saint Mark’s; watch how the glittering height

Soars in quick curves; see how each sunbeam roams

And fills the nave with soft pure amber light;

This is the heart of Venice, and the tomb

Which folds her story in its sacred gloom.

So leave her sunlight, enter now her cells,

By frowning black-browed ports and massy bars,

Where pestilence in foul dank vapour dwells,

Far, far from sun and day, from moon and stars

The only sound when whispering waters glide

In on the bosom of a sluggish tide.

Then turn again into her solitudes,—

Things of to-day will faint and fade like smoke;—

Drift through the darkened nooks where silence broods,

Let memory fall upon you like a cloak:

Venice will rise around you as of old.

Decked out in marble, amethyst, and gold.

But that was years ago; to-day the notes

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.

The interior of St. Mark’s is full of interest, but not of beauty: it is dark and heavy, and ill-suited to the Catholic worship, for the massive piers that obstruct the view everywhere shut out the sight of ceremony and procession, as we witnessed at our leisure on the day of the great procession of Corpus Christi. But everywhere there are relics of gone-by art to be studied, from mosaics of the Greeks to mosaics of later artists than the Zuccati; old marble statues, embrowned like a meerschaum pipe; amazing sculptures in wood; Sansovino doors, ambitious to rival Ghiberti’s; transparent alabaster columns; an ancient Madonna, hung with jewels, transported from St. Sophia, in Constantinople; and everywhere the venerable pavement, once beautiful with its starry patterns in rich marble, now deadened and sunk to unevenness like the mud floor of a cabin.

Then outside, on the archway of the principal door, there are sculptures of a variety that makes one renounce the study of them in despair at the shortness of one’s time—blended fruits and foliage, and human groups and animal forms of all kinds. On our first morning we ascended the great tower, and looked around on the island-city and the distant mountains and the distant Adriatic. And on the same day we went to see the Pisani Palace—one of the grand old palaces that are going to decay.... After this we saw the Church of San Sebastiano, where Paul Veronese is buried, with his own paintings around, mingling their colour with the light that falls on his tombstone. There is one remarkably fine painting of his here: it represents, I think, some Saints going to martyrdom, but apart from that explanation, is a composition full of vigorous, spirited figures....

Santa Maria della Salute, built as an ex voto by the Republic on the cessation of the plague, is one of the most conspicuous churches in Venice, lifting its white cupolas close on the Grand Canal, where it widens out towards the Giudecca. Here there are various Tintorettos, but the only one which is not blackened so as to be unintelligible is the Cena, which is represented as a bustling supper-party, with attendants and sideboard accessories, in thoroughly Dutch fashion!... But of all Tintoretto’s paintings, the best preserved, and perhaps the most complete in execution, is the Miracle of St. Mark at the Accademia. We saw it the oftener because we were attracted to the Accademia again and again by Titian’s Assumption, which we placed next to Peter the Martyr among the pictures at Venice. For a thoroughly rapt expression I never saw anything equal to the Virgin in this picture; and the expression is the more remarkable because it is not assisted by the usual devices to express spiritual ecstasy, such as delicacy of feature and temperament or pale meagreness. Then what cherubs and angelic heads bathed in light! The lower part of the picture has no interest; the attitudes are theatrical; and the Almighty above is as unbeseeming as painted Almighties usually are: but the middle group falls short only of the Sistine Madonna.

Among the Venetian painters Giovanni Bellini shines with a mild, serious light that gives one an affectionate respect towards him. In the Church of the Scalzi there is an exquisite Madonna by him—probably his chef-d’œuvre—comparable to Raphael’s for sweetness.

And Palma Vecchio, too, must be held in grateful reverence for his Santa Barbara, standing in calm, grand beauty above an altar in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is an almost unique presentation of a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction.

We made the journey to Chioggia.... Of all dreamy delights, that of floating in a gondola along the canals and out on the lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night on the lagoon when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours: it is the sort of scene in which I could most readily forget my own existence, and feel melted into the general life.

Another charm of evening time was to walk up and down the Piazza of San Marco as the stars were brightening and look at the grand dim buildings, and the flock of pigeons flitting about them; or to walk on to the Bridge of La Paglia and look along the dark canal that runs under the Bridge of Sighs—its blackness lit up by a gaslight here and there, and the plash of the oar of blackest gondola slowly advancing....

Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across the green plains of Lombardy, which can hardly look tempting to an eye still filled with the dreamy beauty it has left behind.

GEORGE ELIOT’S LIFE AS RELATED IN HER
LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

BEFORE ‘A SURVEY OF THE CITY OF VENICE’

THAT EXQUISITE LARGE PEECE

Could any state on earth immortal be,

Venice by her rare Government is she....

Though, Syren-like, on shore and sea, her face

Enchants all those whom once she doth embrace.

Nor is there any can her beauty prize

But he who hath beheld her with his eyes....

Venus and Venice are, Great Queens in their degree;

Venus is Queen of love, Venice of policy.

JAMES HOWELL.

VENICE: THE GEM OF THE WORLD

AN EPITOME

Having now so amply declared unto you most of the principall things of this thrise-renowned and illustrious citie, I will briefly by way of epitome mention most of the other particulars thereof, and so finally shut up this narration: There are reported to be in Venice and the circumjacent islands two hundred Churches in which are one hundred forty three paire organs, fifty foure Monasteries, twenty sixe Nunneries, fifty sixe Tribunals or places of judgment, seventeene Hospitals, sixe Companies or Fraternities; one hundred sixty five marble statues of worthy personages, partly equestriall, partly pedestriall, which are erected in sundry places of the citie, to the honour of those that eyther at home have prudently administered the Commonweale, or abroad valiantly fought for the same. Likewise of brass there are twenty three, whereof one is that of Bartholomew Coleon. Also there are twentie seven publique clocks, ten brasen gates, a hundred and fourteene Towers for bels to hang in, ten brasen horses, one hundred fifty wels for the common use of the citizens, one hundred eighty five delectable gardens, ten thousand Gondolaes, foure hundred and fifty bridges partly stony, partly timber, one hundred and twenty Palaces, whereof one hundred are very worthy of that name, one hundred seventy foure courts: and the totall number of soules living in the citie and about the same is thought to be about five hundred thousand, something more or lesse. For sometimes there is a catalogue made of all the persons in the citie of what sexe or age soever they be; as we may reade there was heretofore in Rome in the time of Augustus Cæsar: and at the last view there were found in the whole city as many as I have before spoken.

Thus have I related unto thee as many notable matters of this noble citie, as either I could see with mine eyes, or heare from the report of credible and worthy persons, or derive from the monuments of learned and authenticke writers that I have found in the citie.... And so at length I finish the treatise of this incomparable city, this most beautifull Queene, this untainted virgine, the Paradise, the Tempe, this rich Diademe and most flourishing garland of Christendome: of which the inhabitants may as proudly vaunt, as I have reade the Persians have done of their Ormus, who say that if the world were a ring, then should Ormus be the gemme thereof: the same (I say) may the Venetians speake of their citie, and much more truely. The sight whereof hath yeelded unto me such infinite and unspeakable contentment (I must needes confesse) that even as Albertus Marquesse of Guasto said, were he put to his choice to be Lord of foure of the fairest cities of Italy, or the Arsenall of Venice, he would prefer the Arsenall: In like manner I say, that had there bin an offer made unto me before I took my journey to Venice, eyther that foure of the richest mannors of Somerset-shire (wherein I was borne) should be gratis bestowed upon me if I never saw Venice, or neither of them if I should see it; although certainly those mannors would do me much more good in respect of a state of livelyhood to live in the world, then the sight of Venice: yet notwithstanding, I will ever say while I live, that the sight of Venice and her resplendent beauty, antiquities, and monuments, hath by many degrees more contented my mind, and satisfied my desires, then those foure Lordshippes could possibly have done.

Thus much of the glorious citie of Venice.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

VENICE FROM THE SEA

Venus is the fair goddess,

Venice is the fair city;

Sweet star, town enchantress,

Pearls of love and of beauty.

Slumber you the still night through,

Cradled in the briny waters;

For you are sisters, both of you,

Of the ocean-foam were daughters.

IN GEORGE SAND’S ‘THE USCOQUE.’

Fayre Venice, flower of the last world’s delight.

EDW. SPENCER.

Faire Venice, like a spouse in Neptune’s armes.

JOHN HARRINGTON.

To taste in all their fulness his first impressions of Venice, the traveller should arrive there by sea, at mid-day, when the sun is high.... He who comes for the first time to Venice by this route realizes a dream—his only dream perhaps ever destined to be surpassed by the reality; and if he knows how to enjoy the things of Nature, if he can take delight in silver-grey and rose-coloured reflections in water, if he loves light and colour, the picturesque life of Italian squares and streets, the good humour of the people and their gentle speech, which seems like the twittering of birds, let him only allow himself to live for a little time under the sky of Venice, and he has before him a season of happiness without alloy.

CHARLES YRIARTE.

SAILING TOWARDS VENICE

To the sea, the wonderful sea!... To Venice, the strangely floating city, the queen of the Adriatic!... I knew perfectly that the north of Italy would present to me a new style of scenery. Venice itself was really so different to any other Italian city; a richly adorned bride for the mighty sea. The winged Venetian lion waved on the flag above me. The sails swelled in the wind, and concealed the coast from me. I sat upon the right side of the ship, and looked out across the blue, billowy sea; a young lad sat not far from me, and sang a Venetian song about the bliss of love and the shortness of life: ‘Kiss the red lips, on the morrow thou art with the dead; love whilst thy heart is young, and thy blood is fire and flame! Grey hairs are the flowers of death: then is the blood ice; then is the flame extinguished! Come into the light gondola! We sit concealed under its roof, we cover the windows, we close the door, nobody sees thee, love! We are rocked upon the waves; the waves embrace, and so do we. Love whilst youth is in thy blood. Age kills with frost and with snow!’

As he sang, he smiled and nodded to the others around him; and they sang in chorus, about kissing and loving while the heart was young. It was a merry song, very merry; and yet it sounded like a magical song of death in my heart.... My heart desired love: God had ordained it, who had implanted this feeling within me. I was still young, however: Venice was a gay city full of beautiful women. And what does the world give me for my virtue, thought I, for my childlike temper? Ridicule, and time brings bitterness and grey hairs. Thus thought I, and sang in chorus with the rest, of kissing and loving, while the heart was yet young....

The vessel flew onward to the north—to the rich Venice. In the morning hour, I discerned the white buildings and town of Venice, which seemed like a crowd of ships with outspread sails. To the left stretched itself the kingdom of Lombardy, with its flat coast: the Alps seemed like pale blue mist in the horizon. Here was the heaven wide. Here the half of the hemisphere could mirror itself in the heart.

In this sweet morning air ... I thought about the history of Venice, of the city’s wealth and pomp, its independence and supremacy; of the magnificent doges, and their marriage with the sea. We advanced nearer and nearer to the sea: I could already distinguish the individual houses across the lagoons.... The sun shone upon Venice: all the bells were ringing. I stepped down into the black gondola, and sailed up into the dead street, where everything was water, not a foot-breadth upon which to walk. Large buildings stood with open doors, and with steps down to the water; the water ran into the great doorways, like a canal; and the palace-court itself seemed only a four-cornered well, into which people could sail, but scarcely turn the gondola. The water had left its greenish slime upon the walls: the great marble palaces seemed as if sinking together: in the broad windows, rough boards were nailed up to the gilded, half-decayed beams. The proud giant-body seemed to be falling away piecemeal; the whole had an air of depression about it. The ringing of the bells ceased, not a sound, excepting the splash of the oars in the water, was to be heard, and I still saw not a human being. The magnificent Venice lay like a dead swan upon the waves.

We crossed about into the other streets; small narrow bridges of masonry hung over the canals; and I now saw people who skipped over me, in among the houses, and in among the walls even; for I saw no other streets than those in which the gondolas glided.

‘But where do the people walk?’ inquired I of my gondolier; and he pointed to small passages by the bridges, between the lofty houses. Neighbour could reach his hand to neighbour, from the sixth story across the street; three people could hardly pass each other below, where not a sunbeam found its way. Our gondola had passed on, and all was still as death.

HANS ANDERSEN.

‘FABRICS OF ENCHANTMENT PILED TO HEAVEN’

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo

Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow

Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand

Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,

Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,

Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,

Is this; an uninhabited seaside,

Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,

Abandons; and no other object breaks

The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes

Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes

A narrow space of level sand thereon,

Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.

This ride was my delight. I love all waste

And solitary places; where we taste

The pleasure of believing what we see

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

And such was this wide ocean, and this shore

More barren than its billows; and yet more

Than all, with a remembered friend I love

To ride as I then rode;—for the winds drove

The living spray along the sunny air

Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,

Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;

And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth

Harmonizing with solitude, and sent

Into our hearts aërial merriment.

So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,

Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,

But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours,

Charged with light memories of remembered hours,

None slow enough for sadness: till we came

Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.

This day had been cheerful but cold, and now

The sun was sinking, and the wind also.

Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be

Talk interrupted with such raillery

As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn

The thoughts it would extinguish:—’twas forlorn,

Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,

The devils held within the dales of hell,

Concerning God, freewill, and destiny.

Of all that earth has been, or yet may be;

All that vain men imagine or believe,

Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve,

We descanted; and I (for ever still

Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)

Argued against despondency; but pride

Made my companion take the darker side.

The sense that he was greater than his kind

Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind

By gazing on its own exceeding light.

Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight

Over the horizon of the mountains—Oh!

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,

Thou paradise of exiles, Italy!

Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers

Of cities they encircle!—It was ours

To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,

Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men

Were waiting for us with the gondola.

As those who pause on some delightful way,

Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood,

Looking upon the evening and the flood,

Which lay between the city and the shore,

Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar

And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared,

Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared

Between the east and west; and half the sky

Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,

Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew

Down the steep west into a wondrous hue

Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent

Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent

Among the many folded hills—they were

Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,

As seen from Lido, through the harbour piles,

The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles—

And then, as if the earth and sea had been

Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen

Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,

Around the vaporous sun, from which there came

The inmost purple spirit of light, and made

Their very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,’

Said my companion, ‘I will show you soon

A better station.’ So, o’er the lagoon

We glided; and from that funereal bark

I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark

How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,

Its temples and its palaces did seem

Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

VENICE SEEN IN THE DISTANCE

We ... were entering the fertile territory of the Bassanese. It was now I beheld groves of olives, and vines clustering the summits of the tallest elms; pomegranates in every garden, and vases of citron and orange before almost every door. The softness and transparency of the air soon told me I was arrived in happier climates, and I felt sensations of joy and novelty run through my veins, upon beholding this smiling land of groves and verdure stretched out before me. A few hazy vapours, I can hardly call them clouds, rested upon the extremities of the landscape; and, through their medium, the sun cast an oblique and dewy ray. Peasants were returning home, singing as they went, and calling to each other over the hills; whilst the women were milking goats before the wickets of the cottage, and preparing their country fare....

Our route to Venice lay winding along the variegated plains I had surveyed from Mosolente; and after dining at Treviso we came in two hours and a half to Mestre, between grand villas and gardens peopled with statues. Embarking our baggage at the last-mentioned place, we stepped into a gondola, whose even motion was very agreeable after the jolts of a chaise. We were soon out of the canal of Mestre, terminating by an isle which contains a cell dedicated to the Holy Virgin, peeping out of a thicket, whence spire up two tall cypresses. Its bells tinkled as we passed along and dropped some paolis into a net tied at the end of a pole stretched out to us for that purpose. As soon as we had doubled the cape of this diminutive island, an expanse of sea opened to our view, the domes and towers of Venice rising from its bosom. Now we began to distinguish Murano, St. Michele, St. Giorgio in Alga, and several other islands, detached from the grand cluster, which I hailed as old acquaintances; innumerable prints and drawings having long since made their shapes familiar. Still gliding forward, we every moment distinguished some new church or palace in the city, suffused with the rays of the setting sun, and reflected with all their glow of colouring from the surface of the waters.

The air was calm; the sky cloudless; a faint wind just breathing upon the deep, lightly bore its surface against the steps of a chapel in the island of San Secondo, and waved the veil before its portal, as we rowed by and coasted the walls of its garden overhung with fig-trees and surmounted by spreading pines. The convent discovers itself through their branches, built in a style somewhat morisco, and level with the sea, except where the garden intervenes.

We were now drawing very near the city, and a confused hum began to interrupt the evening stillness; gondolas were continually passing and repassing, and the entrance of the Canal Reggio, with all its stir and bustle, lay before us. Our gondoliers turned with much address through a crowd of boats and barges that blocked up the way, and rowed smoothly by the side of a broad pavement, covered with people in all dresses and of all nations.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF VENICE

It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. The influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable. But to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the spirit of the place has been harmonized through familiarity with our habitual mood, is difficult.

Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From our earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather than weeks, we carry away with us the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud and water; of violet domes and bell-towers etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering in sun-litten haze; of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine darkness made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted palace fronts; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd; of pictures by earth’s proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of council chambers where Venice sat enthroned a queen, where nobles swept the floors with robes of Tyrian brocade. These reminiscences will be attended by an ever-present sense of loneliness and silence in the world around; the sadness of a limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of heaven, the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the pathos of a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine.

These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are inevitable. They abide, and form a glowing background for all subsequent pictures, toned more austerely, and painted in more lasting hues of truth upon the brain. Those have never felt Venice at all who have not known this primal rapture, or who perhaps expected more of colour, more of melodrama, from a scene which nature and the art of man have made the richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered by this first experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains an element of unrest and unreality which vanishes upon familiarity. From the blare of that triumphal bourdon of brass instruments emerge the delicate voices of violin and clarinet. To the contrasted passions of our earliest love succeed a multitude of sweet and fanciful emotions. It is my present purpose to recapture some of the impressions made by Venice in more tranquil moods. Memory might be compared to a kaleidoscope. Far away from Venice I raise the wonder-working tube, allow the glittering fragments to settle as they please, and with words attempt to render something of the patterns I behold.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

TOWARDS VENICE

The gates were opened and we passed into the sea. There was a ‘breath of Venice in the breeze;’ the odour of the lagoons, clear and pungent; a scent that seems to penetrate the being, to reach the very heart, and charms it to surrender. The evening wind sprang up behind, and we set our sail and prow for Venice, twenty-five miles away across the pearly grey lagoon. On and on we sailed while the day faded about us, deepening slowly into night. A fiery sunset flamed itself to death behind the Euganean Hills. The expanse of water quickened from grey to crimson, to gold, to orange, to pale burnished copper, dimpled and shadowed by the tiny waves, to purple as the night came down; then all this glory of colour withdrew once more into the pervasive pearly grey, as the last light died in the western heavens, and darkness stole silently over the waters....

It is the people and the place, the union and interpenetration of the two, the sea life of these dwellers in the city that is always ‘just putting out to sea,’ which constitutes for many the peculiar and enduring charm of Venice. The people and the place so intimately intermingled through all their long history, have grown into a single life charged with the richness of sea-nature and the warmth of human emotion. From both together escapes this essence or soul of Venice which we would clasp with all the ardour of a lover. Venice, her lagoons, her seafaring folk, become the object of a passionate idolatry which admits no other allegiance in the hearts that have known its power. To leave her is a sure regret; to return a certain joy.

HORATIO F. BROWN.

THE APPROACH TO VENICE

We come to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,—it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.

Stroke by stroke, we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west, the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen purple shades, of the colour of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky,—the Alps of Bassano. Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,—the bastions of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast,—it widens: the rank grass of the banks sinks lower and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous dockyard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it;—this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and, apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line; but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a church.

It is Venice.

JOHN RUSKIN.

THE THRONE OF VENICE

In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,—in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller, than that which ... brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named ‘St. George of the Seaweed.’ As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north—a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick, silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian Sea; when first upon the traveller’s sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,—each with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier’s cry, ‘Ah! Stalì,’ struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat’s side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea.

And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero’s death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter’s favourite subject, the novelist’s favourite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute,—the mighty Doges would not know in what part of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of their Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion.

When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediments which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of the ruins of ages.

I will not tax the reader’s faith in modern science by insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great chain, they become of the colour and opacity of clay before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is built Ravenna, and in the other Venice.

What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt of sediment in the earliest times it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis.

The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city’s having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracts are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture, and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores all the richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary seaport. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.

The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form: but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hands are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and the only preparation possible, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour!

JOHN RUSKIN.

THE JEWELLED CROWN OF VENICE

In days before the railway and its bridge had done away with the island apartness of Venice, it seemed like a dream of Young Romance to drop through the narrow canal from Mestre on the mainland and come upon the far-spread shimmer of the silvery lagoon; and, rowing slowly, see, through veils of morning mist, the distant towers, walls, churches, palaces, rise slowly, one after another, out of the breast of the waters—silver and rose and gold out of the sapphire, azure, and pale grey—a jewelled crown of architecture on the head of slumbering ocean. We forgot that fairyland had been driven from the earth, and saw, or dreamed we saw, the city of Morgan le Fay, or the palaces of the Happy Isles where the Everyoung found refuge in the sea—so lovely and so dim the city climbed out of the deep.

That vision is gone, but even now there are few visions more startling in their charm than that which befalls the weary traveller when, coming out of the dark station, he finds himself suddenly upon the marble quay, with a river of glittering waters before his eyes, fringed with churches, palaces, and gardens; the broad stream alive with black gondolas, shouts in his ears like the shouting of seamen; and, lower in note and cry, but heard more distinctly than all other sounds, the lapping of the water on the steps of stone, the rushing of the tide against the boats. Midst all the wonders of the city, this it is which first seizes on his heart. It is the first note of the full melody of charm which the sea in Venice will play upon his imagination for many a happy day.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

VENICE FROM THE EUGANEAN HILLS

Ay, many Lowering islands lie

In the waters of wide Agony:

To such a one this morn was led,

My bark by soft winds piloted:

’Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the pæan,

With which the legioned rooks did hail

The sun’s uprise majestical;

Gathering round with wings all hoar,

Through the dewy mist they soar

Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,

Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain,

Starred with drops of golden rain,

Gleam above the sunlight woods,

As in silent multitudes

On the morning’s fitful gale

Through the broken mist they sail,

And the vapours cloven and gleaming

Follow down the dark steep streaming,

Till all is bright, and clear, and still,

Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread, like a green sea,

The waveless plain of Lombardy,

Bounded by the vaporous air,

Islanded by cities fair;

Underneath day’s azure eyes

Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies,

A peopled labyrinth of walls,

Amphitrite’s destined halls,