THE CHARM OF VENICE

THE

CHARM OF VENICE

AN ANTHOLOGY

COMPILED BY
ALFRED H. HYATT

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908

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.

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[Pg viii] 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).

[Pg 2]

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[Pg 4] 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.

[Pg 5] 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

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[Pg 8] 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,[Pg 9] 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

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[Pg 11] 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[Pg 12] 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[Pg 13] 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[Pg 14] 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

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[Pg 18] 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.

[Pg 19]

A REVERIE IN VENICE

[Pg 23]

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,[Pg 24] 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,[Pg 25] 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[Pg 26] 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[Pg 27] 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,[Pg 28] 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[Pg 29] 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

THAT GLORIOUS CITY IN THE SEA

[1] Attila.

[Pg 33]

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[Pg 34] 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,[Pg 35] 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

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[Pg 38] 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, ...

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.’

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.

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[Pg 41] 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[Pg 42] 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—

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,[Pg 43] 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;[Pg 44] 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,[Pg 45] 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:

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

[Pg 46] I will conclude with that famous hexastic which Sannazaro made of this rare city, which pleaseth me much better:

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

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,[Pg 49] 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[Pg 50] 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[Pg 51] 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[Pg 52] 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’

THE BRIDE OF THE SEA

BROWNING’S VENICE

[Pg 56]

VENICE

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[Pg 58] 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[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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[Pg 61] 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[Pg 62] 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

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,[Pg 63] 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:[Pg 64] 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).

[Pg 67]

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,[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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’

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....

[Pg 73] 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.

[Pg 74] 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[Pg 75] 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.

[Pg 76]

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.

[Pg 77]

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:[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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,[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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[Pg 83] 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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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[Pg 87] 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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

[Pg 96]

THE CITY OF ENCHANTMENT

I think there can be nothing else in the world so full of glittering and exquisite surprise as that first glimpse of Venice which the traveller catches as he issues from the railway station by night, and looks upon her peerless strangeness. There is something in the blessed breath of Italy (how quickly; coming South, you know it, and how bland it is, after the harsh, transalpine air!) which prepares you for your nocturnal advent into the place; and O you! whoever you are, that journey toward this enchanted city for the first time, let me tell you how happy I count you! There lies before you for your pleasure the spectacle of such singular beauty as no picture can ever show you nor book tell you,—beauty which you shall feel perfectly but once, and regret for ever.

For my own part, as the gondola slipped away from the blaze and bustle of the station down the gloom and silence of the broad canal, I forgot that I had been freezing two days and nights; that I was at that moment very cold and a little homesick. I could at first feel nothing but that beautiful silence, broken only by the star-silvered dip of the oars. Then on either hand I saw stately palaces rise grey and lofty from the dark waters, holding here and there a lamp against their faces, which brought balconies, and columns, and carven arches into momentary relief, and threw long streams of crimson into the canal. I could see by that uncertain glimmer how fair was all, but not how sad and old; and so, unhaunted by any pang for the decay that afterward saddened me amid the forlorn beauty of Venice, I glided on. I have no doubt it was a proper time to think all the[Pg 97] fantastic things in the world, and I thought them; but they passed vaguely through my mind, without at all interrupting the sensations of sight and sound. Indeed, the past and present mixed here, and the moral and material were blent in the sentiment of utter novelty and surprise. The quick boat slid through old troubles of mine, and unlooked-for events gave it the impulse that carried it beyond, and safely around sharp corners of life. And all the while I knew that this was a progress through narrow and crooked canals, and past marble angles of palaces. But I did not know then that this fine confusion of sense and spirit was the first faint impression of the charm of life in Venice.

Dark, funereal barges like my own had flitted by, and the gondoliers had warned each other at every turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries; the lines of balconied palaces had never ended;—here and there at their doors larger craft were moored, with dim figures of men moving uncertainly about on them. At last we had passed abruptly out of the Grand Canal into one of the smaller channels, and from comparative light into a darkness only remotely affected by some far-streaming corner lamp. But always the pallid, stately palaces; always the dark heaven with its trembling stars above, and the dark water with its trembling stars below; but now innumerable bridges, and an utter lonesomeness, and ceaseless sudden turns and windings. One could not resist a vague feeling of anxiety, in these strait and solitary passages, which was part of the strange enjoyment of the time, and which was referable to the novelty, the hush, the darkness, and the piratical appearance and unaccountable pauses of the gondoliers.[Pg 98] Was not this Venice, and is not Venice for ever associated with bravoes and unexpected dagger-thrusts? That valise of mine might represent fabulous wealth to the uncultivated imagination. Who, if I made an outcry, could understand the Facts of the Situation—(as we say in the journals)? To move on was relief; to pause was regret for past transgressions mingled with good resolutions for the future. But I felt the liveliest mixture of all these emotions, when, slipping from the cover of a bridge, the gondola suddenly rested at the foot of a stairway before a closely-barred door. The gondoliers rang and rang again, while their passenger ‘divided the swift mind,’ in the wonder whether a door so grimly bolted and austerely barred could possibly open into a hotel, with cheerful overcharges for candles and service. But as soon as the door opened, and he beheld the honest swindling countenance of a hotel portier, he felt secure against everything but imposture, and all wild absurdities of doubt and conjecture at once faded from his thought, when the portier suffered the gondoliers to make him pay a florin too much.

So, I had arrived in Venice, and I had felt the influence of that complex spell which she lays upon the stranger. I had caught the most alluring glimpses of the beauty which cannot wholly perish while any fragment of her sculptured walls nods to its shadow in the canal; I had been penetrated by a deep sense of the mystery of the place, and I had been touched already by the anomaly of modern life amid scenes where its presence offers, according to the humour in which it is studied, constant occasion for annoyance or delight, enthusiasm or sadness....

I yet felt curiously at home in Venice from the[Pg 99] first. I believe it was because I had, after my own fashion, loved the beautiful that I here found the beautiful, where it is supreme, full of society and friendship, speaking a language which, even in its unfamiliar forms, I could partly understand, and at once making me a citizen of that Venice from which I shall never be exiled. It was not in the presence of the great and famous monuments of art alone that I felt at home—indeed, I could as yet understand their excellence and grandeur only very imperfectly—but wherever I wandered through the quaint and marvellous city, I found the good company of ‘The fair, the old;’ and to tell the truth, I think it is the best society in Venice, and I learned to turn to it later from other companionship with a kind of relief.

W. D. HOWELLS.

IN VENICE

An hour before sunset I arrived at Fusina, and beheld, four or five miles out at sea, the towers and cupolas of Venice suffused with a rich golden light, and rising out of the bright blue waters. Not an exclamation escaped me. I felt like a man who has achieved a great object. I was full of calm exultation, but the strange incident of the morning made me serious and pensive.

As our gondolas glided over the great lagoon, the excitement of the spectacle reanimated me. The buildings that I had so fondly studied in books and pictures rose up before me. I knew them all; I required no cicerone. One by one, I caught the hooded cupolas of St. Mark, the tall Campanile red in the sun, the Morescoe Palace of the Doges, the deadly Bridge[Pg 100] of Sighs, and the dark structure to which it leads. Here my gondola quitted the lagoon, and, turning up a small canal, and passing under a bridge which connected the quays, stopped at the steps of a palace.

I ascended a staircase of marble, I passed through a gallery crowded with statues, I was ushered into spacious apartments, the floors of which were marble and the hangings satin. The ceilings were painted by Tintoretto and his scholars, and were full of Turkish trophies and triumphs over the Ottomite. The furniture was of the same rich material as the hangings, and the gilding, although of two hundred years’ duration, as bright and burnished as the costly equipment of a modern palace. From my balcony of blinds I looked upon the great lagoon. It was one of those glorious sunsets which render Venice, in spite of her degradation, still famous. The sky and sea vied in the brilliant multiplicity of their blended tints. The tall shadows of her Palladian churches flung themselves over the glowing and transparent wave out of which they sprang. The quays were crowded with joyous groups, and the black gondolas flitted like sea-serpents, over the red and rippling waters.

I hastened to the Place of St. Mark. It was crowded and illuminated. Three gorgeous flags waved on the mighty staffs, which are opposite to the church in all the old drawings, and which once bore the standards of Candia, and Cyprus, and the Morea. The coffee-houses were full, and gay parties, seated on chairs in the open air, listened to the music of military bands, while they refreshed themselves with confectionery so rich and fanciful that it excites the admiration of all travellers, but which I since discovered in Turkey to be Oriental. The variety of costume was also great.[Pg 101] The dress of the lower orders in Venice is still unchanged; many of the middle classes yet wear the cap and cloak. The Hungarian and the German military, and the bearded Jew, with his black velvet cap and flowing robes, are observed with curiosity. A few days also before my arrival, the Austrian squadron had carried into Venice a Turkish ship and two Greek vessels, which had violated the neutrality. Their crews now mingled with the crowd. I beheld, for the first time, the haughty and turbaned Ottoman, sitting crossed-legged on his carpet under a colonnade, sipping his coffee and smoking a long chibouque, and the Greeks, with their small red caps, their high foreheads, and arched eyebrows.

Can this be modern Venice, I thought? Can this be the silent, and gloomy, and decaying city, over whose dishonourable misery I have so often wept? Could it ever have been more enchanting? Are not these indeed still subjects of a Doge, and still the bridegrooms of the ocean? Alas, the brilliant scene was as unusual as unexpected, and was accounted for by its being the feast day of a favourite Saint. Nevertheless, I rejoiced at the unaccustomed appearance of the city at my entrance, and still I recall with pleasure the delusive moments, when, strolling about the Place of St. Mark, the first evening that I was in Venice, I mingled for a moment in a scene that reminded me of her lost light-heartedness, and of that unrivalled gaiety which so long captivated polished Europe.

The moon was now in her pride. I wandered once more to the quay, and heard for the first time a serenade. A juggler was conjuring in a circle under the walls of my hotel, and an itinerant opera was[Pg 102] performing on the bridge. It is by moonlight that Venice is indeed an enchanted city. The effect of the floods of silver light upon the twinkling fretwork of the Moresco architecture, the total absence of all harsh sounds, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produce an effect upon the mind which cannot be experienced in any other city. As I stood gazing upon the broad track of brilliant light that quivered over the lagoon, a gondolier saluted me. I entered his boat, and desired him to row me to the Grand Canal.

The marble palaces of my ancestors rose on each side, like a series of vast and solemn temples. How sublime were their broad fronts bathed in the mystic light, whose softened tints concealed the ravages of Time, and made us dream only of their eternity! And could these great creations ever die! I viewed them with a devotion which I cannot believe to have been surpassed in the most patriotic period of the Republic. How willingly would I have given my life to have once more filled their mighty halls with the proud retainers of their free and victorious nobles!

As I proceeded along the canal, and retired from the quarter of St. Mark, the sounds of merriment gradually died away. The light string of a guitar alone tinkled in the distance, and the lamp of a gondola, swiftly shooting by, indicated some gay, perhaps anxious, youth, hastening to the general rendezvous of festivity and love. The course of the canal bent, and the moon was hid behind a broad, thick arch, which black, yet sharply defined, spanned the breadth of the water. I beheld the famous Rialto.

Was it possible? was it true? was I not all this time in a reverie gazing upon a drawing in Winter’s studio![Pg 103] Was it not some delicious dream? some delicious dream from which perhaps this moment I was about to be roused to cold, dull life? I struggled not to wake, yet, from a nervous desire to move and put the vision to the test, I ordered the gondolier to row to the side of the canal, jumped out, and hurried to the bridge. Each moment I expected that the arch would tremble and part, and that the surrounding palaces would dissolve into mist, that the lights would be extinguished and the music cease, and that I should find myself in my old chamber in my father’s house.

I hurried along; I was anxious to reach the centre of the bridge before I woke. It seemed like the crowning incident of a dream, which, it is remarkable, never occurs, and which, from the very anxiety it occasions, only succeeds in breaking our magical slumbers.

I stood upon the Rialto; I beheld on each side of me, rising out of the waters, which they shadowed with their solemn image, those colossal and gorgeous structures raised from the spoils of the teeming Orient, with their pillars of rare marbles, and their costly portals of jasper, and porphyry, and agate; I beheld them ranged in majestic order, and streaming with the liquid moonlight.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

ENTERING VENICE AT TWILIGHT

Nothing could exceed Emily’s admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the lofty mountains[Pg 104] of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening. As they glided on, the grander features of this city appeared more distinctly: its terraces, crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather than reared by mortal hands.

The sun, soon after, sinking to the lower world, the shadow of the earth stole gradually over the waves, and then up the towering sides of the mountains of Friuli, till it extinguished even the last upward beams that had lingered on their summits, and the melancholy purple of evening drew over them like a thin veil. How deep, how beautiful was the tranquillity that wrapped the scene! All nature seemed to repose; the finest emotions of the soul were alone awake. Emily’s eyes filled with tears of admiration and sublime devotion, as she raised them over the sleeping world to the vast heavens, and heard the notes of solemn music that stole over the waters from a distance. She listened in still rapture, and no person of the party broke the charm by an inquiry. The sounds seemed to grow on the air; for so smoothly did the barge glide along, that its motion was not perceivable, and the fairy city appeared approaching to welcome the strangers. They now distinguished a voice, accompanied by a few instruments, singing a soft and mournful air, and its fine expression, as it sometimes seemed, pleading with the impassioned tenderness of love, and then languishing into the cadence of hopeless grief, declared that it flowed from no feigned sensibility....[Pg 105] The deep twilight that had fallen over the scene admitted only imperfect images to the eye, but at some distance on the sea she thought she perceived a gondola: a chorus of voices and instruments now swelled on the air—so sweet, so solemn! seemed like the hymn of angels descending through the silence of night! Now it died away, and fancy almost beheld the holy choir reascending towards heaven; then again it swelled with the breeze, trembled awhile, and again died into silence.... The gay and busy scene that appeared, as the barge approached St. Mark’s Place, at length roused her attention. The rising moon, which threw a shadowy light upon the terrace, and illumined the porticos and magnificent arcades that crowned them, discovered the various company, whose light steps, soft guitars, and softer voices, echoed through the colonnades.

The music they heard before now passed Montoni’s barge in one of the gondolas, of which several were seen skimming along the moonlight sea, full of gay parties, catching the cool breeze. Most of these had music, made sweeter by the waves over which it floated, and by the measured sound of oars as they dashed the sparkling tide.... The barge passed on to the Grand Canal, where Montoni’s mansion was situated. And here other forms of beauty and of grandeur, such as her imagination had never painted, were unfolded to Emily in the palaces of Sansovino and Palladio, as she glided along the waves. The air bore no sounds but those of sweetness, echoing along each margin of the canal, and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlight terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairyland.... The singers sung in[Pg 106] parts, the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian expression, heightened by the enchantments of Venetian moonlight, could give.

MRS. RADCLIFFE.

[Pg 109]

THE LAGOONS’ PHANTOM SPELL

The lagoons are full of mysteries of light; they are a veritable treasure ground of illusion. They are not one expanse of water over which the light broods with equable influence; they form a region of various circles, as it were, of various degrees of remoteness or tangibility. Almost one feels that each circle must be inhabited by a spirit appropriate to itself, and that a common language could not be between them, so sharp are the limits set by the play of light. On an early autumn morning, when the sky is clear and the sun streams full and level upon the clear blue expanse that separates Venice and Mestre, we seem to have a firm foothold on this dancing water. It is a substantial glory; but as our eye flits on from jewel to jewel in the clear blue paving, a sudden line is drawn beyond which it may not pass. The rich flood of vital colour has its bounds, and beyond it lies a region bathed in light so intense that even colour is refined into a mystic whiteness—a mirror of crystal, devoid of substance, infinitely remote; and above it, suspended in that lucent unearthly atmosphere, hover the towers of Torcello and Burano, like a mirage of the desert, midway between the water and the sky. They hang there in completest isolation, yet with a precise definition, a startling clearness of contour. There is no vestige of other buildings or of the earth on which they stand, only the dome and campanile of Murano, the leaning spire of Burano and Mazzorbo’s[Pg 110] lightning-blasted tower, their reflections distinctly mirrored in a luminous medium, half mist, half water. There is an immense awe in the vision of these phantoms, caught up into a region where the happy radiant colour dares not play; and yet not veiled—clearer in what they choose to reveal than the near city strong and splendid in the unreserve of the young day, but so unearthly, so magical, that our morning spirits scarcely dare accost them. What boat shall navigate that shining nothingness that divides them from our brave and brilliant water?

Venice, indeed, at times falls under the phantom spell. In those mornings of late autumn when the duel between the sun and the scirocco seems as if it could not end till day is done and night calls up her reinforcements of mist, Venice is herself the ghost, her goblet brimming with a liquor that seems the drink of death, a perilous, grey, steely vapour. One only of her islands looms out of the enfolding, foggy blanket: it is San Michele, the island of the dead. On such a morning we may visit this abode of shadows, not at this hour more strange, more ghostly, than the city.

BERYL DE SÉLINCOURT AND MAY STURGE HENDERSON.

VENETIAN SPELL

THE SOUL THAT ENDURES

On an evening of late September Venice revealed herself to one of her lovers amidst a spectacle beyond any range of dreams. Evening was closing in upon the city with cloud and breeze.... The tide was low, and land and water stretched out in interchanging coils of olive and azure beneath a purple storm-cloud, whilst ever against the bar of the Lido rolled the sea, dyed with that celestial blue that sometimes steals from the Adriatic into the basin of San Marco[Pg 112] to prostrate itself at the conquering Lion’s feet. And there lay Venice, her form outlined against a flood of pearl, the water bending in a tender, luminous bow behind her towers. Far away, across the mysterious expanse of low lagoon, Torcello and Burano gleamed out in startling pallor against the storm, amid a wild confusion of dark earth and glittering water. The Northern Alps were hidden in darkness at the horizon, but westward across the mainland the clear, sharp peaks of the Euganean hills rose up behind the city’s pearly halo, behind the deep blue of the surging lowlands, in almost unearthly outline against the sunset sky. In front of them a livid fire rolled sullenly along the valley, sending up purple smoke into the cloud. The storm genie, summoned by nether powers, was descending to his fearful tryst behind the Euganeans, but, as he sank, he bent his face upon the pale form of Venice, his enchantress, and the fire of his wonder and of his adoration kindled in all her slumbering limbs a glow of responsive life. A flood of crimson suffused the pallor of her pearly diadem, and her maidens, sleeping grey among the waters round her, unfolded rosy petals upon the surface of the lagoon.

It is this power of living communion with the daily pageant in which sun and moon are doge and emperor, and the stars and the clouds their retinue—this it is which, finding expression once at Venice in a temporal glory that has passed away, is the abiding assurance of her immortality. This is the spirit which, if once it helped to make her great, still makes her great to-day, the spirit that endures.

BERYL DE SÉLINCOURT AND MAY STURGE HENDERSON.

[Pg 113]

VENICE

THE QUIETUDE OF THE LAGOON

What I have learnt about Venice, Venice as a person, has come to me more or less unconsciously, from living on the Zattere, where I could see the masts of ships and the black hulls of barges, whenever I looked out of my windows on the canal of the Giudecca; from sitting night after night outside a café in the Piazza, listening to the military band, watching people pass, thinking of nothing, only singularly content to be there; from strolling night after night down to the promontory of the Dogana, and looking into the darkness of the water watching a man catching fish in a net like a shrimping net, while the sound of the mandolines and of the voices of singers[Pg 115] who sat in lantern-lighted gondolas outside the windows of the hotels on the Grand Canal came to me in a double chorus, crossing one another in a strange, not inharmonious confusion of tunes; and especially from the Lido, that long, narrow bank between the lagoon and the Adriatic, to whose seaward side I went so often, merely to be there, on the sand beyond the bathing-huts, watching the quietude of the sea. On the horizon there would be a long, tall line of fishing-boats, their red sails floating against the pearl grey of the sky like the painted wings of great moths, spread for flight; as you gazed at them, they seemed to stand there motionless; then, as you looked away for a moment and looked back again, one of them would have vanished suddenly, as if it had gone down into the sea. And the water, which rippled so gently against the sand at my feet, had something of the gentleness of colour of that water which wanders about the shores of Ireland. It shone, and seemed to grow whiter and whiter, as it stretched out towards the horizon, where the fishing-boats stood up in their long, tall fine against the sky; it had the delicacy, the quietude of the lagoon, with, in those bright sails, the beckoning of a possible escape from the monotony of too exquisite things....

Melancholy ... is an element in the charm of Venice; but a certain sadness is inherent in the very sound and colour of still water, and a little of the melancholy which we now feel must always have been a background of shadow.... Why is it, then, that the melancholy of Venice is the most exquisite melancholy in the world? It is because that melancholy is no nearer to one’s heart than the melancholy in the face of a portrait. It is the tender and gracious[Pg 116] sadness of that beautiful woman who leans her face upon her hands in a famous picture in the Accademia. The feast is over, the wine still flushes the glass on the table, the little negro strikes his lute, she listens to the song, her husband sits beside her, proudly: something not in the world, a vague thought, a memory, a forgetfulness, has possessed her for the moment, setting those pensive lines about her lips, which have just smiled, and which will smile again when she has lifted her eyelids.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

A SEA-VIEW

Translated by Baroness Swift.

VENICE: ITS PLEASURABLE MELANCHOLY

Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, is distinguished, not only by the glory of her arts, the strangeness of her position, the romance of her origin, but by the great historical memories of her days of power. These throw an interest over a city which survives its own glories, and even its own life, like the scenery[Pg 117] in some great theatre after the play is done and all the actors are withdrawn. A pleasurable melancholy grows upon the traveller who wanders among the churches or glides along on the canals of Venice. Although misfortune has overcast the city with a pall of sadness, it still preserves the indefinable grace of things Italian. Its old magnificence imposes on the mind, while the charm of its present melancholy creeps about the heart. And even on the brightest day, when the unconquerable sun looks down most broadly on the glittering city of St. Mark, silence and melancholy still hold their court on the canals; and the most unsentimental spirit yields to the elegiac influence.

At Venice, he who is happy, he for whom silence has no charms and who loves the tumult of the world, soon finds his footsteps dogged by limping dulness. But those who have known the sorrows of life return gladly thither; the place is catching—every corner or open square recommends itself to the affections. The lightness of the heavens, the even purity of the air, the steely shine of the lagoon, the roseate reflections of the walls, the nights as clear as day, the softness of the Venetian dialect, the trustfulness and placability of the people, their tolerance for all men’s humours, and their gentle intercourse—out of all these results that unseizable and seductive quality which is indeed Venice, which sings at a man’s heart, and so possesses and subdues him that he shall feel far from home whenever he is far from the Piazzetta.

Travel where you will, neither Rome nor Jerusalem, neither Granada, Toledo, nor the Golden Horn, will offer you the spectacle of such another enchanted approach. It is a dream that has taken shape; a[Pg 118] vision of fairyland turned into reality by human hands. The order of nature is suspended; the lagoon is like the heavens, the heavens are like the sea; these rosy islets carrying temples are like bards voyaging the sky; and away upon the horizon, towards Malamocca, the clouds and the green islands lie mingled as bafflingly as shapes in the mirage of the desert. The very buildings have an air of dreamland; solids hang suspended over voids; and ponderous halls and palaces stand paradoxically supported on the stone lace-work of mediæval sculptors. All the principles of art are violated: and out of their violation springs a new art, borrowed from the East but stamped with the mark of Venice; in a while this is transformed and becomes, in the hands of the Lombardi, the Leopardi, and the Sansovino, the glory and the adornment of the city. Opulent and untamed imaginations have spoiled the treasury of the Magnificoes to build these sculptured palaces and basilicas of marble and mosaic, to lay their pavements with precious stones and cover their walls with gold and onyx and Oriental alabaster. They used the pillage of Aquileia, Altinum, Damascus, and Heliopolis. With a nameless daring they raised high in air, over the porches and among their domes, the huge antique bronze horses of Byzantium. They sustained a mighty palace upon pillars whose carvings seem wrought by workmen in some opiate dream making them reckless of the cost of time. They dammed back the sea to set up their city in its place. In the lagoon, to the sound of strange workmen’s choruses, they buried all the oaks of Istria and Dalmatia, of Albania and the Julian Alps. They transformed the climate of the Illyrian peninsula, leaving[Pg 119] plains instead of mountains, and sunburnt deserts in the place of green and grateful forests; for all the hills have become palaces, as at the touch of a wand; and deep in the salt sea the old oaks stand embedded, sustaining the city of St. Mark.

CHARLES YRIARTE.

YOUTH IN VENICE

BOATS AND VOICES

The boat rocks backwards and forwards, to the gondolier’s circling oar, the shadows dance a delicious contredanse. Splash, gentle oar; rise, domes and spires upon the vault; sing, voices, calling along the water; stream, golden suns, reflected there. The gondola flies down a narrow passage towards an open place where the canals diverge; the shadows part, and fire is streaming from the tumultuous water. Sà premi! cry the gondoliers; for a moment all is in swinging confusion.... Lights flash from the upper windows of the tall palaces, balconies start overhead marked upon the sky. Now it is a palace to let, with wooden shutters swinging in shadow; now we pass the yawning vaults of great warehouses filled with saffron and crimson dyes, where barges are moored and workmen strain at the rolling barrels.... Now it is the brown wall of some garden terrace; a garland has crept over the brick, and droops almost to the water; one little spray encircles a rusty ring hanging there with its shadow.... Now we touch palace walls, and with a hollow jar start off once more. Now comes a snatch of song through an old archway; here are boats and voices, the gondolier’s earrings twinkle in the sun; here are vine wreaths, and steps[Pg 121] where children, those untiring spectators of life, are clustering; more barges with heavy fruit and golden treasure go by. A little brown-faced boy is lying with his brown legs in the sun on the very edge of a barge, dreaming over into the green water; he lazily raises his head to look, and falls back again; now a black boat passes like a ghost, its slender points start upwards in a line with the curve of yonder spire; now it is out of all this swing of shadow and confusion that we cross a broad sweet breadth of sunlight, and come into the Grand Canal.

LADY RITCHIE.

FROM A PALACE-STEP AT VENICE

THE UNWEARIEDNESS OF VENICE

In returning from an excursion ... it is generally at sunset that one re-enters Venice, the city all ablaze with purple and gold, the radiance of the descending orb; the lagoon is a pearly grey studded with the black points of the piles, and all the campaniles, domes, and warehouses along the bank seem crowned with halos of gold.

These are the spectacles—these, and such as are presented to us by everyday life, which, after a long sojourn in Venice, end by engrossing our interest above all others: as though man soon tired of the works of men, and kept his appetite and desire always keen, always alive for the works of God only, for nature and for life. In truth, however passionate a man may be for the things of art, he is soon surfeited in so colossal a museum as is the city of Venice; he comes at last to the pass of looking at Tintoret without attention, he stands before a Giovanni Bellini without emotion; masterpiece crowds upon masterpiece, Titian on Carpaccio, Pordenone on Palma; bronzes, enamels, triptychs, marbles, figures of doges lying on their biers, famous condottieri buried in their armour and standing proud and valorous in the garb of war upon their sepulchres—all these sights and glories leave us indifferent.... The truth is, the air of Venice, the sky and its varying moods, the extraordinary[Pg 124] colouring which the atmosphere throws over everything, offer a charm which surpasses all others; and the open air, the lagoon, the life of the port, with the changing aspect of the pearly waves, that glimmering surface which Guardi has so well rendered, the trembling light upon the silvery field all barred by tongues of sand and dotted by the black points of the piles, are beyond the highest inspirations of man.

To sit in front of a café on the Riva, with no other object but that of looking before you, is a keen pleasure for anyone who has the love of the picturesque. The incessant movement; the never ungentle pranks of the motley crowds; those singular colloquies of which the meaning unfortunately escapes the ear unfamiliar with the Venetian dialect; the colouring, the sunshine; the changing effects, the seductive distances; the constant arrivals of great ships, the entrance or departure of the Chioggiotes or the Greeks of Zante, or sailors of Sporades, with their ruddy sails making blots of colour on the lagoon, and when stretched like a bow by the wind, showing in the transparent air the great Virgin rudely painted on their surface; the caravans of strangers that pass, with the special character peculiar to each nationality,—methodical Englishmen,—American ladies with their long loose hair,—southern Italians high-coloured and vehement,—blond Germans in spectacles,—quick Frenchmen running with their noses in the air,—Italian soldiers with helmets of grey canvas; lastly the quaint industries sheltered under immense umbrellas; chance singers, who fling upon the echoes of the lagoon an air of Verdi or Gordigiani—all this is what one never wearies of at Venice.

And what new surprises in the streets, and on the[Pg 125] open places great and small! Here you go up some steps to cross a canal, there the way is barred, and a little staircase descends right into the water; old women, worthy copies of the old woman with the basket of eggs in Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin, brush along the wall, their heads covered up in their shawls....

Nature, the warm air, the limpid and transparent atmosphere in which Venice is bathed,—it is the emotion of this which after all remains the strangest among your impressions. After a visit to that prodigious Ducal Palace, where masterpieces are heaped upon masterpieces, you long to breathe the clear air and hurry away to the gardens. You pass along the whole length of the Riva degli Schiavoni, you get among the shipping, and the farther you go the better you can see the long front of Venice composing itself into a single view. You turn from time to time to enjoy the panorama, for it is the most admirable scene ever dreamt of by a Desplechin, a Thierry, a Cambon, a Chapron, a Nolan, or a Rubbé, and when you lean on the terrace you soon forget the great works of art on which you have but now been gazing, in presence of this mighty work of the Master of masters! The man of letters and the critic in you give way to the painter, and you are held enchanted by the spell of these wonderful harmonies. The grounds of the garden are a light grey, the grass is green, the trees in the foreground, still bare of leaves, cut out against the sky the delicate tracery of their boughs, the water is pearly with diamond spangles and shifting facets of light as bright as stars; the tongues of sand and dry places of the lagoon come cutting here and there with bars of brown that silver mirror; San[Pg 126] Giorgio Maggiore, red and white, catches a luminous reflection; the Grand Canal and its palaces close the horizon. All is solitary in the gardens, the green lizards glide quiveringly from sight, a gondolier cries alla barca, a pretty little girl passes with bare head, her hair deftly dressed and draped in her shawl; stretched on the scanty grass all round, the gondoliers sleep in the sunshine. All this would no doubt not satisfy the desires and aspirations of practical minds and natures hungry for life and change, for sensations ever new and spectacles ever varied. But for us it is a world sufficient, and we are not alone in feeling it to be so. ‘You dwell there in delight,’ says Paul de St. Victor, ‘and you look back to the days of your sojourn with emotion. Venice casts about you a charm as tender as the charm of woman. The rosy atmosphere in which she lies steeped, the shimmer of her lagoons, the jewelled hues that change with the changing hour upon her domes, her fascinating vistas, the masterpieces of her radiant painting, the gentle temper of her men and women, the sweet and pensive gladness that you breathe with her very air—all these are so many divers but interlinked enchantments. Other cities had admirers, Venice alone has lovers.’

CHARLES YRIARTE.

ON THE ZATTERE

INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS

‘THE SUN OF VENICE GOING TO SEA’

The Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exceptions carry canvass painted with bright colours, the favourite design for the centre being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favourite colours being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. The radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting; but it is strange that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons, Turner alone should have availed himself of them. Nothing could be more faithful than the boat which was the principal object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with colour; finally and especially, the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. All these, however, are comparatively minor merits (though not the blaze of colour which the artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances), but the peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid colour fell from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance the city and crowded boats threw down[Pg 129] some playing lines, but these still left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning sky. This was divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the local colour of the water was seen, pure aqua-marine (a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed truth), but still there remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above had no distinct details and was pure faint grey, with broken white vestiges of cloud; it gave no help, therefore. But there the water lay, no dead grey flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away, as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by perspective. Now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it is his having done this which made me say above that ‘no man had ever painted the surface of calm water but Turner.’ The San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in one of the Canale della Giudecca the specific green colour of the water is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue.

JOHN RUSKIN.

VENICE UNDER THE STARLIGHT

Embark at the Piazzetta at eleven o’clock on a clear sweet starlight evening, and tell the gondolier to go into the canal of the Giudecca. The gondola enters on the golden track, you have left the custom-house on your right. The stars touch with light the gold ball which carries Fortune on it, and the lamp at the foot of the portico, the steps of which run down into the water, lights up the white façade, and makes it reflect[Pg 130] itself in the slightly rippled waters. The faubourg of the Giudecca is on our left—a red-brown by daylight and dark by night; a few scattered lanterns alone break this black ground like the gold sparkles which appear and disappear on a piece of burning paper, and sometimes under the stars, as in the picture of the English painter Orchardson, two lovers exchange their soft vows ‘in the pale light of stars’ under the brightly spangled sky.

The Giudecca is long and low, and becomes faint and almost bluish as it prolongs itself towards the horizon. The black keels of some boats at anchor, their masts and fine cordage, outline themselves distinctly against the clear sky; the dome of the Redentore, the church of the faubourg, rounds itself above the houses. On the right we have the Zattere and their quays with polished flagstones, looking white in the rays of the moon, with the great palaces, regular and noble, the little deserted jetties, and here and there the bridges at the openings of the canals.

The Giudecca is dark; the Zattere is as light as day, but with that veiled illumination which the moon throws over everything it floods with its rays. The silence is profound and the calmness undisturbed; the distant echoes, the solemn striking of the hour by the clock of St. Mark’s, the song of a solitary sailor guarding his felucca which he has brought timber-laden from Dalmatia, the voice of a belated gondolier who sits swinging his legs in that nocturnal reverie which is like the kief of the East: who can render this impression at once sweet and solemn, the incomparable charms which lulls all longings, and attaches us to Venice with an imperishable love?

CHARLES YRIARTE.

[Pg 131]

TO VENICE: A FAREWELL

NIGHT IN VENICE

How beautiful is night in Venice! Then music and the moon reign supreme; the glittering sky reflected in the waters, and every gondola gliding with sweet sounds! Around on every side are palaces and temples, rising from the waves which they shadow with their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city, too, is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, the sighs of serenaders, and the responsive chorus of[Pg 132] gondoliers. Now and then a laugh—light, joyous, and yet musical—bursts forth from some illuminated coffee-house, before which a buffo disports, a tumbler stands on his head, or a juggler mystifies; and all for a sequin!

The Place of St. Mark ... is distinguished for elegance, luxury, and enjoyment.... Under a Venetian moon it is the hour of love and of faro; now is the hour to press your suit and to break a bank; to glide from the apartment of rapture into the chamber of chance. For [other] tastes there is the minstrel, the conjurer, and the story-teller, goblets of Cyprus wine, flasks of sherbet, and confectionery that dazzle like diamonds. And for every one, from the grave senator to the gay gondolier, there is an atmosphere in itself a spell, and which, after all, has more to do with human happiness than all the accidents of fortune and all the arts of government.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

In the palmy days of the gondolier (for he bore the traveller all the way from Mestre to Venice) there was real poetry in the journey, as tower, and campanile, and dome gathered from the golden haze, across the narrowing expanse of water.... It was a vehicle no less pleasant for the longer excursions on the lagoon. Shaded by its awning, or sheltering under its black covering, what could be more pleasant than to slide over the water to the sandy Lido for a refreshing dip in the Adriatic, or seek the Cathedral of Murano, or, yet further afield, pass by lonely islets to visit Torcello and its oldest church? Venice the silent and the gondola are exactly suited. There is no more restful mode of locomotion; no vibration, no rattle, no clatter, nothing but the rhythmic wash of the water beneath the oar, so curiously handled, or the gentle ripple as it slides past the sides; no louder sound except now and again the gondolier’s strange cry on approaching a corner to warn those beyond it what direction to take. But the gondolier has another advantage. Venice is more than a few important canals, something more than ornate palaces or stately churches. The waterways among its three score and ten islands ramify in all directions, and some of the most picturesque, though often dilapidated, parts of the city are only properly accessible from the smaller canals.... Here some ornate balcony overhangs; then a little canal unexpectedly opens, perhaps with[Pg 136] its central well. Here a quaintly designed bridge carries from islet to islet those narrow alleys, means of communication yet more intricate than the canals themselves. Sometimes they reveal unexpected phases of domestic life, such as a group of youngsters indulging in a bath from their own doorstep, now disporting themselves in the warm water, now basking in the sunshine on the stone slabs. Venetian boys take to the water almost as naturally as ducks; and the baby, tied for safety to the door-post with a string, solemnly contemplates the sport. Venice is at its best in the summer-time.... A refreshing breeze from the Adriatic often tempers even the midday heat, and it is a city which needs sunshine almost as much as London itself.

ANON.

IN A GONDOLA

THE INVITATION TO THE GONDOLA

THE GONDOLA

A DREAM IN A GONDOLA

WERE LIFE BUT AS THE GONDOLA!

THE SONGS OF THE GONDOLIERS

This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who sing Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not[Pg 150] to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one singer before and the other behind me. They sing their song, taking up the verses alternately. The melody, which we know through Rousseau, is of a middle kind, between choral and recitative, maintaining throughout the same cadence, without any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying with a sort of declamation both tone and measures, according to the subject of the verse. But the spirit—the life of it, is as follows:

Without inquiring into the construction of the melody, suffice it to say that it is admirably suited to that easy class of people who, always humming something or other to themselves, adapt such tunes to any little poem they know by heart.

Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a low penetrating voice—the multitude admire force above everything—anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far. Another in the distance, who is acquainted with the melody and knows the words, takes it up and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies, so that the one is as it were the echo of the other. The song continues through whole nights, and is kept up without fatigue. The further the singers are from each other, the more touching sounds the strain. The best place for the listener is half-way between the two.

In order to let me hear it, they landed on the bank of the Giudecca, and took up different positions by the canal. I walked backwards and forwards between[Pg 151] them, so as to leave the one whose turn it was to sing, and to join the one who had just left off. Then it was that the effect of the strain first opened upon me. As a voice from the distance it sounds in the highest degree strange—as a lament without sadness: it has an incredible effect, and is moving even to tears. I ascribed this to my own state of mind, but my old boatman said: ‘È singolare, come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando è piu ben cantato.’ He wished that I could hear the women of the Lido, especially those of Malamocco, and Pelestrina. These also, he told me, sang Tasso and Ariosto to the same or similar melodies. He went on: ‘In the evening, while their husbands are on the sea, fishing, they are accustomed to sit on the beach, and with shrill and penetrating voice to make these strains resound, until they catch from the distance the voices of their partners, and in this way they keep up a communication with them.’ Is not that beautiful? and yet, it is very possible that one who heard them close by would take little pleasure in such tones which have to vie with the waves of the sea. Human, however, and true becomes the song in this way: thus is life given to the melody, on whose dead elements we should otherwise have been sadly puzzled. It is the song of one solitary, singing at a distance, in the hope that another of kindred feelings and sentiments may hear and answer.

GOETHE.

THE GONDOLA

SING TO ME, GONDOLIER

THE GONDOLIER’S CRY

Most persons are now well acquainted with the general aspect of the Venetian gondola, but few have taken the pains to understand the cries of warning uttered by its boatmen, although those cries are peculiarly characteristic, and very impressive to a stranger.... It may perhaps be interesting to the traveller in Venice to know the general method of management of the boat to which he owes so many happy hours.

A gondola is in general rowed only by one man, standing at the stern; those of the upper classes having two or more boatmen, for greater speed and magnificence. In order to raise the oar sufficiently, it rests, not on the side of the boat, but on a piece of crooked timber like the branch of a tree, rising about a foot from the boat’s side, and called a ‘fórcola.’ The fórcola is of different forms, according to the size and uses of the boat, and it is always somewhat complicated in its parts and curvature, allowing the oar various kinds of rest and catches on both its sides, but perfectly free play in all cases; as the management of the boat depends on the gondolier’s being able in an instant to place his oar in any position. The fórcola[Pg 155] is set on the right-hand side of the boat, some six feet from the stern: the gondolier stands on a little flat platform or deck behind it, and throws nearly the entire weight of his body upon the forward stroke. The effect of this stroke would be naturally to turn the boat’s head round to the left, as well as to send it forward; but this tendency is corrected by keeping the blade of the oar under the water in the return stroke, and raising it gradually, as a full spoon is raised out of any liquid, so that the blade emerges from the water only an instant before it again plunges. A downward and lateral pressure upon the fórcola is thus obtained, which entirely counteracts the tendency given by the forward stroke; and the effort, after a little practice, becomes hardly conscious, though, as it adds some labour to the back stroke, rowing a gondola at speed is hard and breathless work, though it appears easy and graceful to the looker-on.

If then the gondola is to be turned to the left, the forward impulse is given without the return stroke; if it is to be turned to the right, the plunged oar is brought forcibly up to the surface; in either case a single strong stroke being enough to turn the light and flat-bottomed boat. But as it has no keel, when the turn is made sharply, as out of one canal into another very narrow one, the impetus of the boat in its former direction gives it an enormous leeway, and it drifts laterally up against the wall of the canal, and that so forcibly, that if it has turned at speed, no gondolier can arrest the motion merely by strength or rapidity of stroke of oar; but it is checked by a strong thrust of the foot against the wall itself, the head of the boat being, of course, turned for the moment almost completely round to the opposite wall, and greater[Pg 156] exertion made to give it, as quickly as possible, impulse in the new direction.

The boat being thus guided, the cry ‘Premi’ is the order from one gondolier to another that he should ‘press’ or thrust forward his oar, without the back stroke, so as to send his boat’s head round to the left; and the cry ‘Stali’ is the order that he should give the return or upward stroke which sends the boat’s head round to the right. Hence, if two gondoliers meet under any circumstances which render it a matter of question on which side they should pass each other, the gondolier who has at the moment the least power over his boat cries to the other ‘Premi,’ if he wishes the boats to pass with their right-hand sides to each other, and ‘Stali’ if with their left. Now, in turning a corner, there is, of course, risk of collision between boats coming from opposite sides, and warning is always clearly and loudly given on approaching an angle of the canals. It is, of course, presumed that the boat which gives the warning will be nearer the turn than the one which receives and answers it; and, therefore, will not have so much time to check itself or alter its course. Hence the advantage of the turn—that is, the outside, which allows the fullest swing, and greatest room for leeway—is always yielded to the boat which gives warning. Therefore, if the warning boat is going to turn to the right, as it is to have the outside position, it will keep its own right-hand side to the boat which it meets, and the cry of warning is therefore ‘Premi,’ twice given; first as soon as it can be heard round the angle, prolonged and loud, with the accent on the e, and another strongly accented e added, a kind of question, ‘Prémi-é,’ followed, at the instant of turning, with ‘Ah Premí,’ with the accent[Pg 157] sharp on the final i. If, on the other hand, the warning boat is going to turn to the left, it will pass with its left-hand side to the one it meets; and the warning cry is, ‘Stálié, Ah Stalí.’ Hence the confused idea in the mind of the traveller that Stali means ‘to the left,’ and ‘Premi’ to the right; while they mean, in reality, the direct reverse: the Stali, for instance, being the order to the unseen gondolier who may be behind the corner, coming from the left-hand side, that he should hold as much as possible to his own right; this being the only safe order for him, whether he is going to turn the corner himself, or to go straight on; for as the warning gondola will always swing right across the canal in turning, a collision with it is only to be avoided by keeping well within it, and close up to the corner which it turns.

There are several other cries necessary in the management of the gondola, but less frequently, so that the reader will hardly care for their interpretation; except only the ‘sciar,’ which is the order to the opposite gondolier to stop the boat as suddenly as possible by slipping his oar in front of the fórcola. The cry is never heard except when the boatmen have got into some unexpected position, involving a risk of collision; but the action is seen constantly, when the gondola is rowed by two or more men (for if performed by the single gondolier it only swings the boat’s head sharp round to the right), in bringing up at a landing-place, especially when there is any intent of display, the boat being first urged to its full speed and then stopped with as much foam about the oar-blades as possible, the effect being much like that of stopping a horse at speed by pulling him on his haunches.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[Pg 158]

GONDOLIERS

Venice, May 1, 1834.

You always wish to seize boldly upon beauty, to feel and know what it is, to know why and how nature is worthy of your admiration and love. I was explaining these feelings to our friend the other evening, as we were passing in a gondola under the sombre arcade of the Bridge of Sighs. Do you remember the light which is seen at the end of the canal, and which is reflected and multiplied in the old and shining marble of the palace of Bianca Cappello? In all Venice there is no canalletto more mysterious, more melancholy. This single light, glancing on all surrounding objects but enlightening none, dancing on the water, and appearing to play in the wake of the passing gondolas, as though it were an ignis fatuus attached to their course, made me remember that long line of lamps which trembles in the Seine, and which in the water looks like long crooked tracks of fire.... I was quite absorbed in my customary fantasies, when I saw upon the canal of St. George, among the other objects upon its surface, a black spot moving so rapidly as soon to leave all the others behind. It was the new and brilliant gondola of the young Catullo. When within sight, I recognized the flower of our gondoliers, in his nankin vest.... In the interval of dipping the oar into the tranquil mirror of the lake, from time to time, he threw a glance of satisfaction upon his resplendent image, and charmed with his appearance, and penetrated with gratitude towards the generous soul of his patron, he managed the gondola with a vigorous hand, and made her bound over the waters like a wild duck.

[Pg 159] Giulio (Catullo’s brother) was at the other end of the barque, and seconded his efforts with all the ease of a true child of the Adriatic. Our friend Pietro was lying indolently on the carpet of the gondola, and the beautiful Beppa, seated on the black morocco cushions, let the wind play among her ebony tresses, parted on her noble brow, and falling in two long loose curls upon her bosom.... The gondola slackened its pace whilst one of the rowers took breath, and when it neared the shady banks, it floated idly on the waves which caressed the marble stairs of the garden. Pietro asked Beppa to sing. Giulio took his guitar, and Beppa’s voice rose into the air full of passion as the appeal of a syren. She sang a verse from a song which Pietro composed for some fair lady, perhaps for Beppa herself:

GONDOLIERS’ MUSIC

The gondolier, stationed at the traghetto, invites passengers by the most miraculous offers: ‘Will you go to Trieste this afternoon, monseigneur? Here is a beautiful gondola, that does not fear the tempest in the open sea, and a gondolier ready to row you, without stopping, to Constantinople.’ Unexpected pleasures are the only pleasures in the world. Yesterday I wished to go and see the moon rise over the Adriatic; I had never been able to decide Catullo to[Pg 160] conduct me to the Lido. He pretended, what they all pretend when they do not wish to obey, that the water or the wind was contrary.... I was in desperate ill-humour when we met, just opposite La Salute, a barque which was floating gently towards the Grand Canal, leaving behind it, like a perfume, the sounds of a delightful serenade. ‘Turn the prow,’ said I to old Catullo; ‘I hope you are strong enough to follow that gondola.’ Another barque floating idly by, imitated my example, then a second, then another; at last all those who were enjoying the fresh air on the canal, and several even which were vacant, and whose gondoliers surrounded us, crying, ‘Music, music,’ with an air, hungry as the Israelites in the desert for the manna. In ten minutes a flotilla was formed round these dilettanti; all the oars were silent, and the barques were left at the will of the current.

The harmony floated softly in the breeze and the hautbois sighed so sweetly that each one held his breath for fear of interrupting its accents so full of tenderness and love. The violin mingled its voice so sad,—with such sympathetic yearnings.... Then the harp gave forth two or three chords of harmonious sounds, which seemed to descend from heaven, and promise the caresses and consolation of its angels to all souls suffering on this earth. Then came the horn as from the depths of a wood, and each of us might fancy he saw his first love advance from the forests of Friuli, and approach with these sounds of joy. The hautbois replied with sounds more full of passion than those uttered by the dove seeking her mate in the air. The violin exhaled its sobs of convulsive joy, the harp gave forth its full and generous vibrations,[Pg 161] like the palpitations of an ardent breast, and then the sounds of the four instruments mingled like happy souls embracing each other before their departure for a better world. I drank in their accents, and my imagination heard them after they had ceased to exist. Their passage left a magic warmth in the atmosphere, as though Love had agitated it with his wings.

There was some minutes’ silence, which no one dared to break. The melodious barque began to flee before us as though it wished to make its escape, but we quickly followed in its track; we might have been compared to a flock of petrels disputing the possession of a goldfish. We pressed upon its flight with our prows, like large steel scythes in the moon’s beams, shining like the fiery teeth of Ariosto’s dragons. The fugitive achieved its deliverance in the same way as Orpheus: some chords from the harp reduced us all to order and silence. At the sound of its light arpeggios, three barques ranged themselves on each side of the one bearing the music, and followed the adagio with the most religious slowness. The others remained behind like a cortège, and this was perhaps the best situation for hearing. This long file of silent gondolas, floating gently with the wind on the magnificent Grand Canal of Venice, was a coup-d’œil which realized the most lovely dreams. Every undulation of the water, every slight movement of the oars, seemed to respond sympathetically to the sentiment of each musical passage, extracted from the harmonious themes of Oberon and Guillaume Tell. The gondoliers, erect on the poop, their bold attitudes clearly defined against the blue atmosphere, seemed to form a background of dark spectres behind the[Pg 162] groups of friends and lovers they were conducting. The moon rose slowly, and peeping curiously over the roofs, seemed also to listen and love the music. A palace on one side of the canal, yet plunged in obscurity, defined upon the clear sky its enormous Moorish outlines, darker than the gates of hell.

The other shore, illumined by the rays of the full moon, at that time as large and brilliant as a silver shield, received the light upon its silent and serene arcades. These immense piles of fairy-like buildings, lighted only by the stars, wore an aspect of solitude, repose, and immobility truly sublime. The slender statues rising by hundreds into the air seemed mysterious spirits watching the repose of the quiet city, slumbering like the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and condemned, like her, to slumber for a hundred years or more.

GEORGE SAND.

THE GONDOLIERS OF VENICE

In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. But this talent seems at present on the decline:—at least, after taking some pains, I could find no more than two persons who delivered to me in this way a passage from Tasso. Goldoni, in his life, however, notices the gondolier returning with him to the city: ‘He turned the prow of the gondola towards the city, singing all the way the twenty-sixth stanza of the sixteenth canto of the “Jerusalem Delivered.”’ ... Lord Byron has told us that with the independence of Venice the song of the gondoliers has died away.

[Pg 163] There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.

I entered a gondola by moonlight: one singer placed himself forwards and the other aft, and thus proceeded to St. Georgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned, but, according to the subject-matter of the strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on one and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the whole strophe, as the object of the poems altered....

We got out upon the shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing against one another, and I kept walking up and down between them both, so as to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood still and hearkened to the one and to the other.

Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the attention; the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emotions or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, immediately began where the former left off,[Pg 164] answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene, and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.

It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary mariner, lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company, or for a fare; the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror; and as all is still around, he is as it were in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers: a silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashing of oars is scarcely to be heard.

At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers: he becomes the responsive echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain themselves without fatigue; the hearers, who are passing between the two, take part in the amusement.

This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfils its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound, and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears....

[Pg 165]

I was told that the women of Lido, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the lagoons, particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocco and Pelestrina, sing in like manner the works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.

They have a custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance.

How much more delightful and more appropriate does this song show itself here, than the call of a solitary person uttered far and wide, till another equally disposed shall hear and answer him! It is the expression of a vehement and hearty longing, which yet is every moment nearer to the happiness of satisfaction.

ISAAC D’ISRAELI.

GONDOLIERS AND THEIR SONGS

The gondolas, which everybody knows are black, and give an air of melancholy at first sight, yet are nothing less than sorrowful; it is like painting the lively Mrs. Cholmondeley in the character of Milton’s

as I once saw her drawn by a famous hand, to show a Venetian lady in her gondola and zendaletta, which is black like a gondola, but wholly calculated like that for the purposes of refined gallantry. So is the nightly rendezvous, the café and casino; for whilst Palladio’s palaces serve to adorn the Grand Canal and strike those who enter Venice with surprise at its magnificence,[Pg 166] those snug retreats are intended for the relaxation of those who inhabit the more splendid apartments and are feigned with exertions of dignity and necessity of no small expense.... I have asked several friends about the truth of what one has been always hearing in England—that the Venetian gondoliers sing Tasso’s and Ariosto’s verses in the streets at night, sometimes quarrelling with each other concerning the merits of their favourite poets; but what I have been told since I came here of their attachment to their respective masters, and secrecy when trusted by them in love affairs, seems far more probable, as they are proud to excess when they serve a nobleman of high birth, and will tell you with an air of importance that the house of Memmo, Monsenigo, or Gratterola has been served by their ancestors for these eighty or perhaps a hundred years, transmitting pride thus from generation to generation, even when that pride is but reflected only like the mock rainbow of a summer sky. But hark! while I am writing this peevish reflection in my room, I hear some voices under my window answering each other upon the Grand Canal. It is—it is the gondolieri sure enough; they are at this moment singing to an odd sort of tune, but in no unmusical manner, the flight of Erminia from Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem.’

MRS. PIOZZI (1785).

A GONDOLIER OF CHIOGGIA

‘Drink, my friends! vive la joyeuse Italie, et Venise la belle!... I am, as you know, the son of a Chioggia fisherman. Nearly all the natives of this shore have the thorax well developed, and possess strong voices, which would be beautiful also, if not early injured by[Pg 167] struggles, when at sea, with the noise of the wind and waves.... The Chioggiotes are a handsome race. They say that a great French painter, Leopolo Roberto, is now occupied in illustrating their beauty in a picture, which he will allow no one to see. Though, as you perceive, my complexion is sufficiently robust, my father, in comparing me with my brothers, considered me so frail and delicate, that he would not teach me either to throw the line, or to manage skiff or fishing-boat. He showed me only how to handle an oar with both hands, to row a small boat, and sent me to gain a living at Venice, in the capacity of assistant gondolier of the place. It was a great relief and humiliation for me to enter thus into servitude, to quit my paternal home, the borders of the sea, and the honourable and perilous profession of my ancestors. But I had a fine voice, and knew many fragments of Ariosto and Tasso. I might make a lively gondolier, and gain, with time and patience, fifty francs a month in the service of amateurs and strangers.... Taste for poetry and music develops itself among us sons of the people. We had, and we still have (though the custom threatens to be lost) our bards and our poets, whom we call cupidons; rhapsodical travellers, who bring us from the central provinces incorrect notions of the mother-tongue, modified—I should better say enriched, with all the genius of the northern and southern dialects. Men of the people like us, gifted at the same time with memory and imagination, they never care for mixing their fantastic improvisations with the creations of poets. Always taking, and leaving some new phrase in their passage, they embellish the language and the text of their authors with an inconceivable confusion of idioms. They might well be[Pg 168] called the preservers of the instability of language in the literature of the frontier provinces. Our ignorance accepts, without appeal, the decisions of this walking academy; and you have had occasion, at times, to admire the energy and the grotesque Italian of our poets, in the mouths of the singers of the lagoons. It is noon on Sunday after Grand Mass, upon the public place of Chioggia, or of an evening in the cabarets on the banks, that these rhapsodists delight a numerous and impassioned audience by their recitations mingled with song and declamation. The cupido usually stands upon a table, and plays from time to time a symphony or finale after his fashion, upon some kind of instrument; sometimes the Calabrian pipe, sometimes the violin, flute, or guitar. The Chioggiotes, cold and phlegmatic in appearance, listen and smoke at first, with an imperturbable and almost disdainful air; but at the noble battle of Ariosto’s heroes, at the death of Paladins, the rescue of ladies, and the defeat of giants, the audience are aroused, become animated, utter cries, excite themselves so effectually, that pipes and glasses fly into pieces, the seats and the tables are overturned, and often the cupido, about to fall the victim to the enthusiasm he has called forth, is forced to take flight, while the dilettanti spread themselves through the country in pursuit of an imaginary ravisher with cries of ‘d’amazza! d’amazza! kill the monster! kill the coward! bravo, Astolphe! courage, brave comrade!’ It is thus these men of Chioggia, intoxicated with the fumes of tobacco, wine, and poetry, take to their boats, declaiming to the winds and waves broken fragments of these delirious epic poems.

GEORGE SAND.

[Pg 171]

PLEASANT MURANO

I passed in a gondola to pleasant Murano, distant about a little mile from the citie, where they make their delicate Venice glasses, so famous over al Christendome for the incomparable finenes thereof, and in one of their working houses made a glasse my selfe. Most of their principall matter whereof they make their glasses is a kinde of earth which is brought thither by sea from Drepanum, a goodly haven towne of Sicilie, where Æneas buried his aged father Anchises. This Murano is a very delectable and populous place, having many faire buildings both publique and private, and divers very pleasant gardens. The first that inhabited it were those of the towne Altinum, bordering upon the sea coast, who in the time of the Hunnes invasion of Italy, repaired hither with their wives and children, for the securitie of their lives, as other borderers also did at the same time to those Islands, where Venice now standeth. Here did I eate the best oysters that ever I did in all my life. They were indeede but little, something lesse than our Wainflete oysters about London.... By the way, betwixt Venice and Murano I observed a most notable thing, whereof I had often heard long before, a faire monastery of Augustinian monkes built by a second Flora or Lais. I meane a rich Cortezan of Venice, whose name was Margarita Æmiliana. I have not heard of so religious a worke done by so irreligious a founder in any place of Christendome: belike she[Pg 172] hoped to make expiation unto God by this holy deede for the lascivious dalliances of her youth, but tali spe freti sperando pereant.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

MURANO

The decay of the city of Venice is, in many respects, like that of an outwearied and aged human frame; the cause of its decrepitude is indeed at the heart, but the outward appearances of it are first at the extremities. In the centre of the city there are still places where some evidence of vitality remains, and where, with kind closing of the eyes to signs, too manifest even there, of distress and declining fortune, the stranger may succeed in imagining, for a little while, what must have been the aspect of Venice in her prime. But this lingering pulsation has not force enough any more to penetrate into the suburbs and outskirts of the city; the frost of death has there seized upon it irrevocably, and the grasp of mortal disease is marked daily by the increasing breadth of its belt of ruin. Nowhere is this seen more grievously than along the great north-eastern boundary, once occupied by the smaller palaces of the Venetians, built for pleasure or repose; the nobler piles along the Grand Canal being reserved for the pomp and business of daily life. To such smaller palaces some garden ground was commonly attached, opening to the water-side; and, in front of these villas and gardens, the lagoon was wont to be covered in the evening by gondolas: the space of it between this part of the city and the island group of Murano being to Venice, in her time of power, what its parks are to[Pg 173] London; only gondolas were used instead of carriages, and the crowd of the population did not come out till towards sunset, and prolonged their pleasures far into the night, company answering to company with alternate singing.

If, knowing this custom of the Venetians, and with a vision in his mind of summer palaces lining the shore, and myrtle gardens sloping to the sea, the traveller now seeks this suburb of Venice, he will be strangely and sadly surprised to find a new but perfectly desolate quay, about a mile in length, extending from the arsenal to the Sacca della Misericordia, in front of a line of miserable houses built in the course of the last sixty or eighty years, yet already tottering to their ruin; and not less to find that the principal object in the view which these houses (built partly in front and partly on the ruins of the ancient palaces) now command is a dead brick wall, about a quarter of a mile across the water, interrupted only by a kind of white lodge, the cheerfulness of which prospect is not enhanced by his finding that this wall encloses the principal public cemetery of Venice. He may, perhaps, marvel for a few moments at the singular taste of the old Venetians in taking their pleasure under a churchyard wall; but on further inquiry, he will find that the building on the island, like those on the shore, is recent, that it stands on the ruins of the Church of St. Cristoforo della Pace; and that, with a singular, because unintended, moral, the modern Venetians have replaced the Peace of the Christ-bearer by the Peace of Death, and where they once went, as the sun set daily, to their pleasure, now go, as the sun sets to each of them, for ever, to their graves.

Yet the power of Nature cannot be shortened by[Pg 174] the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of man. The broad tides still ebb and flow brightly about the island of the dead, and the linked conclave of the Alps know no decline from their old pre-eminence, nor stoop from their golden thrones in the circle of the horizon. So lovely is the scene still, in spite of all its injuries, that we shall find ourselves drawn there again and again at evening out of the narrow canals and streets of the city, to watch the wreaths of the sea-mist weaving themselves like mourning veils around the mountains far away, and listen to the green waves as they fret and sigh along the cemetery shore.

But it is morning now: we have a hard day’s work to do at Murano, and our boat shoots swiftly from beneath the last bridge of Venice, and brings us out into the open sea and sky.

The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another, rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet them, and are lost in them, barred across by the grey terraces of those cloud foundations and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the mainland fringed with low trees; and then the wide-waving surface of the burnished lagoon trembling slowly, and shaking out into forked bands of lengthening fight the images of the towers of cloud above. To the north, there is first the great cemetery wall, then the long stray buildings of Murano, and the island villages[Pg 175] beyond, glittering in intense crystalline vermilion, like so much jewellery scattered on a mirror, their towers poised apparently in the air a little above the horizon, and their reflections, as sharp and vivid and substantial as themselves, thrown on the vacancy between them and the sea. And thus the villages seem standing on the air; and, to the east, there is a cluster of ships that seem sailing on the land; for the sandy line of the Lido stretches itself between us and them, and we can see the tall white sails moving beyond it, but not the sea, only there is a sense of the great sea being indeed there, and a solemn strength of gleaming light in the sky above.

The most discordant feature in the whole scene is the cloud which hovers above the glass furnaces of Murano; but this we may not regret, as it is one of the last signs left of human exertion among the ruinous villages which surround us. The silent gliding of the gondola brings it nearer to us every moment; we pass the cemetery, and a deep sea-channel which separates it from Murano, and finally enter a narrow water-street, with a paved footpath on each side, raised three or four feet above the canal, and forming a kind of quay between the water and the doors of the houses. These latter are, for the most part, low, but built with massy doors and windows of marble or Istrian stone, square set, and barred with iron; buildings evidently once of no mean order, though now inhabited only by the poor. Here and there an ogee window of the fourteenth century, or a doorway deeply enriched with cable mouldings, shows itself in the midst of more ordinary features; and several houses, consisting of one story only carried on square pillars, forming a short arcade along the quay, have[Pg 176] windows sustained on shafts, of red Verona marble, of singular grace and delicacy. All now in vain: little care is there for their delicacy or grace among the rough fishermen sauntering on the quay with their jackets hanging loose from their shoulders, jacket and cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some life in the scene more than is usual in Venice; the women are sitting at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses sifting glass-dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water, from vendors of figs and grapes, and gourds, and shellfish; cries partly descriptive of the eatables in question, but interspersed with others of a character unintelligible in proportion to their violence, and fortunately so, if we may judge by a sentence which is stencilled in black, within a garland, on the whitewashed walls of nearly every other house in the street, but which, how often soever written, no one seems to regard: ‘Bestemme non più. Lodate Gesù.’

We push our way on between large barges laden with fresh water from Fusina, in round white tubs seven feet across, and complicated boats full of all manner of nets, that look as if they could never be disentangled, hanging from their masts and over their sides; and presently pass under a bridge with the lion of St. Mark on its archivolt, and another on a pillar at the end of the parapet, a small red lion with much of the puppy in his face, looking vacantly up into the air (in passing we may note that, instead of feathers, his wings are covered with hair, and in several other points the manner of his sculpture is not uninteresting). Presently the canal turns a little to[Pg 177] the left, and thereupon becomes more quiet, the main bustle of the water-street being usually confined to the first straight reach of it, some quarter of a mile long, the Cheapside of Murano. We pass a considerable church on the left, St. Pietro, and a little square opposite to it with a few acacia-trees, and then find our boat suddenly seized by a strong green eddy, and whirled into the tide-way of one of the main channels of the lagoon, which divides the town of Murano into two parts by a deep stream some fifty yards over, crossed only by one wooden bridge. We let ourselves drift some way down the current, looking at the low line of cottages on the other side of it, hardly knowing if there be more cheerfulness or melancholy in the way the sunshine glows on their ruinous but whitewashed walls, and sparkles on the rushing of the green water by the grass-grown quay. It needs a strong stroke of the oar to bring us into the mouth of another quiet canal on the farther side of the tide-way, and we are still somewhat giddy when we run the head of the gondola into the sand on the left-hand side of this more sluggish stream, and land under the seat end of the Church of San Donato, the ‘Matrice’ or ‘Mother’ Church of Murano.

JOHN RUSKIN.

THE GLASS FURNACES OF MURANO

I was lately to see the arsenal of Venice, one of the worthiest things of Christendom; they say there are as many galleys, and galeasses of all sorts, belonging to St. Mark, either in cours, as anchor, in dock, or upon the carine, as there be days in the year; here they can build a complete galley in half a day, and[Pg 178] put her afloat in perfect equipage, having all the ingredients fitted beforehand, as they did in three hours, when Henry the Third passed this way to France from Poland, who wished, that besides Paris and his parliament towns, he had this arsenal in exchange for three of his chiefest cities. There are three hundred people perpetually here at work, and if one comes young and grows old in St. Mark’s service, he hath a pension from the State during life. Being brought to see one of the Clarissimos that governs this arsenal, this huge sea store-house, amongst other matters reflecting upon England, he was saying: ‘That if Cavalier Don Roberto Mansell were now here, he thought verily the republic would make a proffer to him to be admiral of that fleet of galleys and galleons, which are now going against the Duke of Ossuna and the forces of Naples, you are so well known here.’

I was, since I came hither, in Murano, a little island about the distance of Lambeth from London, where crystal glass is made, and it is a rare sight to see a whole street, where on the one side there are twenty furnaces together at work. They say here that although one should transplant a glass-furnace from Murano to Venice herself, or to any of the little assembly of islands about her, or to any other part of the earth besides, and use the same materials, the same workmen, the same fuel, the self-same ingredients every day, yet they cannot make crystal glass in that perfection, for beauty and lustre, as in Murano. Some impute it to the quality of the circumambient air that hangs over the place, which is purified and attenuated by the concurrence of so many fires that are in those furnaces night and day perpetually, for they are like the vestal fire which never goes out....

[Pg 179] The art of glass-making here is very highly valued; for, whosoever be of that profession are gentlemen ipso facto, and it is not without reason; it being a rare kind of knowledge and chemistry to transmute dust and sand (for they are the only main ingredients) to such a diaphanous pellucid dainty body as you see a crystal glass is, which hath this property above gold or silver or any other mineral, to admit no poison; as also that it never wastes or loses a whit of its first weight, though you use it never so long. When I saw so many sorts of curious glasses made here I thought upon the compliment which a gentleman put upon a lady in England, who having five or six comely daughters, said he never saw in his life such a dainty cupboard of crystal glasses; the compliment proceeds, it seems, from a saying they have here, ‘That the first handsome woman that ever was made, was made of Venice glass,’ which implies beauty, but brittleness with all (and Venice is not unfurnished with some of that mould, for no place abounds more with lasses and glasses).... When I pried into the materials, and observed the furnaces and the calcinations, the transubstantiations, the liquefactions that are incident to this art, my thoughts were raised to a higher speculation: that if this small furnace-fire hath the virtue to convert such a small lump of dark dust and sand into such a precious clear body as crystal, surely that grand universal fire which shall happen at the day of judgment, may by its violent ardour vitrify and turn to one lump of crystal the whole body of the earth; nor am I the first that fell upon this conceit.

JAMES HOWELL.

[Pg 180]

TORCELLO

Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen grey; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the colour of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but further back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as[Pg 181] the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,—Torcello and Venice.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude[Pg 182] of its people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea.

The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower’s scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow land.

The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water’s edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken for the outhouses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of the ‘Palazzo publico,’ both dating as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which surrounds it[Pg 183] are of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church, to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight and distress, who sought in the hurried erection of their island church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendour, and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honour to God by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western extremities,—one[Pg 184] representing the Last Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,—and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men ‘persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed.’ ...

And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,—first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,—rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:

JOHN RUSKIN.

[Pg 185]

UPON A CUPBOARD OF VENICE-GLASSES

SENT FOR A NEW YEAR’S GIFT TO A CHOICE LADY

Madame,

JAMES HOWELL.

[Pg 186]

SAN FRANCESCO DEL DESERTO

SAN FRANCESCO DELLA VIGNA

Do you know San Francesco della Vigna, in Venice?

Some say that its tall tower is the first point rising above the waves, which the returning Venetian sailor sees as he comes homeward from the south-east, over the foaming bars of Chioggia and Malamocco, one slender shaft lifted against sky, calling him back to his city and his home. All the mariners and fishermen,[Pg 189] who come and go over the Adrian waters, have an especial tenderness, an especial reverence, for Saint Francis of the Vineyard. There is no vineyard now; only one small square garden, with a cloister running round it, arched, columned, marble paved, where the dead lie under the worn smooth slabs, and the box-edges hem in thyme, and balsams, and basil, and carnations, and thrift, and saxifrage, and other homely hardy plants which need slight fostering care. The sea winds blow strongly there, and the sea fogs drift thickly, and the steam and smoke of the foundries round about hang in heavy clouds, where once the pavilions and the lawns and the terraces of the patricians of Venice touched the grey-green lagoon; but this garden of San Francesco is still sweet and fresh: shut in between its marble colonnades with the deep brown shadow of the church leaning over it, and the chiming of the bells, and the melody of the organ rolling above it in deep waves of sound, jarred sometimes by the clash of the hammers falling on the iron and the copper of the foundries near at hand, and sometimes sinking to a sweet silence, only softly stirred by the splash of an oar as a boat passes up or down the narrow canal.

For the sake of that cloistered garden, a gondola came one summer every day to the landing-place before San Francesco. In the gondola was an artist, a painter of Paris, Yvon Dorât, who had seen the spot, and liked it, and returned to paint from it every day, finding an inexpressible charm in its contrasts of gloom and light, of high brown walls and low-lying graves, of fresh green herbs and flowers, and melancholy immemorial marble aisles. He meant to make a great picture of it, with the ethereal Venetian sky[Pg 190] above all, and, between the straight edges of the bay, a solitary monk passing thoughtfully. Dorât was under the charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm, voluptuous and yet spiritual, which no artist or poet ever can resist, and these summer months were to him as a vision of languor, and beauty and rest, in which the white wings of sea-birds, and the silver of gleaming waters, and the festal figures of Carpaccio and the golden warmth of Palma, Vecchio, and the glories of sunsets aflame behind the Euganean hills, and the mystery of moonless night, with the tide washing against the weed-grown piles of a Madonna of the lagoon, were all blended in that confusion of past and present, of art and nature, of desire and repose, which fills the soul and the senses of those who love Venice, and live in thrall to her.

OUIDA.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI’S

[2] Galuppi the musician was a native of Burano, a small island about a mile from Torcello, where his name is held in great esteem.—A. H. H.

TO CHIOGGIA WITH OAR AND SAIL

The sandolo is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or ferro which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just raised above the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike movement of the gondola. In one of these boats—called by him the Fisolo or Seamew—my friend Eustace had started with Antonio, intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured, to hoist a sail and help[Pg 194] himself along. After breakfast, when the crew for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed with the Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which occur as a respite from broken weather, when the air is windless and the light falls soft through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the Redentore, the islands in front of us, St. Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco, seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. The Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, and almost blent with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs into their work; and soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a breeze from the Adriatic caught us sideways for a while....

Now we are well lost in the lagoons—Venice no longer visible behind; the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disappeared in light irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the suggestion of coastlines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre, all remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached. We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead—a huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for a twelve hours’ cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came, with variegated sails of orange, red,[Pg 195] and saffron, curiously chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints. A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving eastward on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according as each wills.

The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia, which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language and race and customs have held the two populations apart from these distant years when Genoa and the Republic of St. Mark fought their duel to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his pipe more than his donna or his wife. The main canal is lined with substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But from Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter. Wandering about its wide deserted courts and calli, we feel the spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility....

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering[Pg 196] along the sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing—those at least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad, and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion. But some transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through the dignity with which these men invested them. By the peculiarity of their treatment the recitativo of the stage assumed a solemn movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna’s lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that calm—stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, till San Giorgio’s gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with the whispers at the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the[Pg 197] deep-scented darkness of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was on its burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

THE MIRROR OF THE LAGOON

This strange, soft sea, so tempered into gentlehood, brings through its quietude another element of charm into Venice. It reflects all things with a wonderful perfection. Whatever loveliness is by its side it makes more lovely. Shallow itself, it seems deep; and the towers and palaces of Venice in all their colours descend and shine among other clouds and in another sky below. All outlines of sculpture and architecture, of embossment, in wall and window; all play of sunshine and shade; all the human life in balcony, bridge or quay, on barge or boat, are in the waters as in a silent dream—revealed in every line and colour, but with an exquisite difference in softness and purity. All Nature’s doings in the sky are also repeated with a tender fidelity in the mirror of the lagoon—morning light, noonday silver, purple thunder-cloud in the afternoon, sunset vapours, the moon and stars of night—and not only on the surface, but also, it seems, in an immeasurable depth. To look over the side of the boat into the water is to cry, ‘I see infinite space.’

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

[Pg 198]

LAGOON MESSAGE

ON THE LAGOONS

The afternoons invite us to a further flight upon the water. Both sandolo and gondola await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the wind and inclination tempt us.

Yonder lies San Luzzaro, with the neat red buildings of the Armenian convent. The last oleander[Pg 199] blossoms shine rosy pink above its walls against the pure blue sky as we glide into the little harbour. Boats piled with coal-black grapes block the landing-place, for the Padri are gathering their vintage from the Lido, and their presses run with new wine. Eustace and I have not come to revive memories of Byron—that curious patron-saint of the Armenian colony—or to inspect the printing-press, which issues books of little value for our studies. It is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an hour beneath the low broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines, through which the domes and towers of Venice rise more beautiful by distance.

Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall—block piled on block—of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on these murazzi, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them had to be brought across the Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea might effect an entrance into the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of some places where the murazzi were broken in a gale, or sciroccale, not very long ago. Lying awake in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one hears the sea thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God for the murazzi. On such a night it happened once to me to dream a dream of Venice overwhelmed by water. I[Pg 200] saw the billows roll across the smooth lagoon, like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San Marco’s domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed. And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to their fall, while boats piled high with men and women strove to stem the tide, and save themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the sea’s roar and Tintoretto’s painting. But this afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the moist autumn air we break tall branches of the seeded yellowing samphire from hollows of the rocks, and bear them homeward in a wayward bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn.

Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth of the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and meadows, intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind the Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines Venice—a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark fire-rimmed clouds. The[Pg 201] Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids, Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last, we see the first lamps glitter on the Zattere. The quiet of the night has come.

Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the zenith, and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step, stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or, again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson, and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one such evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea between Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there[Pg 202] on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

AT THE LIDO

Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent. It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy, above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant’ Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant’ Elisabetta offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour’s contemplation of a[Pg 203] limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant’ Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across the island and back again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with them in the shade of the little osteria’s wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to Lido was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are welcome to the artist’s soul. I have always held that in our modern life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopœic sense—that sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail judged by this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.

I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful risings and[Pg 204] sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the Ægean or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows plunge in tideless instability.

We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad pergola. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown back upon his matted zazzera of dark hair tipped with dusky brown. This shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of the lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and sunset gilds its[Pg 205] sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin bronzed, but showing white and healthful through open front and sleeves of lilac shirt. The dashing sparkle of this animate splendour, who looked to me as though the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some hour of secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasized by a curious dint dividing his square chin—a cleft that harmonized with smile on lip and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon a reader to compare eyes to opals. Yet Stefano’s eyes, as they met mine, had the vitreous intensity of opals, as though the colour of Venetian waters were vitalized in them. This noticeable being had a rough, hoarse voice, which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god, might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages from crests of tossing billows.

I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the lagoons was humanized; the spirit of the salt-water lakes had appeared to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given; I was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.

Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews’ cemetery. It is a quiet place, where the flat gravestones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian, lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet, knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm so much. There is one outlying[Pg 206] piece of the cemetery which seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes. Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and defile these habitations of the dead:

Some of the gravestones have been used to fence the towing-path; and one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian marble.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

THE LIDO

Yesterday I set out early with my tutelary genius for the Lido, the tongue of land which shuts in the lagoons, and divides them from the sea. We landed and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur,—it was the sea! I soon saw it: it crested high against the shore, as it retired,—it was about noon, and time of ebb. I have then seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it. I wished the children had been there to gather the shells; childlike, I myself picked up plenty of them.... On the Lido, not far from the sea, is the burial-place of Englishmen, and a little further on, of the Jews: both alike are refused the privilege of resting in consecrated ground. I found here the tomb of Smith, the noble English consul, and that of his first wife.[Pg 207] It is to him that I owe my first copy of Palladio; I thanked him for it here in his unconsecrated grave....

The Lido is at best but a sand-bank. But the sea—it is a grand sight! I will try and get a sail upon it some day in a fishing-boat: the gondolas never venture out so far....

A delicious day from morning to night! I have been towards Chioggia, as far as Pelestrina, where are the great structures, called murazzi, which the Republic has caused to be raised against the sea. They are hewn of stone, and properly are intended to protect from the fury of the wild element the Lido, which separates the lagoons from the sea.

The lagoons are the work of old nature. First of all, the land and tide, the ebb and flow, working against each other, and then the gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, together, the causes why, at the upper end of the Adriatic, we find a pretty extensive range of marshes, which, covered by the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the ebb. Art took possession of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice, formed out of a group of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and labour, deep canals have been dug through the marshes, in order that at the time of high water, ships of war might pass to the chief points. What human industry and wit contrived and executed of old, skill and industry must now keep up....

Yesterday evening I ascended the tower of St. Mark’s: as I had lately seen from its top the lagoons in their glory at flood-time, I wished to see them at[Pg 208] low water; for in order to have a correct idea of the place, it is necessary to take in both views. It looks rather strange to see land all around one, where a little before the eye fell upon a mirror of waters. The islands are no longer islands—merely higher and house-crowned spots in one large morass of a grey-greenish colour, and intersected by beautiful canals.

GOETHE.

ON THE LAGOONS

À LA ZUECCA

LA MADONNA DELL’ACQUA

In the centre of the lagoon between Venice and the mouths of the Brenta, supported on a few mouldering piles, stands a small shrine dedicated to the Madonna dell’Acqua, which the gondolier never passes without a prayer.

LORD BYRON ON THE LIDO

Lord Byron (writes the poet’s friend) proposed to me to accompany him in his rides on the Lido.... Every day that the weather would permit, Lord Byron called for me in his gondola, and we found the horses waiting for us outside the fort. We rode as far as we could along the sea-shore, and then on a kind of dyke, or embankment, which has been raised where the island was very narrow, as far as another small fort, about half-way between the principal one and the town or village of Malamocco, near the other extremity of the island,—the distance being about three miles.

On the land side of the embankment, near the smaller fort, was a boundary stone, which probably marked some division of property,—all the side of the island, nearest the lagoon, being divided into gardens for the cultivation of vegetables. At the foot of this stone, Lord Byron repeatedly told me that I should cause him to be interred, if he should die in Venice, or its neighbourhood. During my residence here ... nothing could be more delightful than these rides on the Lido. We were from half to three-quarters of an hour crossing the water, during which his conversation[Pg 212] was most amusing and interesting. Sometimes he would bring with him any new book he had received, and read to me the passages which struck him most. Often he would repeat to me whole stanzas of the poems he was writing, as he had composed them on the preceding evening.

THOMAS MOORE.

THE LIDO AND ITS GRAVES

AN ISLAND VISIT

I am just returned from visiting the isles of Murano, Torcello, and Mazorbo, distant about five miles from Venice. To these amphibious spots the Romans, inhabitants of eastern Lombardy, fled from the rapine of Attila; and, if we may believe Cassiodorus, there was a time when they presented a beautiful appearance. Beyond them, on the coast of the lagoons, rose the once populous city of Altina, with its six stately gates, which Dandolo mentions. Its neighbourhood was scattered with innumerable villas and temples, composing altogether a prospect which Martial compares to Baiæ: ‘Æmula Baiunis Altini littora villis.’

[Pg 215]

But this agreeable scene, like so many others, is passed entirely away, and has left nothing, except heaps of stones and misshapen fragments, to vouch for its former magnificence. Two of the islands, Costanziaco and Amiano, that are imagined to have contained the bowers and gardens of the Altinatians, have sunk beneath the waters; those which remain are scarcely worthy to rise above their surface.

Though I was persuaded little was left to be seen above ground, I could not deny myself the imaginary pleasure of treading a corner of the earth once so adorned and cultivated; and of walking over the roofs, perhaps, of concealed halls and undiscovered palaces. Hiring, therefore, a peiotte, we took some provisions and music (to us equally necessaries of life), and launched into the canal, between St. Michael and Murano.

The waves coursed each other with violence, and dark clouds hung over the grand sweep of northern mountains, whilst the west smiled with azure and bright sunshine. Thunder rolled awfully at a distance, and those white and greyish birds, the harbingers of storms, flitted frequently before our bark. For some moments we were in doubt whether to proceed; but as we advanced by a little dome in the Isle of St. Michael, shaped like an ancient temple, the sky cleared, and the ocean subsiding by degrees, soon presented a tranquil expanse, across which we were smoothly wafted. Our instruments played several delightful airs, that called forth the inhabitants of every island, and held them silent, as if spellbound, on the edge of their quays and terraces, till we were out of hearing.

Leaving Murano far behind, Venice and its world[Pg 216] of turrets began to sink on the horizon, and the low desert isles beyond Mazorbo to lie stretched out before us. Now we beheld vast wastes of purple flowers, and could distinguish the low hum of the insects which hover above them; such was the silence of the place. Coasting these solitary fields, we wound amongst several serpentine canals, bordered by gardens of figs and pomegranates, with neat Indian-looking inclosures of cane and reed: an aromatic plant clothes the margin of the waters, which the people justly dignify with the title of marine incense. It proved very serviceable in subduing a musky odour, which attacked us the moment we landed, and which proceeds from serpents that lurk in the hedges. These animals, say the gondoliers, defend immense treasures which lie buried under the ruins. Woe to those who attempt invading them, or prying too cautiously about!

Not choosing to be devoured, we left many a mount of fragments unnoticed, and made the best of our way to a little green, free from weeds or adders, bounded on one side by a miserable shed, decorated with the name of the Podesta’s residence, and on the other by a circular church. Some remains of tolerable antique sculpture are enchased in the walls; and the dome, supported by pillars of a smooth Grecian marble, though uncouth and ill-proportioned, impresses a sort of veneration, and transports the fancy to the twilight glimmering period when it was raised.

Having surveyed what little was visible, and given as much career to our imaginations as the scene inspired, we walked over a soil composed of crumbling bricks and cement to the cathedral; whose arches, turned on the ancient Roman principle, convinced[Pg 217] us that it dates as high as the sixth or seventh century.

Nothing can well be more fantastic than the ornaments of this structure, formed from the ruins of the Pagan temples of Altina, and incrusted with a gilt mosaic, like that which covers our Edward the Confessor’s tomb. The pavement, composed of various precious marbles, is richer and more beautiful than one could have expected, in a place where every other object savours of the grossest barbarism. At the farther end, beyond the altar, appears a semicircular niche, with seats like the gradines of a diminutive amphitheatre; above rise the quaint forms of the apostles, in red, blue, green, and black mosaic, and in the midst of the goodly group a sort of marble chair, cool and penitential enough, where St. Lorenzo Giustiniani sat to hold a provincial council, the Lord knows how long ago! The fount for holy water stands by the principal entrance, fronting this curious recess, and seems to have belonged to some place of Gentile worship. The figures of horned imps cling round its sides, more devilish, more Egyptian, than any I ever beheld. The dragons on old china are not more whimsical: I longed to have it filled with bats’ blood, and to have sent it by way of present to the Sabbath; I can assure you it would have done honour to their witcheries. The sculpture is not the most delicate, but I cannot say a great deal about it, as but little light reaches the spot where it is fixed. Indeed, the whole church is far from luminous, its windows being narrow and near the roof, with shutters composed of blocks of marble, which nothing but the last whirlwind, one would think, could move from their hinges.

By the time we had examined every nook and[Pg 218] corner of this singular edifice, and caught, perhaps, some small portion of sanctity by sitting in San Lorenzo’s chair, dinner was prepared in a neighbouring convent, and the nuns, allured by the sound of our flutes and oboes, peeped out of their cells and showed themselves by dozens at the grate. Some few agreeable faces and interesting eyes enlivened the dark sisterhood; all seemed to catch a gleam of pleasure from the music; two or three of them, probably the last immured, let fall a tear, and suffered the recollection of the world and its profane joys to interrupt for a moment their sacred tranquillity.

We stayed till the sun was low, and the breezes blew cold from the ocean, on purpose that they might listen as long as possible to a harmony which seemed to issue, as the old abbess expressed herself, from the gates of paradise ajar. A thousand benedictions consecrated our departure; twilight came on just as we entered the bark and rowed out upon the waves, agitated by a fresh gale, but fearing nothing under the protection of St. Margherita, whose good wishes our music had secured.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

[Pg 221]

THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL

The history of Venice reads like a romance; the place seems a fantastic vision at the best, from which the world must at last awake some morning, and find that after all it has only been dreaming, and that there never was any such city.... The Church of St. Mark, standing so solidly, with a thousand years under the feet of its innumerable pillars, is not in the least grey with time—no greyer than a Greek lyric.

in this fantastic city. The prose of earth has risen poetry from its baptism in the sea....

The cunning city beguiles you street by street, and step by step, into some old court, where a flight of marble stairs leads high up to the pillared gallery of an empty palace, with a climbing vine green and purple on its old decay, and one or two gaunt trees stretching their heads to look into the lofty windows,—blind long ago to their leafy tenderness,—while at their feet is some sumptuously carven well, with the beauty of the sculptor’s soul wrought for ever into the stone. Or Venice lures you in a gondola, into one of her remote canals, where you glide through an avenue as secret and as still as if sea-deep under our work-day world; where the grim heads carven over the water-gates of the palaces stare at you in austere surprise; where the innumerable balconies are full of the absences of gay cavaliers and gentle[Pg 222] dames, gossiping and making love to one another, from their airy perches. Or if the city’s mood is one of bolder charm, she fascinates you in the very places where you think her power is the weakest, and as if impatient of your forgetfulness, dares a wilder beauty, and enthrals with a yet more unearthly and incredible enchantment.... But whatever surprise of memorable or beautiful Venice may prepare for your forgetfulness, be sure it will be complete and resistless. Nay, what potenter magic needs my Venice to revivify her past whenever she will, than the serpent cunning of her Grand Canal?... For myself, I must count as half lost the year spent in Venice before I took a house upon the Grand Canal. There alone can existence have the perfect local flavour. But by what witchery touched, one’s being suffers the common sea-change, till life at last seems to ebb and flow with the tide in that wonder-avenue of palaces, it would be idle to attempt to tell. I can only take you to our dear little balcony at Casa Falier, and comment not very coherently on the scene upon the water under us....

October is the month of the sunsets, and are best seen from the Public Gardens, whence one looks westward, and beholds them glorious behind the domes and towers of San Giorgio Maggiore and the church of the Redentore. Sometimes, when the sky is clear, your sunset on the lagoon is a fine thing; for then the sun goes down into the water with a broad trail of bloody red behind him, as if, wounded far out at sea, he had dragged himself landward across the crimsoning expanses, and fallen and died as he reached the land. But we (upon whom the idleness of Venice grows daily, and from whom the Gardens,[Pg 223] therefore, grow further and further) are commonly content to take our bit of sunset as we get it from our balcony, through the avenue opened by the narrow canal opposite. We like the earlier afternoon to have been a little rainy, when we have our sunset splendid as the fury of a passionate beauty—all tears and fire. There is a pretty but impertinent little palace on the corner which is formed by this canal as it enters the Canalazzo, and from the palace, high over the smaller channel, hangs an airy balcony. When the sunset sky, under and over the balcony, is of that pathetic and angry red which I have tried to figure, we think ourselves rich in the neighbourhood of that part of the ‘Palace of Art,’ whereon

And so, after all, we do not think we have lost any greater thing in not seeing the sunset from the Gardens, where half a dozen artists are always painting it, or from the quay of the Zattere, where it is splendid over and under the island church of San Giorgio in Alga....

About nightfall came the market boats on their way to the Rialto market, bringing heaped fruits and vegetables from the mainland; and far into the night the soft dip of the oar, and the gurgling progress of the boats was company and gentlest lullaby. By which time, if we looked out again, we found the moon risen, and the ghost of dead Venice shadowily happy in haunting the lonesome palaces, and the sea, which had so loved Venice, kissing and caressing the tide-worn marble steps where her feet seemed to rest.

W. D. HOWELLS.

[Pg 224]

BROWNING’S FUNERAL

VENICE, DEC. 15, 1889

[3] See ‘In a Gondola,’ p. 136.

BYRON ON THE GRAND CANAL

We started together, Lord Byron and myself, in my little Milanese vehicle, for Fusina,—his portly gondolier, Tito, in a rich livery and most redundant mustachios.... As we proceeded across the lagoon in his gondola, the sun was just setting, and it was an evening such as Romance would have chosen for a first sight of Venice, rising with her ‘tiara of bright towers’ above the wave; while to complete, as might be imagined, the solemn interest of the scene, I beheld it in company with him who[Pg 225] had lately given a new life to its glories, and sung of that fair City of the Sea, thus grandly:

But, whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene might, under other circumstances, have inspired within me, the mood of the mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the very reverse of what might have been expected. The exuberant gaiety of my companion, and the recollections—anything but romantic—into which our conversation wandered, put at once completely to flight all poetic and historical associations; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one of uninterrupted merriment and laughter, till we found ourselves at the steps of my friend’s palazzo on the Grand Canal.

THOMAS MOORE.

BELOW THE RIALTO: MORNING

Could I but place the reader at the early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden colour; and let him watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of the vine leaves; and show him the purple of the grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away in long streams upon the waves; and among them, the crimson fish baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on their wet tawny sides; and above, the painted sails of the fishing boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue; and better than all such florid colour, the[Pg 226] naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione colour on their brows and bosoms!

JOHN RUSKIN.

A VENETIAN MARKET

The gondola was waiting as usual at the corner; it took them but a very little way, and landed them on the quay near the Rialto.... All the pictures out of all the churches were buying and selling in this busy market; Virgins went by, carrying their Infants; St. Peter is bargaining his silver fish; Judas is making a low bow to a fat old monk, who holds up his brown skirts and steps with bare legs into a mysterious black gondola that has been waiting by the bridge, and that silently glides away.... A girl came quietly through the crowd, carrying her head nobly above the rest, and looking straight before her with a sweet and generous face. ‘What a beautiful creature! Brava, brava!’ shrieked Lady W. The girl hung her sweet head and blushed. Titian’s mother, out of the ‘Presentation,’ who was sitting by with her basket of eggs, smiled and patted the young Madonna on her shoulder. ‘They are only saying good things; they mean no harm,’ said the old woman.... Then a cripple went along on his crutches; then came a woman carrying a beautiful little boy, with a sort of turban round her head.... One corner of the market was given up to great hobgoblin pumpkins; tomatoes were heaped in the stalls; oranges and limes were not yet over; but perhaps the fish-stalls are the prettiest of all. Silver fish tied up in stars with olive-green leaves, golden[Pg 227] fish, as in miracles, with noble people serving. There are the jewellers’ shops too, but their wares do not glitter so brightly as all this natural beautiful gold and silver.

LADY RITCHIE.

A RIALTO SCENE

The traveller who delights to linger on St. Mark’s Place, in the Basilica, at the Ducal Palace, in the museums and churches, should also halt long and often at the Rialto. This is a corner with a character quite its own; here crowd together, laden with fruit and vegetables, the black boats that come from the islands to provision Venice, the great hulls laden with cocomeri, angurie, with gourds and water-melons piled in mountains of colour; there the gondolas jostle, and the gondoliers chatter like birds in their Venetian idiom; there, too, are the fishermen in their busy, noisy, black-looking market, an assemblage of strange craft and strange types of humanity; and as a pleasant contrast, on the steps of the bridge and stepping before the jewellers’ shops, are girls from the different quarters of Venice, from Canareggio, Dorso Duro, San Marco, and Sante Croce, and from every corner of the town, come to buy the coloured handkerchiefs they deck themselves in, and jewellery of delicately worked gold, or bright glass beads from Murano, or glass balls iridescent with green, blue, and pink; while, wrapped in old grey shawls and showing only their wrinkled profiles and silver locks, the old women of the Rialto drag their slippers up the steps, and glide among the crowd, hiding under the folds of their aprons the strange[Pg 228] fries they have just bought from those keepers of open-air provision stalls who ply their trade on the approaches to the Rialto.

CHARLES YRIARTE.

THE GRAND CANAL

It was not five o’clock before I was aroused by a loud din of voices and splashing of water under my balcony. Looking out, I beheld the Grand Canal so entirely covered with fruits and vegetables, on rafts and in barges, that I could scarcely distinguish a wave. Loads of grapes, peaches, and melons arrived, and disappeared in an instant, for every vessel was in motion; and the crowds of purchasers, hurrying from boat to boat, formed one of the liveliest pictures imaginable. Amongst the multitudes I remarked a good many whose dress and carriage announced something above the common rank; and upon inquiry I found they were noble Venetians, just come from their casinos, and met to refresh themselves with fruit, before they retired to sleep for the day.

Whilst I was observing them, the sun began to colour the balustrades of the palaces, and the pure exhilarating air of the morning drawing me abroad, I procured a gondola, laid in my provision of bread and grapes, and was rowed under the Rialto, down the Grand Canal, to the marble steps of S. Maria della Salute, erected by the Senate in performance of a vow to the Holy Virgin, who begged off a terrible pestilence in 1630. I gazed, delighted with its superb frontispiece and dome, relieved by a clear blue sky. To criticize columns or pediments of the different façades would be time lost; since one glance upon the worst view[Pg 229] that has been taken of them conveys a far better idea than the most elaborate description. The great bronze portal opened whilst I was standing on the steps which lead to it, and discovered the interior of the dome, where I expatiated in solitude; no mortal appearing except an old priest who trimmed the lamps, and muttered a prayer before the high altar, still wrapped in shadows. The sunbeams began to strike against the windows of the cupola just as I left the church, and was wafted across the waves to the spacious platform in front of St. Giorgio Maggiore, by far the most perfect and beautiful edifice my eyes ever beheld.

When my first transport was a little subsided, and I had examined the graceful design of each particular ornament, and united the just proportion and grand effect of the whole in my mind, I planted my umbrella on the margin of the sea, and reclining under its shade, my feet dangling over the waters, viewed the vast range of palaces, of porticos, of towers, opening on every side and extending out of sight. The Doge’s residence and the tall columns at the entrance of the place of St. Mark, form, together with the arcades of the public library, the lofty Campanile and the cupolas of the ducal church, one of the most striking groups of buildings that art can boast of. To behold at one glance these stately fabrics, so illustrious in the records of former ages, before which, in the flourishing times of the republic, so many valiant chiefs and princes have landed, loaded with the spoils of different nations, was a spectacle I had long and ardently desired. I thought of the days of Frederic Barbarossa, when looking up the piazza of St. Mark, along which he marched in solemn procession, to cast himself at the[Pg 230] feet of Alexander the Third, and pay a tardy homage to St. Peter’s successor. Here were no longer those splendid fleets that attended his progress; one solitary galeass was all I beheld, anchored opposite the palace of the Doge, and surrounded by crowds of gondolas, whose sable hues contrasted strongly with its vermilion oars and shining ornaments. A party-coloured multitude was continually shifting from one side of the piazza to the other; whilst senators and magistrates in long black robes were already arriving to fill their respective charges.

I contemplated the busy scene from my peaceful platform, where nothing stirred but aged devotees creeping to their devotions; and, whilst I remained thus calm and tranquil, heard the distant buzz and rumour of the town. Fortunately a length of waves rolled between me and its tumults; so that I ate my grapes, and read Metastasio, undisturbed by officiousness or curiosity.

WILLIAM BECKFORD.

[Pg 233]

THE COLOUR OF VENICE

Venice is a delightful place for a man sick or well.... No noise, no flies, no dust. An air so gentle that it could scarce be called a breeze. A sun that warms and rarely burns: a light, veiled white and soft, and lets one read without glare-made fatigue; a climate which asks no man to do anything, and is answered affirmatively by all. So we, too, should have been content not to do.

The more so that in Venice there is no monotony. Of all places on earth it is the most variable in its moods. The changes in its colour are as great from day to day, and sometimes from hour to hour, as in more northern climes from month to month, or even from season to season. This variableness, the despair of her studious student, is the joy of her loitering lover. The painter finds a lovely subject, indeed they are all around him, and goes from his first day’s work, and perhaps his second, content that he has caught the tone that charmed him. Even as he says so a change comes on that makes him doubtful of that work. The golden light has become silver, the cool blue shadows are swimming in a cinque cento richness. He must alter his whole scheme of colour or go home. The next day it may be worse, and he may wait for weeks for the effect that he had not quite time to render. Thus it is that finished studio-painted pictures of Venice so rarely tell of Venice to the man who knows it, whilst the quick sketches made by the artist who[Pg 234] can see, and is possessed of the hand that can render, faithful to his eye and taste, are so very lovely.

To the idle man this change of mood and colour is, or should be, perfection. He should never tire, and rarely does so, of his fickle mistress. He is floating to-day where he floated yesterday. The lagoon, the island, the buildings are all the same, but how different. The Euganean Hills, or perhaps the Alps, that spoke to him of Shelley, or of snow, the distant line of terra-firma that held, as in a fine cut frame, the steely lagoon waters, are now hidden in a mist of light. The Ducal Palace, the Salute’s dome, that yesterday appeared clear and earthly, the grand campanile of San Marco—alas! that it has fallen a victim to its own weight and Time’s corrosion—the scarcely less beautiful campanile of San Giorgio, whose clean outlines stood out so sharply in the atmosphere of vivid blue, to-day all swim ethereal in a golden haze. ’Tis all there, but a dream rather than a reality, a spirit picture more than a motive for a sketch.

F. EDEN.

THE GLORY OF COLOUR IN ITALY

You learn for the first time in this Italian climate what colours really are. No wonder it produces painters. An English artist of any enthusiasm might shed tears of vexation to think of the dull medium through which blue and red come to him in his own atmosphere, compared with this. One day we saw a boat pass us, which instantly reminded us of Titian, and accounted for him: and yet it contained nothing but an old boatman in a red cap, and some women with him in other colours, one of them in a bright yellow[Pg 235] petticoat. But a red cap in Italy goes by you, not like a mere cap, much less anything vulgar or butcher-like, but like what it is, an intense specimen of the colour of red. It is like a scarlet bud in the blue atmosphere. The old boatman, with his brown hue, his white shirt, and his red cap, made a complete picture; and so did the woman and the yellow petticoat. I have seen pieces of orange-coloured silk hanging out against a wall at a dyer’s, which gave the eye a pleasure truly sensual. Some of these boatmen are very fine men. I was rowed to shore one day by a man the very image of Kemble. It was really grand to see the mixed power and peacefulness with which all his limbs came into play as he pulled the oars, occasionally turning his heroic profile to give a glance behind him at other boats.

LEIGH HUNT.

VENICE THE UNFALLEN

The barge of the ambassador met them at Fusina, and when Venetia beheld the towers and cupolas of Venice, suffused with a golden light and rising out of the bright blue waters, for a moment her spirit seemed to lighten. It is indeed a spectacle as beautiful as rare, and one to which the world offers few, if any, rivals. Gliding over the great lagoon, the buildings, with which the pictures at Cherbury had already made her familiar, gradually rose up before her; the mosque-like Church of St. Marc, the tall Campanile red in the sun, the Moresco Palace of the Doges, the deadly Bridge of Sighs, and the dark structure to which it leads.

Venice had not then fallen. The gorgeous standards[Pg 236] of the sovereign republic, and its tributary kingdoms, still waved in the Place of St. Marc; the Bucentaur was not rotting in the Arsenal, and the warlike galleys of the State cruised about the lagoon; a busy and picturesque population swarmed in all directions; and the Venetian noble, the haughtiest of men, might still be seen proudly moving from the council of state, or stepping into a gondola amid a bowing crowd. All was stirring life, yet all was silent; the fantastic architecture, the glowing sky, the flitting gondolas, and the brilliant crowd gliding about with noiseless step, this city without sound, it seemed a dream!

The ambassador had engaged for Lady Annabel a palace on the Grand Canal, belonging to Count Manfrini. It was a structure of great size and magnificence, and rose out of the water with a flight of marble steps. Within was a vast gallery, lined with statues and busts on tall pedestals; suites of spacious apartments, with marble floors and hung with satin; ceilings painted by Tintoretto and full of Turkish trophies; furniture alike sumptuous and massy; the gilding, although of two hundred years’ duration, as bright and burnished as if it had but yesterday been touched with the brush; sequin gold, as the Venetians tell you to this day with pride. But even their old furniture will soon not be left to them, as palaces are now daily broken up like old ships, and their colossal spoils consigned to Hanway Yard and Bond Street, whence, re-burnished and vamped up, their Titanic proportions in time appropriately figure in the boudoirs of Mayfair and the miniature saloons of St. James’s. Many a fine lady now sits in a Doge’s chair, and many[Pg 237] a dandy listens to his doom from a couch that has already witnessed the less inexorable decrees of the Council of Ten.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

FEEDING THE PIGEONS—VENICE

A FIRST IMPRESSION IN VENICE

‘Is this Venice?—the rich bride of the sea?—the mistress of the world?’

I saw the magnificent square of St. Mark. ‘Here is life!’ people said.... The square of St. Mark’s is the heart of Venice, where life does exist. Shops of books, pearls, and pictures, adorn the long colonnades, where, however, it was not yet animated enough. A crowd of Greeks and Turks, in bright dresses, and[Pg 238] with long pipes in their mouths, sat quietly outside the cafés. The sun shone upon the golden cupola of St. Mark’s Church, and upon the glorious bronze horses over the portal. From the red masts of the ships from Cyprus, Candia, and Morea, depended the motionless flags. A flock of pigeons filled the square by thousands, and went daintily upon the broad pavement.

I visited the Ponte Rialto, the pulse-vein which spoke of life; and I soon comprehended the great picture of Venice—the picture of mourning—the impression of my own soul. I seemed yet to be at sea, only removed from a smaller to a greater ship, a floating ark.

The evening came; and when the moonbeams cast their uncertain light and diffused broader shadows, I felt myself more at home; in the hour of the spirit-world. I could first become familiar with the dead bride. I stood at the open window: the black gondola glided quickly over the dark, moonlit waters. I thought upon the seaman’s song of kissing and of love; felt a bitterness towards Annunciata.... I entered a gondola, and allowed myself to be taken through the streets in the silent evening. The rowers sung their alternating song, but it was not from the Gerusalemme Liberata; the Venetians had forgotten even the old melodies of the heart, for their Doges were dead, and foreign hands had bound the wings of the lion, which was harnessed to their triumphal car.

‘I will seize upon life—will enjoy it to the last drop!’ said I, as the gondola lay still. I went to my own room, and lay down to sleep. Such was my first day in Venice.

HANS ANDERSEN.

[Pg 239]

A VENETIAN DREAM

It was now quite night, and we were at the water-side. There lay here, a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled, by two men, towards a great light, lying in the distance on the sea.

Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying before the stars. I could not but think how strange it was, to be floating away at that hour: leaving the land behind, and going on, towards this light upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter; and from being one light became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water, as the boat approached towards them by a dreamy kind of track, marked out upon the sea by posts and piles.

We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when I heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and massive—like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a raft—which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place.

Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street—a phantom street; the houses rising on both sides, from the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the[Pg 240] black stream with their reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent.

So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners, where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors, that opened straight upon the water. Some of these were empty; in some, the rowers lay asleep; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from the interior of a palace: gaily dressed, and attended by torchbearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them, for a bridge, so low and close upon the boat seemed ready to fall down and crush us; one of the many bridges that perplexed the dream: blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange place—with water all about us where never water was elsewhere—clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it—and, everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoar-frost or gossamer—and[Pg 241] where, for the first time, I saw people walking—arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest; listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep.

The glory of the day that broke upon me in this dream; its freshness, motion, buoyancy; its sparkles of the sun in water; its clear blue sky and rustling air; no waking words can tell. But, from my window, I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, cordage, flags; on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes of these vessels; on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds; on great ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence; on islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets: and where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches, springing from the sea! Going down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness.

It was a great piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries: so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands: so strong that centuries had battered them in vain: wound round and round this palace, and enfolded it with a cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant fancies, of the East. At no great distance from its[Pg 242] porch, a lofty tower, standing by itself and rearing its proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the stream were two ill-omened pillars of red granite; one having on its top a figure with a sword and shield; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these again, a second tower: richest of the rich in all its decorations: even here, where all was rich: sustained aloft, a great orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue: the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course around them: while above, two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene; and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the pavement of the unsubstantial ground.

I thought I entered the cathedral, and went in and out among its many arches: traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances; shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old palace; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as[Pg 243] of old. I thought I wandered through its halls of state and triumph—bare and empty now!—and musing on its pride and might, extinct: for that was past; all past: heard a voice say, ‘Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced here, yet!’

I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, the Bridge of Sighs.

But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions’ mouths—now toothless—where, in the distempered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked Council, had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was dark. So, when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were taken for examination, and the door by which they passed out, when they were condemned—a door that never closed upon a man with life and hope before him—my heart appeared to die within me.

It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch was placed—I dreamed—to light the prisoner within, for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with a rusty nail’s point, had outlived their agony and them, through many generations.

One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead[Pg 244] before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came—a monk brown-robed, and hooded—ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope’s extinguisher, and Murder’s herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door—low browed and stealthy—through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net.

Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it: licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime within: stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop: furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the State—a road so ready that it went along with them, and ran before them, like a cruel officer—flowed the same water that filled this dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the time.

Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, the Giant’s—I had some imaginary recollection of an old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell, proclaiming his successor—I glided off, in one of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble lions. To make my dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in an unknown language; so that their purport was a mystery to all men....

In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding[Pg 245] of its flight. But there were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets.

Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed apartments where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering away. Pictures were there, replete with such enduring beauty and expression; with such passion, truth and power: that they seemed so many young and fresh realities among a host of spectres. I thought these, often intermingled with the old days of the city: with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests: nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and public places; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and went on in my dream.

Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on flagstones and on flights of steps.[Pg 246] Past bridges, where there were idlers too; loitering and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, theatre, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture—Gothic—Saracenic—fanciful with all the fancies of all times and countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona’s leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare’s spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere: stealing through the city.

At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof, I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged with people; while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee-houses opening from it—which were never shut, I thought, but open all night long. When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life and animation of the city were all centred here; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones.

But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons: sucking at their walls, and welling up[Pg 247] into the secret places of the town: crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress.

Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name be Venice.

CHARLES DICKENS.

A VENETIAN RESTAURANT

Uncomforted in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise from it unfed!

Far other be the doom of my own friends—of pious bards and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian’s marble tables, or a perch in Quadri’s window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird’s-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the trattoria the view is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship’s cabin. Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog[Pg 248] in the pavilion and the caffè. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. ‘Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?’ Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe’s nose it is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos’ jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little further we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where the black-capped little padrone and the gigantic white-capped chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, etc., according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities[Pg 249] and divers ages frequent this house; and the talk arising from the several little tables turns upon points of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the cuisine, or about the reasonable charges of this trattoria.... There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no ahurissement of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can sit a while over our cigarette and coffee until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a giro in the gondola.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

VENETIAN CAFFÈS

What is Florian’s? It is the principal, largest, and most fashionable caffè on the Piazza di San Marco. The caffè in itself is in many respects a speciality of Venetian life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his comedies, so abundantly rich in local colouring, will not have failed to observe that the caffè plays a larger part in the life of Venice than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his accustomed caffè. Men of business write their letters and arrange their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most marked speciality of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the native female aristocracy frequents the caffè. Indeed, I know no place in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian’s on a brilliant midsummer moonlight night.

[Pg 250]

Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that every traveller finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of arcades that form the two long sides of the parallelogram which has the gorgeous front of St. Mark’s Church occupying the entirety of one of the shorter sides. Well, about half-way up the length of the piazza six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark’s Church are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed rooms, corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are very small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part of the throng which finds itself at Florian’s, quite as a matter of course, every fine summer’s night. But nobody thinks of entering these smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the hours of the day.

Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats under the arcade, either immediately in front of the cabinets or around the pillars which support the arches, and thus have an opportunity of observing the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of life that flows by them under the arcade. But the vast majority of the crowd place themselves on chairs arranged around little tables set out on the flags of[Pg 251] the piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables are placed in long rows extending far out into the piazza, and far on either side beyond the extent of the six arches which are occupied by the caffè itself. A London or New York policeman would have his very soul revolted, and conclude that there must be something very rotten indeed in the state of a city in which the public way could be thus encumbered and no cry of ‘move on’ ever heard. Assuredly, it is public ground which Florian, in the person of his nineteenth-century representative, thus occupies with his tables and chairs. Probably, if a Venetian were asked by what right he does so, the question would seem to him much as if one asked by what right the tide covers the shallows of the lagoon. It always has been so. It is in the natural order of things. And how could Venice live without Florian’s?...

I am tempted to endeavour to give the reader some picture of the scene on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space, and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force—to describe the wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow tone of the great clock of St. Mark, with importunate warning that another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few traits of the popular life of Venice,[Pg 252] which the magnificent Piazza of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy, which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.

But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of Venice, it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre of the piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which opens out of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon opposite the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the corner of the Ducal Palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which above our head is spanned by the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ with its ‘palace and a prison on each hand,’ as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the ‘Riva degli Schiavoni’—the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived, and arrive still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in Venice, paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic form of Venetian life from early morning till late into the night.

There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva, for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good one; and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and not too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for the Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know what coffee is, and will not take chicory or other such detestable substitutes[Pg 253] in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen centimes—just over one penny—and study as he drinks it the moving and ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbour, perhaps, will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old ‘pantaloon,’ whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender, and rather delicately cut features, terminating in a long, narrow, and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sunken cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently very poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of ‘The Ten’; his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking—which can do much, but, alas! not all things—can make them. His expenditure of a penny will entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline colour by the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys[Pg 254] the cool evening breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of dolce far niente, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford him....

Presently a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffè. The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly dressed, and as shining as oil can make it. She has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-coloured shawl in good condition. Whatever might be beneath and below this, is in dark shadow—et sic melius situm. She is not starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of those pale delicate, oval faces so common in Venice; she also has a good shawl—an amber-coloured one—which so sets off the olive-coloured complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture. This couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing ad misericordiam. They pose themselves en artistes. The girl sets about arranging her music in a businesslike way, and then they play the well-known air of ‘La Stella Confidente’ the little violinist really playing remarkably well. Then the elder woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions. No slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give nothing. The saucer is presented to each in turn. I supposed that the application to Si’or Pantaleone was an empty form. But no. That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime—the fifth part of a cent—into[Pg 255] the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden Fleece.

Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighbouring barracks. Then there are fruit sellers and fish sellers and hot-chestnut dealers, and, most vociferous of all, the cryers of ‘Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!’ There, making its way among the numerous small vessels from Dalmatia, Greece, etc., moored to the quay of the Schiavoni, comes a boat from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which arrived this morning from Alexandria, with four or five Orientals on board. They come on shore, and proceed to saunter along the Riva towards the Grand Piazza, while their dark faces and brightly coloured garments add an element to the motley scene which is perfectly in keeping with old Venetian reminiscences.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE

A TOUR ROUND VENICE WITH GOLDONI

IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The genius of Goldoni, like his character and his life, was in perfect harmony with his allotted work.... Given the style, no individual could be imagined more supremely its master: he had the perfect facility of conception, the perfect ease of execution, the absolute facility of finish and detail, the immense fecundity of the providentially sent artist. He was never at a loss for a subject, and never at a standstill for its treatment; a moment at a window, a glance round a drawing-room, a word caught in the street, was sufficient material for a comedy. The sight of the dirty grey-beard Armenian goody-seller, snarling out ‘Baggigi, Abaggigi’ over his basket of lollipops near the clock-tower of St. Mark’s, produced the delightful little play, ‘I pettegolezzi delle donne....’

Goldoni was best pleased with the humblest, forming in this a strange contrast with the French comic writers; the shopkeepers, ridiculous gullible M. Jourdains and Sganarelles in the eyes of Molière, never ceased to be respectable for Goldoni.... This democratic, domestic Goldoni naturally refused to show us the effeminate, corrupt Venice of nobles, and spies, and courtezans, which shameful adventurers like[Pg 257] Casanova, heaping up all the ordure of their town and times, have made some of us believe to have been the sole, the real Venice of the eighteenth century. But Goldoni has another Venice to show, a Venice undiscovered by gallant idlers like the Président de Brosses, or pedantic guide-book makers like La Lande. Let us follow Goldoni across the Square of St. Mark’s, heedless of the crowd in mask and cloak, of the nobles in their silk robes, of the loungers at the gilded coffee-houses, of the gamblers and painted women lolling out of windows; let us pass beneath the belfry where the bronze twins strike the hours in vain for the idlers and vagabonds who turn day into night and night into day; and let us thread the network of narrow little streets of the Merceria. There, in those tall dark houses, with their dingy look-out on to narrow canals floating wisps of straw, or on to dreary little treeless, grassless squares, in those houses is the real wealth, the real honour, the real good of Venice; there, and not in the palaces of the Grand Canal, still lingers something of the spirit and the habits of the early merchant princes. Merchant princes no longer, alas! only shopkeepers and brokers, but thrifty, frugal, patriarchal as in olden days, the descendants of the great Pantalone de’ Bisognosi, once clothed in scarlet-lined robe and pointed cap, now dressed austerely in black, without hair-powder, gold lace, swords, or scarlet cloaks; active, honest, gruff, and puritanical.... Let us follow Goldoni yet further from St. Mark’s to the distant wharves, to the remoter canals and campieli, to the further islands of the archipelago of Venice, and he will show us all that remains of the force of the city, of the savage simplicity and austerity of the boatmen, and fishers, and[Pg 258] working classes. There are the gondoliers, forming a link between the artisans and the seamen—a strange, Janus-like class which Goldoni loved to depict: servants of the upper classes, devoted, faithful, and pliant; steering along with equal indifference, political conspiracy, household corruption ... beneath the black, tasselled roof of their boats; witnesses of all the most secret life of the nobles and merchants, and, while on their prow, mute and cynical; but, once on shore, independent, arrogant, despising the indoor servants, contemptuous towards their masters, whose secrets they possess, frugal and austere at home, jealous and revengeful among each other. Goldoni has shown us the gondoliers seated on the slimy steps by their moored boats, exchanging witticism on witticism, criticizing the performances at the theatre, discussing city life with ineffable arrogance: he has shown them coming along the Grand Canal, chanting the flight of Erminia through the ancient forest; he has shown them, again, quarrelling in the narrow twisting canals, each refusing to make way for another, yelling and cursing, forcing their passengers to alight in terror, and then pursuing each other with their oars and their short, sharp tatare daggers. The gondoliers, besides being good comic stuff for Goldoni, were an influential part of his audience, and had to be propitiated by being shown on the stage in all their originality and waywardness. The gondoliers lived, when off their boats, among a savage population of ferrymen, bargees, and fishers; poor, violent, and austere, whose daughters had at once the freedom of speech and strength of action of amazons, and the purity—nay prudery—of nuns: large-limbed, sunburnt, barefoot creatures, with the golden tints of hair[Pg 259] and cheek of Titian and Palma, with the dark, savage eyes of an animal, with the arms of an athlete and the language of a trooper, of whom Goldoni has painted a magnificent portrait, idealized but intensely real, in his Bettina....

Let us call Goldoni’s favourite gondolier, the rough and caustic Menego Cainello, and bid him steer us through the last canals, among the remotest Venetian islands, leaving the towers of Venice behind us; bid him row us across the shallow open lagoon, with its vast, snake-like rows of sea-corroded posts, its stunted marine reeds, and its tangled sea-grass waving lazily on the rippled water; row on till we get to that tiny other Venice, still perhaps like the greater Venice in the days of her earliest Doges, to the little fishing-town of Chiozza. There, in the port, Goldoni will show us the heavy fishing-boat, grimy and oozy, just returned from a week’s cruise in the Adriatic, with her yellow sail, emblazoned with the winged lion, leisurely flapping, and her briny nets over her sides; the master of the boat, Paron Fortunato, is shouting in unintelligible dialect, Venetian further insularized into Chiozzot, and Chiozzot rarefied on sea into some strange nautical lisping jargon; the rest of the fishermen, Tita-Nane, and Menegheto, and Tonì, are collecting the fish they have brought into baskets, reserving the finest for His Excellency the Governor of Chiozza. And, when the fish are disposed of, follow we the fishermen to the main street of the little town, where, facing the beach, their wives, daughters, and sisters sit making lace on their cushions, chattering like magpies; some eating, others holding disdainfully aloof from the baked pumpkin with which the gallant peasant Toffolo Marmottina regales them.[Pg 260] Suddenly a tremendous gabble begins, gabble turning into shrieking and roaring, and upsetting of chairs and cushions; and a torrent of abuse streams forth in dialect, and all is lost in scuffling confusion; the men come up, seize sticks, daggers, and stones, and rush to the rescue of their female relatives, till the police hasten up and separate the combatants. Then let us watch the recriminations of the lovers, hear them accusing each other of perfidy, calling each other dog, assassin, beggar, ginger-bread, jewel, pig, all in turns; clinging and nudging, weeping and roaring, till at length the good-natured little Venetian magistrate of Chiozza, contemptuously called ‘Mr. Wig-of-Tow’ (Sior paruca de stopa), makes up all the quarrels, bids the innkeeper send wine and pumpkins and delicious fried things, and, after regaling the pacified Chiozzoti and Chiozzote, calls for fiddles and invites them all to dance some furlane. Is it reality? Has Menego rowed us over the lagoon? Have we seen the ship come in and the fish put in baskets? Have we seen the women at their lace cushions? Have we heard that storm of cries, and shrieks, and clatter, and scuffling feet? Have we really witnessed this incident of fishing life on the Adriatic? No; we have only laid down a little musty volume at the place marked ‘Le Baruffe Chiozzotte.’

VERNON LEE.

VENETIAN BELLES

[Pg 262]

A VENETIAN CARNIVAL

Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden haze, and all the westward-facing palace windows flashed and shone with an illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were to be lighted after sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. It was Shrove Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been shining on the city and on the lagoons all day long. It was one of those Shrove Tuesdays which recall the familiar proverb—

But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence when to-day is fair and balmy? A hum of joyous, foolish voices echoed from those palace façades, and floated out seaward, and rang along the narrow calle, and drifted on the winding waterways, and resounded under the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the City by the Sea men, women, and children were making merry, and had given themselves up to a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning mirth, ready to explode into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An old man tapped upon the shoulder by a swinging paper lantern—a boy whose hat had been knocked off—a woman calling to her husband or her lover across the gay flotilla—anything was food for mirth on this holiday evening, while the great gold orb sank in the silvery lagoon, and all the sky over yonder Chioggia was dyed with the crimson afterglow, and the Chioggian fishing-boats were moving westward in all the splendour of their painted sails.

M. E. BRADDON.

[Pg 263]

THREE VENETIAN FEASTS

I was at three very solemne feasts in Venice; I meane not commessations or banquets, but holy and religious solemnities, whereof the first was in the Church of certaine Nunnes in St. Laurence parish.... This was celebrated the one and thirtieth of July, being Sunday, where I heard much singular musicke. The second was on the day of our Ladies assumption, which was the fifth of August, being Fryday, that day in the morning I saw the Duke in some of his richest ornaments, accompanyed with twenty-sixe couple of Senators, in their damaske long-sleeved gownes, come to Sainte Marks. Also there were Venetian Knights and Ambassadors, that gave attendance upon him, and the first that went before him on the right hand, carried a naked sword in his hand. He himselfe then wore two very rich robes or long garments, whereof the uppermost was white, of cloth of silver, with great massy buttons of gold, the other cloth of silver also, but adorned with many curious workes made in colours with needle worke. His traine was then holden up by two Gentlemen. At that time I heard much good musicke in Sainte Markes Church, but especially that of a treble voill which was so excellent, that I thinke no man could surpasse it. Also there were sagbuts and cornets as at St. Laurence feast which yeelded passing good musicke. The third feast was upon Saint Roches day, being Saturday and the sixth day of August, where I heard the best musicke that ever I did in all my life both in the morning and the afternoone, so good that I would willingly goe an hundred miles a foote at any time to heare the like. The place where it was, is neare to Saint Roches Church, a very sumptuous and magnificent[Pg 264] building that belongeth to one of the sixe Companies of the citie.... This building hath a marvailous rich and stately frontispice, being built with passing fair white stone, and adorned with many goodly pillars of marble. There are three most beautiful roomes in this building; the first is the lowest, which hath two rowes of goodly pillars in it opposite to each other which upon this day of Saint Roch were adorned with many faire pictures of great personages that hanged round about them, as of Emperours, Kings, Queenes, Dukes, Duchesses, Popes, etc. In this roome are two or three faire Altars: For this roome is not appointed for merriments and banquetings as the halles belonging to the Companies of London, but altogether for devotion and religion.... The second is very spacious and large, having two or three faire Altars more: the roofe of this roome, which is of a stately height, is richly gilt and decked with many sumptuous embossings of gold, and the walles are beautified with sundry delicate pictures, as also many parts of the roofe; unto this room you must ascend by two or three very goodly paire of staires. The third roome which is made at one corner of this spacious roome, is very beautifull, having both roofe and wals something correspondent to the other; but the floore is much more exquisite and curious, being excellently distinguished with checker worke made of several kinds of marble, which are put in by the rarest cunning that the wit of man can devise. The second roome is the place where this festivitie was solemnized to the honour of Saint Roch, at one end whereof was an altar garnished with many singular ornaments, but especially with a great multitude of silver candlesticks,[Pg 265] in number sixty, and candles in them of virgin waxe. This feast consisted principally of Musicke, which was both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so superexcellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like. But how others were affected with it I know not; for mine owne part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven. Sometimes there sung sixeteene or twenty men together, having their master or moderator to keepe them in order; and when they sung, the instrumentall musitians played also. Sometimes sixeteene played together upon their instruments, ten Sagbuts, foure Cornets, and two Violdegambaes of an extraordinary greatness; sometimes tenne, sixe Sagbuts and foure Cornets; sometimes two, a Cornet and treble violl. Of those treble viols I heard three severall there, whereof each was so good, especially one, that I observed above the rest, that I never heard the like before. Those that played upon the treble viols, sung and played together, and sometimes two singular fellowes played together upon Theorboes, to which they sung also, who yeelded admirable sweet musicke, but so still that they could scarce be heard but by those that were very neare them. Those two Theorbists concluded that night’s musicke, which continued three whole howers at the least. For they beganne about five of the clocke and ended not before eight. Also it continued as long in the morning: at every time that every severall musicke played, the Organs, whereof there are seven faire paire in that room, standing all in a rowe together, plaied with them. Of the singers there were three or foure so excellent that I thinke few or none[Pg 266] in Christendome do excell them, especially one, who had such a peerelesse and (as I may in a manner say) such a supernaturall voice for such a privilege for the sweetnesse of his voice, as sweetnesse, that I think there was never a better singer in all the world, insomuch that he did not onely give the most pleasant contentment that could be imagined, to all the hearers, but also did as it were astonish and amaze them.... Truely I thinke that had a Nightingale beene in the same roome, and contended with him for the superioritie, something perhaps he might excell him, because God hath granted that little birde such a priviledge for the sweetnesse of his voice, as to none other: but I thinke he could not much. To conclude, I attribute so much to this rare fellow for his singing, that I thinke the country where he was borne, may be as proude for breeding so singular a person as Smyrna was of her Homer, Verona of her Catullus, or Mantua of Virgil: But exceeding happy may that Citie, or towne, or person bee that possesseth this miracle of nature. These musitians had bestowed upon them by that of Saint Roche an hundred duckats. Thus much concerning the musicke of those famous feastes of St. Laurence, the Assumption of our Lady, and Saint Roche.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

AN IMPROVISATORE

I had now visited the rich Palace of the Doges, had wandered in the empty, magnificent halls; seen the chamber of the Inquisition, with the frightful picture of the torments of hell. I went through a narrow gallery, over a covered bridge, high upon the roof,[Pg 267] above the canals on which the gondolas glided: this is the way from the Doge’s Palace to the prisons of Venice. This bridge is called the Bridge of Sighs. Close beside it lie the wells. The light of the lamps alone from the passage can force its way between the close iron bars into the uppermost dungeon; and yet this was a cheerful, airy hall, in comparison with those which lie lower down, below the swampy cellars, deeper even than the water outside in the canals; and yet in these unhappy captives had sighed, and inscribed their names on the damp walls.

‘Air, air!’ demanded my heart, rent with the horrors of this place; and, entering the gondola, I flew with the speed of an arrow from the pale-red old palace, and from the columns of St. Theodoret and the Venetian lion, forth over the living, green water to the lagoons and Lido, that I might breathe the fresh air of the sea,—and I found a churchyard.

Here is the stranger, the Protestant, buried, far from his native country,—buried upon a little strip of land among the waves, which day by day seem to rend away more and more of its small remains. The billows alone wept. Here often sat the fisherman’s bride or wife, waiting for the lover or the husband, who had gone out fishing upon the uncertain sea. The storm arose, and rested again upon its strong pinions; and the woman sang Tasso’s songs, and listened to hear whether the man replied. But Love gave no return in song; alone she sat there, and looked out over the silent sea. Then, also, her lips became silent; her eye saw only the white bones of the dead in the sand; she heard only the hollow booming of the billows, whilst night ascended over the dead, silent Venice.

[Pg 268]

The dark picture filled my thoughts, my whole state of mind gave it a strong colouring. Solemn as a church reminding of graves, and the invisible saints stood before me the entire scene. Flaminia’s words resounded in my ear, that the poet, who was a prophet of God, should endeavour only to express the glorification of God, and that subjects which tended to this were of the highest character. The immortal soul ought to sing of the immortal; the glitter of the moment changed its play of colour, and vanished with the instant that gave it birth.... I silently entered the gondola, which bore me toward Lido. The great open sea lay before me, and rolled onward to the shore in long billows. I thought of the bay of Amalfi.

Just beside me, among sea-grass and stones, sat a young man sketching, certainly a foreign painter; it seemed to me that I recognized him. I stepped nearer, he raised his head, and we knew each other. It was Poggio, a young Venetian nobleman.

‘Signore,’ exclaimed he, ‘you on Lido! Is it the beauty of the scene, or,’ added he, ‘some other beauty, which has brought you so near to the angry Adriatic?... Such a blue, billowy plain,’ said he, pointing to the sea, ‘is not to be found in Rome! The sea is the most beautiful thing on the earth! It is also the mother of Venus, and,’ added he, laughing, ‘is the widow of all the mighty Doges of Venice.’

‘The Venetians must especially love the sea,’ said I, ‘regarding it as their grandparent, who carried them and played with them for the sake of her beautiful daughter Venetia.’

‘She is no longer beautiful now; she bows her head,’ he replied.

[Pg 269] ‘But yet,’ said I, ‘she is still happy under her sway of the Emperor Francis.’

‘It is a prouder thing to be queen upon the sea than a Caryatide upon land,’ returned he. ‘The Venetians have nothing to complain about, and politics are what I do not understand, but beauty, on the contrary, I do; and if you are a patron of it, as I do not doubt but you are, see, here comes my landlady’s handsome daughter, and inquires whether you will take part in my frugal dinner.’

We went into the little house close by the shore. The wine was good, and Poggio most charming and entertaining....

‘You do not sing?’ asked the lady of the house from me, when we had done.

‘I will have the honour to improvise before you,’ said I, as a thought entered my mind.

‘He is an improvisatore,’ I heard whispered around me. The eyes of the ladies sparkled; the gentlemen bowed. I took a guitar, and begged them to give me a subject.

‘Venice!’ cried a lady, looking boldly into my eyes.

‘Venice!’ repeated the young gentlemen, ‘because the ladies are handsome!’

I touched a few chords; described the pomp and glory of Venice in the days of her greatness, as I had read about it, and as my imagination had dreamed of its being, and all eyes flashed; they fancied that it was so now. I sang about the beauty in the balcony in the moonlight night, and every lady imagined I meant it for her, and clapped her hands in applause.... I sang about the proud sea,—the bridegroom of Venice; about the sons of the sea,—the bold mariners and fishermen in their little boats. I described a[Pg 270] storm; the wife’s and the bride’s longing and anxiety; described that which I myself had seen; the children who had let fall the holy crucifix, and clung to their mothers, and the old fisherman who kissed the feet of the Redeemer.... And now my heart was wonderously light; the empty canals of Venice and the old palaces seemed to me beautiful—a sleeping fairy world.

HANS ANDERSEN.

VENICE AND HER CHILDREN

Though Orio had quadrupled the sum he had desired, all the treasures of the world were nothing to him without a Venice to spend them in. At that time love of country was a passion so strong, so powerful, that it influenced all hearts, the vilest as well as the noblest. And truly there was little merit in loving Venice then,—she was so beautiful, so powerful, so gay! She was such a bountiful mother to all her children; such a delightful lover of their glory! Venice gave such caresses to her triumphant warriors, such glowing praise for their bravery, such elegant and noble rewards for their prudence, such rare pleasures to recompense their slightest services! Nowhere else could one find such splendid feasts, enjoy such luxurious idleness, or plunge at will, to-day in a whirlwind of pleasure, to-morrow in voluptuous repose. Venice was the most beautiful city of Europe; the most corrupted and the most virtuous. The righteous could there be always good, the vicious always bad. It had sunshine for some, shade for others. While there were wise institutions and touching ceremonies to proclaim noble actions, there were[Pg 271] also caves, inquisitors and executioners, to maintain order and subdue dangerous passions. There were days of triumph and ovation for the virtuous, and nights of debauchery and excess for the vicious: and in no other part of the world were ovations so exciting, excesses so poetical. Venice was the natural country for all strong minds, good or evil. It was the undeniable fatherland of all who knew it.

GEORGE SAND.

SOCIETY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VENICE

Venice, Oct. 10, 1739.

I like this place extremely, and am of opinion you would do so too: as to cheapness, I think ’tis impossible to find any part of Europe where both the laws and customs are so contrived purposely to avoid expenses of all sorts; and here is a universal liberty that is certainly one of the greatest agrémens in life. We have foreign ambassadors from all parts of the world, who have all visited me. I have received visits from many of the noble Venetian ladies; and upon the whole I am very much at my ease here. If I was writing to Lady Sophia, I would tell her of the comedies and operas which are every night, at very low prices; but I believe even you will agree with me that they are ordered to be as convenient as possible, every mortal going in a mask, and consequently no trouble in dressing, or forms of any kind....

Venice, Oct. 14, 1739.

I find myself very well here. I am visited by the most considerable people of the town, and all the foreign ministers, who have most of them made great[Pg 272] entertainments for me. I dined yesterday at the Spanish Ambassador’s, who even surpassed the French in magnificence. He met me at the hall-door, and the lady at the stair-head, to conduct me through the long apartment; in short, they could not have shown me more honours, if I had been an ambassadress. She desired me to think myself patrona del casa, and offered me all the services in her power, to wait on me where I pleased, etc. They have the finest palace in Venice. What is very convenient, I hear it is not at all expected I should make any dinners, it not being the fashion for anybody to do it here but the foreign ministers; and I find I can live here very genteelly on my allowance. I have already a very agreeable general acquaintance; though when I came, here was no one I had ever seen in my life, but the Cavaliere Grimani and the Abbé Conti. I must do them justice to say they have taken pains to be obliging to me. The Procurator brought his niece (who is at the head of his family) to wait on me; and they invited me to reside with them at their palace on the Brent, but I did not think it proper to accept of it. He also introduced to me the Signora Pisani Mocenigo, who is the most considerable lady here. The Nuncio is particularly civil to me; he has been several times to see me, and has offered me the use of his box at the opera....

Venice, Nov. 6, 1739.

Upon my word, I have spoken my real thoughts in relation to Venice; but I will be more particular in my description, lest you should find the same reason of complaint you have hitherto experienced. It is impossible to give any rule for the agreeableness[Pg 273] of conversation; but here is so great a variety, I think ’tis impossible not to find some to suit every taste. Here are foreign ministers from all parts of the world, who, as they have no court to employ their hours, are overjoyed to enter into commerce with any stranger of distinction. As I am the only lady here at present, I can assure you I am courted, as if I was the only one in the world. As to all the conveniences of life, they are to be had at very easy rates; and for those that love public places, here are two playhouses and two operas constantly performed every night, at exceeding low prices. But you will have no reason to examine that article, no more than myself; all the ambassadors having boxes appointed them; and I have every one of their keys at my service, not only for my own person, but whoever I please to carry or send. I do not make much use of this privilege, to their great astonishment. It is the fashion for the greatest ladies to walk the streets, which are admirably paved; and a mask, price sixpence, with a little cloak, and the head of a domino, the genteel dress to carry you everywhere. The greatest equipage is a gondola, that holds eight persons, and is the price of an English chair. And it is so much the established fashion for everybody to live their own way, that nothing is more ridiculous than censuring the actions of another. This would be terrible in London, where we have little other diversion; but for me, who never found any pleasure in malice, I bless my destiny that has conducted me to a part where people are better employed than in talking of the affairs of their acquaintance. It is at present excessive cold (which is the only thing I have to find fault with); but in recompense we have a[Pg 274] clear bright sun, and fogs and factions things unheard of in this climate....

Venice, June 1, 1740.

You seem to mention the regatta in a manner as if you would be pleased with a description of it. It is a race of boats: they are accompanied by vessels which they call Piotes, and Bichones, that are built at the expense of nobles and strangers that have a mind to display their magnificence; they are a sort of machines adorned with all that sculpture and gilding can do to make a shining appearance. Several of them cost one thousand pounds sterling, and I believe none less than five hundred; they are rowed by gondoliers dressed in rich habits, suitable to what they represent. There was enough of them to look like a little fleet, and I own I never saw a finer sight. It would be too long to describe every one in particular; I shall only name the principal:—the Signora Pisani Mocenigo’s represented the Chariot of the Night, drawn by four sea-horses, and showing the rising of the moon, accompanied with stars, the statues on each side representing the hours to the number of twenty-four, rowed by gondoliers in rich liveries, which were changed three times, all of equal richness, and the decorations changed also to the dawn of Aurora and the midday sun, the statues being new dressed every time, the first in green, the second time in red, and the last blue, all equally laced with silver, there being three races. Signor Soranzo represented the Kingdom of Poland, with all the provinces and rivers in that dominion, with a concert of the best instrumental music in rich Polish habits; the painting and gilding were exquisite in their kinds;[Pg 275] Signor Contarini’s piote showed the Liberal Arts; Apollo was seated on the stern upon Mount Parnassus, Pegasus behind, and the Muses seated round him: opposite was a figure representing Painting, with Fame blowing her trumpet; and on each side Sculpture, and Music in their proper dresses. The procurator Foscarini’s was the Chariot of Flora guided by Cupids, and adorned with all sorts of flowers, rose-trees, etc. Signor Julio Contarini’s represented the Triumphs of Valour; Victory was on the stern, and all the ornaments warlike trophies of every kind. Signor Correri’s was the Adriatic Sea receiving into her arms the Hope of Saxony. Signor Alvisio Mocenigo’s was the Garden of Hesperides; the whole fable was represented by different statues. Signor Querini had the Chariot of Venus drawn by doves, so well done, they seemed ready to fly upon the water; the Loves and Graces attended her. Signor Paul Doria had the Chariot of Diana, who appeared hunting in a large wood: the trees, hounds, stag, and nymphs, all done naturally: the gondoliers dressed like peasants attending the chase: and Endymion, lying under a large tree, gazing on the goddess. Signor Angelo Labbia represented Poland crowning of Saxony, waited on by the Virtues and subject Provinces. Signor Angelo Molino was Neptune waited on by the Rivers. Signor Vicenzo Morosini’s piote showed the Triumphs of Peace; Discord being chained at her feet, and she surrounded with the Pleasures, etc....

I must say one word of the bichonis, which are less vessels, quite open, some representing gardens, others apartments, all the oars being gilt either with gold or silver, and the gondolier’s liveries either velvet[Pg 276] or rich silk, with a profusion of lace, fringe, and embroidery. I saw this show at the Procurator Grimani’s house, which was near the place where the prizes were delivered: there was a great assembly invited on the same occasion, which were all nobly entertained.

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

IN VENICE ONCE

Venice ... rose from a lowly and troublous origin to heights of dazzling grandeur. When the barbarians of the North began their incursions and devastations into Italy in the fifth century, the inhabitants of that part of the Peninsula which was called Venetia fled from the peril to the islands rising in the lagoons of the Adriatic, where they found peace, safety, and liberty.... The inhospitable nature of their new home provided the refugees with but two elements only—and those the most indeterminate and universal—sky and sea. All the rest, all that we see to-day, has been artificially formed by the hand of man, who excluded vegetation, animals, every semblance of living things, and created for himself a world of stone, a landscape of architecture, and perspective. He has willed that this shall of itself be beautiful, not from any assistance from Nature, but by force of art and riches; not a collection of monuments, but one single monument in itself, and that so sublime and lasting as to admit of no comparison. The marvel which here strikes the spectator has no other example, for Venice is altogether the work of human art. An art, too, which is both poetry and history, and when we think of the history of those Venetians who became lords of a mighty commerce and conquerors of provinces, we see, as by an invincible law spreading out before our imagination, the marble mansions around the Piazza and along the Grand Canal; we see through the streets of the city a people proud of[Pg 280] the wisdom of their statesmen and of the creations of their painters; we think of the golden Basilica, of the Palace of the Doges; we evoke the shapes of Titian, of Paolo Veronese, of Tintoretto.... The art of painting arose in Italy in the Trecento. This art, of slower growth than either architecture or sculpture in Venice, only flourished there well on in the fifteenth century. It must not, however, be concluded from this that painting was unknown in the early days of Venetian life, for leaving aside the question as to whether the first mosaicists were Byzantines or Venetians, it is certain that the art of colours was displayed with admirable feeling in the mosaics of St. Mark’s. In the Basilica, which lifts itself to heaven like a sublime hymn and blends in divine fulness Greek harmony with Eastern splendour, may be found the school of Venetian painters, the source of their inspiration, the golden book wherein is entered the pedigree of Venetian art. The colours sparkle, flash, and throw lightning gleams on to that building bright with matchless beauty. Mind and eye are alike filled with amazement and admiration at the sight of the many-hued marbles, the mosaics, and the gold flung round in regal profusion. Thus, in this atmosphere of light, like a serene flower, Venetian painting arose, warm and vivid in colour even when cold and lifeless in expression.

POMPEO MOLMENTI. 

Translated by Alethea Wiel.

A VENETIAN PASTORAL

BY GIORGIONE[4]

[4] In the Louvre.

GIORGIONE’S HOME

Born half-way between the mountains and the sea—that young George of Castelfranco—of the Brave Castle: Stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was—Giorgione.

Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on—fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore—of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city—and became himself as a fiery heart to it?

A city of marble, did I say? Nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war;[Pg 282] pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their blood-red mantle folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable—every word a fate—sat her senate. In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle could grow in the glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dream-like, vanishing in high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will—brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of the evening and[Pg 283] morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea....

I do not find in Giorgione’s work any of the early Venetian monachist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no matter; suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his day, how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual standing-point, have looked to him?

He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows’ houses, and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the young; freezing into merciless bigotry the pokey of the old: also, on the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious—a thing which had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A religion towering over all the city—many buttressed—luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety shines over the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[Pg 284]

TO AN OLD VENETIAN PAINTING

TO GIAN BELLINI

TITIAN AT VENICE

Titian was born in the little town of Cadore, on the Piave, five miles from the Alps. He sprang from the family of the Vecelli, one of the most noble of those parts; and when he reached the age of ten years, showing a fine spirit and quickness of mind, he was sent to Venice to the house of one of his uncles, an honoured citizen. He, seeing that the boy was much inclined to painting, put him with the famous painter Gian Bellini, under whose discipline he studied drawing, and showed himself in a short time to be endowed by nature with all that was necessary for the art of painting. Gian Bellini and the other painters of that country, having no knowledge of ancient art, were accustomed mostly, in fact entirely, to draw from life, though in a dry, crude manner. Titian therefore learnt in this way. But when Giorgione da Castelfranco came, the manner of working did not altogether please him, and he began to give his works more softness and greater relief,[Pg 286] following Nature indeed, and imitating her as well as he could in colour, but not making any drawing, holding firmly that painting in colours without studying the drawing in a cartoon was the true and best way of working. Titian, then, seeing Giorgione’s method, left Gian Bellini’s manner and adopted the new way, imitating it so well that his pictures were mistaken for the works of Giorgione. And when Giorgione was employed upon the façade of the German Exchange a part was given to Titian. Some gentlemen, not knowing that Giorgione had ceased to work there, and that Titian was employed upon it, meeting Giorgione one day, began to congratulate him, saying he was doing better on this façade than he had done on that one on the Grand Canal. And this vexed Giorgione so much that until the work was finished, and it was known that Titian had done that part, he would not be seen, and from that time he would not let Titian work with him or be his friend....

Giovanni Bellini left unfinished at his death the picture, in the hall of the Great Council, of Barbarossa kneeling before Pope Alexander III. Titian completed it, altering many things, and introducing many portraits of his friends and others. For this he obtained from the Signory an office which is called the Senseria, which brings in three hundred crowns a year. This office has usually been given to the best painter of that city, with the duty of painting from time to time their Prince or Doge, at the price of eight crowns only, paid them by this prince, and this portrait is afterwards placed in his memory in the palace of St. Mark’s.

The Duke Alfonso of Ferrara had engaged Giovanni[Pg 287] Bellini to paint a picture for a room in his palace, but he had been unable to complete it on account of his age, and Titian therefore was summoned to finish it, and for this prince he painted several things, and was liberally rewarded by him. At this time he formed a friendship with the divine Ludovico Ariosto, who celebrated him in his ‘Orlando Furioso.’

After his return to Venice he painted many pictures for the churches, and among others for the church of S. Rocco he painted Christ bearing the Cross. This, which many have supposed to be from Giorgione’s hand, has become the chief object of devotion in Venice, and has received in alms more crowns than Titian and Giorgione earned in their whole life.... For the Church of S. Giovanni and S. Paolo he painted an altarpiece representing S. Peter Martyr in a wood of high trees, struck down by a fierce soldier, who has wounded him in the head, and as he lies but half alive you can see in his face the horror of death, while another friar fleeing shows signs of fear. In the sky are two angels coming in the light of heaven, which lights up a beautiful landscape. The work is the most finished one that Titian ever did....

There is no lord of note or prince or great lady who has not been painted by Titian; and, besides, at different times, he produced many other works.

It is true that his way of working in his last pictures is very different from that of his youth. For his first works were finished with great diligence, and might be looked at near or far, but the last are worked with great patches of colour, so that they cannot be seen near, but at a distance they look perfect. This is the reason that many think they are done without any trouble, but this is not true. And[Pg 288] this way of working is most judicious, for it makes the pictures seem living.

All these works, with a great many others, which cannot be mentioned lest I should become tedious, he has completed, having now reached the age of seventy-six. He has been most healthy, and as fortunate as anyone has ever been. In his house at Venice he has received all the princes, and learned and famous men, who have come to Venice; for besides his excellence in art, his manners have been most pleasant and courteous. He has had some rivals, but not very dangerous ones. He has earned much, for his works have always been well paid; but it would be well for him, in these his last years, to work only for pastime, lest he diminish his reputation.

When the present writer was in Venice in 1566, he went to visit Titian, and found him, old as he was, with his brush in his hand, painting, and he found great pleasure in seeing his works and talking with him.

Thus Titian, having adorned Venice, or rather Italy, and indeed other parts of the world, with the finest pictures, deserves to be loved and studied by artists, and in many things imitated, for he has done works worthy of infinite praise, which will last as long as illustrious men are remembered.

VASARI.

Translated by E. L. Seeley.

THE ENCHANTED VOICE OF VENICE

Turner’s imagination dwelt always on three great cities, Carthage, Rome, and Venice—Carthage in connection especially with the thoughts and study[Pg 289] which led to the painting of the Hesperides’ Garden, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of wealth; Rome, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of power; Venice, the death which attends the vain pursuit of beauty.

How strangely significative, thus understood, those last Venetian dreams of his become, themselves so beautiful and so frail; wrecks of all that they were once—twilights of twilight!

Vain beauty; yet not all in vain. Unlike in birth, how like in their labour, and their power over the future, these masters of England and Venice—Turner and Giorgione. But ten years ago I saw the last traces of the greatest works of Giorgione yet glowing, like a scarlet cloud, on the Fondaco de Tedeschi. And though that scarlet cloud (sanguigna e fiammeggiante, per cui le pitture cominciarono con dolce violenza a rapire il cuore delle genti) may, indeed, melt away into paleness of night, and Venice herself waste from her islands as a wreath of wind-driven foam fades from their weedy beach; that which she won of faithful light and truth shall never pass away. Deiphobe of the sea—the Sun God measures her immortality to her by its sand. Flushed, above the Avernus of the Adrian lake, her spirit is still seen holding the golden bough; from the lips of the Sea Sibyl men shall learn for ages yet to come what is most noble and most fair; and, far away, as the whisper in the coils of the shell, withdrawn through the deep hearts of nations, shall sound for ever the enchanted voice of Venice.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[Pg 290]

VENICE

THE SPLENDOUR OF ST. MARK’S

The beautifull Church of Saint Marke doth of its owne accord as it were offer it selfe now to be spoken of. Which though it be but little, yet it is exceeding rich, and so sumptuous for the stateliness of the architecture, that I thinke very few in Christendome of the bignesse doe surpasse it.... The pavement of this Church is so passing curious, that I thinke no Church in Christendome can show the like. For the pavement of the body of the Church, the Quire, and the walkes round about before you come within the body, are made of sundry little pieces of Thasian, Ophiticall, and Laconicall marble in checker worke, and other most exquisite conveyances, and those, of many severall colours, that it is very admirable and rare to behold, the rarenesse such that it doth even amaze all strangers upon their first view thereof. The west front towards St. Marks street is most beautifull, having five severall partitions, unto which there belong as many brasen dores, whereof the middle, through which they usually go into the Church, is made of solid brasse, the other foure in the[Pg 292] forme of latteise windowes. This front is very stately adorned with beautiful pillars of white marble, whereof in one part of the front, I told a hundred and two and fifty, in the higher two and forty. In all one hundred fourescore and fourteene. Some greater, some lesser. Some of one colour and some of another. At the sides of the great gate are eight rich pillars of porphyrie, foure in one side, and as many in another, whereof each would be worth twenty pound with us in England. Over the toppe of this middle gate is to be seene a very ancient and remarkable monument, foure goodly brasen horses made of Corinthian mettall, and fully as great as the life. These horses were brought to Venice in the time of their Duke Petrus Zanus, which was about the yeare 1206. Some say they were cast by Lysippus that singular statuary of Alexander the Great above three hundred years before Christ; some say that the Romans made them at what time Hiero King of Syracuse triumphed of the Parthians, and placed them in a certain arch that they dedicated to him. It is reported that Tyridates King of Armenia bestowed them on the Emperour Nero, when he was entertained in Rome with such pompous magnificence, as is mentioned by Tacitus and Suetonius. And that Constantine the Great brought them from Rome to Constantinople, and therehence they were lastly brought to Venice by the Venetians, when they possessed Constantinople. At what time they brought many other notable things from that City, for the better ornament both of their publique and private buildings. These horses are advanced on certain curious and beautifull pillars, to the end they may be more conspicuous and eminent to be seene of[Pg 293] every person.... I observed another very memorable monument within the first great gate, which is betwixt that gate and the opposite brasen gate at the going into the body of the Church, which is also made of massy brasse, namely a great stone formed and cut according to the fashion of a diamond pavier, in the middle whereof is made a prety checker worke garnished with divers little pieces of marble of sundry colours. On this little worke which is in the middest of the said stone did Fredericus Barbarossa the Emperour lay downe his necke as a foote-stoole to Pope Alexander the third to treade upon it.... Over the gate as you passe into the body of the Church, is to be seene the picture of St. Marke (if at the least a man may properly call such a piece of work a picture) made most curiously with pieces of marble (as I conceive it) exceeding little, all gilt over in a kinde of worke very common in this Church, called Mosaicall worke. He is made looking up to heaven with his hands likewise elevated, and that wearing of a marvailous rich cope, under whom [an inscription] is written in faire letters.... On the right hand of the Church as you goe in, even at the south corner, there is a very faire little Chappel having a sumptuous Altar that is adorned with a very curious roofe, and two goodly pillars of Parian marble at the sides, of wonderfull faire workmanship, wherein are finely made clusters of grapes, and other borders exceeding well expressed. At both the endes of the Altar are made two great lyons in porphyrie, whereof that on the right hand leaneth a little child, the other on the left hand on a sheepe.... The pavement of this Chappel is made of diamond worke with marble of divers colours, and at the entrance a two leafed[Pg 294] brasen gate. The inner walles of the Church are beautified with a great multitude of pictures gilt, and contrived in Mosaical worke, which is nothing else but a pretty kind of picturing consisting altogether of little pieces and very small fragments of gilt marble, which are square, and halfe as broade as the naile of a mans finger; of which pieces there concurreth a very infinite company to the making of these pictures. I never saw any of this kind of picturing before I came to Venice, nor ever either read or heard of it, of which Saint Marks Church is full in every wall and roofe. It is said that they imitate the Grecians in these Mosaical workes.... At the west end of the Church in the walke which is without the body, are three more of those Mosaical round roofes full of those pictures or effigies as the other within the Church, and another square, of a greater height than the rest, wherein is painted the Crosse of Christ ... foure Angels by the sides of it: And a little way farther two companies of Angels more, one on the right hand of the Crosse, and another on the left, with Lilies in their hands. Againe, in the north side of the Church wherein is another of those walkes without the body, are three more of those Mosaical vaulted roofes full of pictures, which doe make up the full number. Most of these pictures have either names, which expresse the same, or Latin Poesies in verse, or both made by them.... I saw in the body of the Church a very rich stone called an Agat, about two foote long, and as broad as the palme of a mans hand, which is valued at tenne thousand duckats at the least. This is on the right hand of the Church as you goe into the Quire from the West gate. The corners whereof I saw broken;[Pg 295] which I heard happened by this meanes. A certaine Jew hid himselfe all night in a corner of this Church, and when all the gates were locked, he tried to pul up the stone with pinsers and some other instruments; but he failed in his enterprise, because the stone was so fast soldered into the ground that he could not with his cunning pull it up; being apprehended in the Church the next morning before he could make an evasion, he was presently hanged for his labour in St. Markes place....

The high Altar is very faire, but especially that inestimable rich table heretofore brought from Constantinople, which is above the Altar: that table is never shewed but onely upon some speciall feast day, being most commonly covered by certaine devices that they have, and another meaner table standeth usually upon it. This table is the fairest that ever I saw, which indeed I saw but once onely, upon the feast of our Ladies assumption, which was the fifth day of August: it is marvellous richly wrought in gold, and silver, with many curious little images, such as we call in Latin imagunculæ or icunculæ. And the upper part of it most sumptuously adorned with abundance of pretious stones of great value that doe exceedingly beautifie the worke. I think it is worth at least ten thousand pounds. Over this Altar is a most beautiful concamerated roofe of rich Ophiticall marble, and supported with foure passing faire pillars at the corners made of Parian marble, wherein are very artifically represented many histories of the old and new Testament. In this Quire I saw two and twenty goodly Candlestickes, hanged up with chains, the fairest that ever I saw. At both sides of it are two exceeding faire[Pg 296] payre of Organes, whose pipes are silver, especially those on the left hand as you come in from the body of the Church, having the brasen winged Lyon of S. Mark on the top, and the images of two Angels at the sides.... The last notable thing that is in the Church ... is the treasure of Saint Marke, kept in a certaine Chappell in the south side of the Church neere to the stately porch of the Dukes Palace. But here methinks I use the figure hysteron proteron, in that I conclude my tract of St. Markes Church with that which was worthiest to be spoken of at the beginning. For this treasure is of that inestimable value, that it is thought no treasure whatsoever in any one place of Christendome may compare with it.... Here they say is kept marveilous abundance of rich stones of exceeding worth, as Diamonds, Carbuncles, Emerauds, Chrysolites, Jacinths, and great pearles of admirable value: also three Unicorns hornes; an exceeding great Carbuncle which was bestowed upon the Senate by the Cardinall Grimannus, and a certaine Pitcher adorned with great variety of pretious stones, which Usumcassanes King of Persia bestowed upon the Signiory, with many other things of wonderful value.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

THE GLORY OF ST. MARK’S

So we entred St. Marc’s Church, before which stand two brasse pedestals exquisitely cut and figur’d, which beare as many tall masts painted red, on which upon greate festivals they hang flags and streamers. This church is also Gotic; yet for the preciousnese[Pg 297] of the materials being of severall rich marbles, aboundance of porphyrie, serpentine, &c. far exceeding any in Rome, St. Peter’s hardly excepted. I much admired the splendid historie of our Saviour, compos’d all of Mosaic over the faciata, below which and over the chiefe gate are four horses cast in coper as big as the life, the same that formerly were transported from Rome by Constantine to Byzantium, and thence by the Venetians hither. They are supported by eight porphyrie columns of very great size and value. Being come into the Church, you see nothing, and tread on nothing, but what is precious. The floore is all inlayed with achats, lazuli’s, calcedons, jaspers, porphyries and other rich marbles, admirable also for the work; the walls sumptuously incrusted and presenting to the imagination the shapes of men, birds, houses, flowers, and a thousand varieties. The roofe is of most excellent Mosaic; but what most persons admire is the new work of the emblematic tree at the other passage out of the Church. In the midst of this rich volto rise five cupolas, the middle very large and susteyn’d by thirty-six marble columns, eight of which are of precious marbles: under these cupolas is the high altar, on which is a reliquarie of severall sorts of jewells, engraven with figures after the Greeke manner, and set together with plates of pure gold. The altar is cover’d with a canopy of ophit, on which is sculptur’d the storie of the Bible and so on the pillars, which are of Parian marble that support it. Behind these are four other columns of transparent and true Oriental alabaster, brought hither out of the mines of Solomon’s Temple as they report. There are many chapells and notable monuments of illustrious persons, Dukes, Cardinals, &c.[Pg 298] as Zeno, Jo. Soranzi, and others: there is likewise a vast baptisterie of coper.... In one of the corners lies the body of St. Isidore, brought hither five hundred years since from the island of Chios.... Going out of the Church they shew’d us the stone where Alexander III. trod on the neck of the Emperor Fred. Barbarossa, pronouncing the verse of the psalm, ‘Super basiliscum,’ &c. The dores of the Church are of massie coper. There are neare five hundred pillars in this building, most of them porphyrie and serpentine, and brought chiefly from Athens and other parts of Greece formerly in their power. At the corner of the Church are inserted into the maine wall foure figures as big as life cut in porphyrie, which they say are the images of four brothers who poysoned one another, by which means there escheated to the Republiq that vast treasury of relicques now belonging to the Church. At the other entrance that looks towards the sea, stands in a small chapell that statue of our Lady, made (as they affirme) of the same stone or rock out of which Moses brought water to the murmuring Israelites at Meriba.... The next day, by favour of the French Ambassador, I had admittance with him to see the Reliquary call’d here Tresoro di San Marco, which very few even of travellers are admitted to see. It is a large chamber full of presses. There are twelve breast-plates, or pieces of pure golden armour studded with precious stones, and as many crownes dedicated to St. Mark by so many noble Venetians who had recovered their wives taken at sea by the Saracens; many curious vases of achats; the cap or cornet of the Dukes of Venice, one of which had a rubie set on it esteemed worth 200,000 crowns; two unicorn hornes; numerous[Pg 299] vases and dishes of achat set thick with precious stones and vast pearles, [and] divers heads of Saints inchas’d in gold.

JOHN EVELYN.

THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK

On the 25th of February, 1340, there fell out a wonderful thing in this land; for during three days the waters rose continually, and in the night there was fearful rain and tempest, such as had never been heard of. So great was the storm that the waters rose three cubits higher than had ever been known in Venice; and an old fisherman being in his little boat in the canal of St. Mark, reached with difficulty the Riva di San Marco, and there he fastened his boat, and waited the ceasing of the storm. And it is related that, at the time this storm was at its highest, there came an unknown man, and besought him that he would row him over to San Giorgio Maggiore, promising to pay him well; and the fisherman replied, ‘How is it possible to go to San Giorgio? We shall sink by the way!’ but the man only besought him the more that he should set forth. So, seeing that it was the will of God, he arose and rowed over to San Giorgio Maggiore; and the man landed there and desired the boatman to wait. In a short time he returned with a young man; and they said, ‘Now row towards San Niccolò di Lido.’ And the fisherman said, ‘How can one possibly go so far with one oar?’ and they said, ‘Row boldly, for it shall be possible with thee, and thou shalt be well paid.’ And he went; and it appeared to him as if the waters were smooth. Being arrived at San Niccolò di Lido, the two men landed, and returned with a third, and[Pg 300] having entered into the boat, they commanded the fisherman that he should row beyond the two castles. And the tempest raged continually. Being come to the open sea, they beheld approaching, with such terrific speed that it appeared to fly over the waters, an enormous galley full of demons (as it is written in the Chronicles, and Marco Sabellino also makes mention of this miracle): the said barque approached the castles to overwhelm Venice and to destroy it utterly. Anon the sea, which had hitherto been tumultuous, became calm; and these three men, having made the sign of the cross, exorcised the demons, and commanded them to depart, and immediately the galley or the ship vanished. Then these three men commanded the fisherman to land them, the one at San Niccolò di Lido, the other at San Giorgio Maggiore, and the third at San Marco. And when he had landed the third, the fisherman, notwithstanding the miracle he had witnessed, desired that he would pay him, and he replied, ‘Thou art right; go now to the Doge and to the Procuratore of St. Mark, and tell him what thou hast seen, for Venice would have been overwhelmed had it not been for us three. I am St. Mark the Evangelist, the protector of this city; the other is the brave knight St. George, and he whom thou didst take up at the Lido is the holy Bishop St. Nicholas. Say to the Doge and to the Procuratore that they are to pay thee, and tell them likewise that this tempest rose because of a certain schoolmaster dwelling at San Felice, who did sell his soul to the devil, and afterwards hanged himself.’ And the fisherman replied, ‘If I should tell them this, they would not believe me!’ Then St. Mark took off a ring which was worth five ducats, and he said,[Pg 301] ‘Show them this, and tell them when they look in the sanctuary they will not find it,’ and thereupon he disappeared. The next morning, the fisherman presented himself before the Doge, and related all he had seen the night before, and showed him the ring for a sign. And the Procuratore having sent for the ring, and sought it in the usual place, found it not; by reason of which miracle the fisherman was paid, and a solemn procession was ordained, giving thanks to God, and to the relics of the three holy saints who rest in our land, and who delivered us from this great danger. The ring was given to Signor Marco Lordano and to Signor Andrea Dandolo, the Procuratore, who placed it in the sanctuary; and, moreover, a perpetual provision was made for the aged fisherman.

MRS. JAMESON.

ST. GEORGE OF THE GREEKS

This Church of St. George of the Greeks is one of Venice’s most wonderful places. One has the impression of a sanctuary which is at the same time a treasure-house; gold everywhere—furniture, eikons, lamps, embroideries—not gilding, but real, heavy gold. The vestments are stiff with it. The bearded golden priest goes backwards and forwards, the gold-embroidered curtains opening and shutting for him, revealing and hiding a number of tapers and incense and shining encrusted walls; while the acolytes, in slender folded linen smocks, with gold stoles crossed over their backs, kneel before the rood-screen. There is a sense of the departed splendours of Judaism, of a Solomon’s Temple behind those half-drawn curtains; and every time that pope came forth a name[Pg 302] rose up in my mind—Melchizedek, he who was a priest and also a king. After that service at St. George’s of the Greeks, we walked home through St. Mark’s, entering it by the sacristy. The hot air, smoke of incense and dust, the shuffle of human beings and snuffling of priests caught one by the throat after that fair empty splendour of the Greek church. Caught me at least, subduing, crushing, perhaps rumpling my imagination and feelings, but making them humaner. There is, in this magnificence, a share of shabbiness; in this venerable place the sense of the deciduous, the perishable, which, in a way, is also a sense of the eternal. There is room, in St. Mark’s solemnity, for such as that consumptive girl who made head garlands for cemeteries. And St. Mark’s is the greater for her poor presence.

VERNON LEE.

[Pg 305]

SUNRISE IN VENICE

The sun rose upon Venice, and presented to me the city, whose image I had so early acquired. In the heart of a multitude, there was stillness. I looked out from the balcony on the crowded quays of yesterday; one or two idle porters were stretched in sleep on the scorching pavement, and a solitary gondola stole over the gleaming waters. This was all.

It was the Villeggiatura, and the absence of the nobility from the city invested it with an aspect even more deserted than it would otherwise have exhibited. I cared not for this. For me, indeed, Venice, silent and desolate, owned a greater charm than it could have commanded with all its feeble imitation of the worthless bustle of a modern metropolis. I congratulated myself on the choice season of the year in which I had arrived at this enchanting city. I do not think that I could have endured to be disturbed by the frivolous sights and sounds of society, before I had formed a full acquaintance with all those marvels of art that command our constant admiration while gliding about the lost capital of the Doges, and before I had yielded a free flow to those feelings of poetic melancholy which swell up in the soul as we contemplate this memorable theatre of human action, wherein have been performed so many of man’s most famous and most graceful deeds.

If I were to assign the particular quality which conduces to that dreamy and voluptuous existence[Pg 306] which men of high imagination experience in Venice, I should describe it as the feeling of abstraction which is remarkable in that city and peculiar to it. Venice is the only city which can yield the magical delights of solitude. All is still and silent. No rude sound disturbs your reveries; Fancy, therefore, is not put to flight. No rude sound distracts your self-consciousness. This renders existence intense. We feel everything. And we feel thus keenly in a city not only eminently beautiful, not only abounding in wonderful creations of art, but each step of which is hallowed ground, quick with associations that, in their more various nature, their nearer relation to ourselves, and perhaps their more picturesque character, exercise a greater influence over the imagination than the more antique story of Greece and Rome. We feel all this in a city, too, which, although her lustre be indeed dimmed, can still count among her daughters maidens fairer than the orient pearls with which her warriors once loved to deck them. Poetry, Tradition, and Love, these are the graces that have invested with an ever-charming cestus this Aphrodite of cities.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

VENICE: NIGHT ILLUSION—MORNING REALITY

If, instead of entering Venice by the Adriatic, the visitor ... crosses at night the long viaduct which connects the town with the mainland, what a strange impression he will receive! To glide silently in the middle of the night over still black waters, to see glimmering lanterns flitting right and left, to hear the splash of an oar on the water, to glide between high banks of architecture, processions of palaces that flit[Pg 307] by more felt than seen, as in an etching of Piranesi,—to pass under bridges, hear cries without catching their meaning, every moment to brush past those sombre catafalques which are other gondolas gliding through the darkness as silently as your own,—then, from time to time, to see as in a flash of lightning the outline of a figure leaning forward on its oar, a lamp burning and casting a keen reflection at the corner of a winding canal, a window brilliantly lighted and making a flaring hole in the midst of night,—to get entangled in dark water-lanes, turning, twisting, moving, without the feeling of movement, and all at once to land at a staircase which plunges its steps down into the water, and leads into a large and noble hall of fine architectural proportions, in a palace gleaming with lights, full of life and activity, and of busy men who bring one back after that strange journey to the commonplaces of hotel life,—this is certainly the most wonderful of dreams, a sort of ideal nightmare.

It has scarcely lasted an hour; but you are tired from a long journey; you soon fall asleep from weariness, hardly asking yourself, in the first uncertainty and fatigue, over what Styx you have sailed, what strange city you have traversed, and whether you have not been the dupe of a dream. In the morning you rush out upon the balcony, and there, amidst dazzling fight and a very debauch of colours, with a shimmering of pearl and silver, triumphant upon the waters of her lagoon, you behold that Venice which you have never seen except in Byron, in Otway, Musset, and George Sand. She glows, she sings in silvery radiance; here in very truth is the Queen of the Adriatic! A pigeon of St. Mark’s[Pg 308] flies over the balcony, throwing its shadow on the flagstones, and you cherish the long-awaited sight! Here are the islands, the Arsenal, the Lido, the Mole, the Redentore, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Ducal Palace, the gondoliers; in a word, all the city of Canaletto! But is it not an illusive scene, a phantasmagoria, a treacherous dream?—if it were but a mirage after all?

And when you begin to wander about the town, stupefied, dazzled, confused, blinded; when you go into the museums, the churches; when cradled in your gondola you pass down that marvellous avenue, the Grand Canal; when you shall have seen face to face, in their full glory, Veronese, Tintoret, Vittoria, the gentle Carpaccio, the Bellini, those sweet and solemn masters, the Vivarini, the Palmas, the great Titian, Sansovino, Verocchio, the Lombardi, the elegant and noble Leopardi, Calendario the rebel, whose genius did not save him from condign punishment; when you shall have viewed all these painters, sculptors, architects, these mighty spirits who, in the palaces of the Doges, at the Frari, in the Arsenal, at Santa Maria Formosa, at San Rocco and the Procuratie, or on either bank of the Grand Canal, have celebrated the glory of Venice with their gorgeous palettes, have moulded and carved the bronze and marble with their puissant hands, have raised to the sky the clear profiles of the campaniles in their hues of white and rose, have cast upon the green mirror of the waters of Canareggio the delicate network of Gothic palaces, or the sudden projections of classic entablatures and balconies; after all this, you will come in worn out, confused, overwhelmed by the force and greatness of these men of the Renaissance, and you will call out to your gondolier, ‘To the Lido,’[Pg 309] in order that you may find rest in Nature from the dazzling things of art. In another week you will be looking at Tintoret with a careless eye; for masterpieces crowd too thick upon one another; bronzes, enamels, triptychs, marbles, figures of doges lying on their sculptured tombs, famous condottieri buried in their armour, or standing haughty and valorous in full panoply on their mausoleums, will leave you indifferent. You are hungry for the open air, for the lagoon, the changing aspects of the pearl-grey waves, for Nature’s own reflections as Guardi and Canaletto caught them.... As you get further from the shore, you turn to enjoy the view, for it is the most splendid scene ever dreamt by the imagination; and before this picture of Venice—a picture signed by the Master of masters—you forget the immortal works made by hands that have been stiff for centuries.

CHARLES YRIARTE.

SUNSET AND VENICE

AT SUNSET

SUNSET

A VENETIAN NIGHT

[Pg 315]

VENETIAN NOCTURNE

NIGHT IN THE PIAZZA

VENETA MARINA

INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS

VENETIAN NIGHT

[Pg 318]

NIGHT IN VENICE

Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.

There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the lagoon, which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their prow; ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the Salute; pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness; piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of rio linked with rio, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once more the level glories and the luminous expanse of heaven beyond Misericordia.

This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single impression of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know not whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling. To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils of scirocco. Over the bridges of San Cristofore and San Gregorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles the water and cools our forehead. It is so dark that we can only see San Giorgio by the light reflected on it from the Piazzetta. The same light climbs the Campanile[Pg 319] of St. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery of gloom. The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water whispers in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a splash of oars, and gliding through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps upon the landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another wrapped in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and quiet. The barcaruolo turns the point in silence. From the darkness they came; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an ordinary incident of coastguard service. But the spirit of the night has made a poem of it.

Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy enough, is never sordid here. There is no noise from carriage traffic in Venice, and the sea-wind preserves the purity and transparency of the atmosphere. It had been raining all day, but at evening came a partial clearing. I went down to the Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all moon-silvered, and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the bluish sky, and Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon-irradiated pearl, and the wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in moonlight, the whole misty sky, with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in moonlight, nothing but moonlight sensible except the tawny flare of gas-lamps and the orange lights of gondolas afloat upon the waters. On such a night the very spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea.

Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi’s Forza del Destino at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward[Pg 320] through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute. It was a warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ferro round, and stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things—the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night above the sea.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

AT THE DOGANA

INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS

Venice, 1st May, 1834.

My friend, you have no idea of what Venice is. She has not quitted the mourning garb she assumed in winter, when you saw her ancient pillars of Greek marble, which in colour and form you compared to dry bones. At present, spring has breathed upon her, as though her breath were emerald dust. The base of her palaces, where oysters clustered in the stagnant moss, is now covered with the most tender green, and gondolas float between two banks of this verdure, soft as velvet, and the noise of the water dies away languishingly, mingled with the foam of the gondola’s track. All the balconies are filled with vases of flowers; and the flowers of Venice, brought to light in this warm clayey soil, blossoming in this damp atmosphere, have a freshness, a richness of tissue, and a languor of attitude which makes them resemble the women of this climate, whose beauty is brilliant and evanescent as their own. The double flowering bramble climbs round every pillar, and suspends its garlands of white rosettes, from the black arabesques of the balconies. The vanilla iris, the Persian tulip, so beautifully striped with pure red and white that it seems formed from the material in which the ancient Venetians used to dress; Greek roses, and pyramids of gigantic campanulas are heaped in the vases which cover the balustrades. Sometimes there is quite an arbour of honeysuckle[Pg 324] crowning the balcony from one end to the other, and two or three cages hidden in the foliage, contain nightingales that sing day and night, as though they were in the open country. These tame nightingales are a luxury peculiar to Venice. The women there have a remarkable talent for bringing up and educating, so to speak, these poor harmonious prisoners, and know how, by every species of delicacy and kindness, to soften the ennui of their captivity. In the night, the birds call to and answer one another from each side of the canal. If a serenade passes, they are quiet and listen, and as soon as it has passed by, they recommence their song, and seem vying to surpass the melody they have just heard. At every street corner, the Madonna shelters her mysterious lamp under a jasmine canopy; and the traghetti, shaded by trellises, diffuse, all along the Grand Canal, the perfume of the vine in flower, perhaps the sweetest odour among plants.

These traghetti are the stations for the public gondolas. Those which are established on the shores of the Canalazzo are the rendezvous of the porters who come to smoke and talk with the gondoliers. These often present very theatrical-looking groups. Whilst one, lying on his gondola, alternately smiles and yawns at the stars, another on the shore, with open breast, and air of mockery, his hat thrust back upon a forest of long crisp curled hair, throws his great shadow on the wall. He is the hero of the traghetto.

GEORGE SAND.

[Pg 325]

SPRING IN VENICE

The way in which the spring made itself felt upon the lagoon was full of curious delight. It was not so early in the season that we should know the spring by the first raw warmth in the air, and there was as yet no assurance of her presence in the growth—later so luxuriant—of the coarse grasses of the shallows. But somehow the spring was there, giving us new life with every breath. There were fewer gulls than usual, and those we saw sailed far overhead, debating departure. There was deeper languor in the laziness of the soldiers of finance, as they lounged and slept upon their floating custom-houses in every channel of the lagoons; and the hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendour used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after week, month after month, that

which, at Venice, contents all your senses, and makes you exult to be alive with the inarticulate gladness of children, or of the swallows that there all day wheel and dart through the air, and shriek out a delight too intense and precipitate for song.

W. D. HOWELLS.

[Pg 326]

APRIL IN VENICE

Venice, 1st May, 1834.

Do you remember that, when we left France, you said you cared for nothing but sculptured marble? You called me a savage, when I replied that I would quit any palace in the world to see a mountain of unhewn marble in the Alps or Apennines.

You may remember after a few days you were satiated with statues, frescoes, churches, and galleries. The sweetest souvenir which was left to you was that of the cold and limpid waters of a fountain where you bathed your heated and weary brow in a garden in Genoa. The creatures of art speak to the intellect alone, but the spectacle of Nature appeals to every faculty. It influences as through every pore, as well as through every idea. To the entirely intellectual pleasure of admiration the aspect of the country adds a purely sensual enjoyment.

The freshness of the fountains, the perfume of plants, the harmony of the winds, circulates through every nerve, whilst the brilliancy of colours and the beauty of outlines insinuate themselves into the imagination. This feeling of pleasure and gratification is appreciable by every organization, even the commonest animals feel it to a certain degree. But to an elevated mind it affords but a transitory pleasure, an agreeable repose after the more energetic functions of the intellect. To great minds, the entire universe is necessary; the works of God, and the works of man. The fountain of pure water invites and charms you, but only for an instant do you repose there. You must exhaust Michael Angelo and Raphael before you linger again on the wayside;[Pg 327] and when you have washed off the dust of the journey in the waters of the spring, you pass on saying, ‘Let us see what more there is under the sun.’

To minds so médiocre and idle as my own, the side of a hedge would suffice to sleep away my life, if this rough and barren journey might be slept or dreamt away. But even then, for me the fosse must be just like this one of Bassano; that is to say, it must be at least one hundred feet above a delicious valley, and every morning must bring its breakfast on a grassy slope covered with primroses, with excellent coffee, mountain butter, and aniseed bread.

To such a breakfast I invite you, when you have time to wish for repose. When that time comes, everything will be known to you; life will have no more secrets for you. Your hair will be slightly grey, mine entirely so; but the valley of Bassano will be just as lovely, the Alpine snows as pure; and our friendship?—I trust in your heart, and I answer for my own....

In the midst of this immense garden, the Brenta flows rapidly and silently over its sandy bed, between banks covered with pebbles and rocky fragments, torn from the bosom of the Alps, with which it furrows the plain in its days of anger. A half-circle of fertile hills covered with those long vine branches which suspend themselves from every tree in Venetia, were the immediate border of the picture, and the snowy mountains, sparkling in the sun’s first rays, formed an immense framework which rose like a silver fringe into the deep blue of the atmosphere.

‘I wish you to observe,’ said the doctor to me, ‘that your coffee is getting cold, and the vetturino is waiting for us.’

[Pg 328] ‘Now, Doctor,’ said I, ‘do you really believe I am going back to Venice with you?’

Towards sunset I was in the public garden [of Venice]. As usual, there was very little company there. The elegant Venetian ladies dread the heat, and dare not go out in full daylight, but they also dread the cold, and never venture out in the night. There are three or four days in each season which seem expressly made for them, and then they raise the covers of their gondolas, but they rarely put their foot to the ground.

They are a species set apart, beings so frail and delicate, that one ray of sunlight would wither their beauty, or one breath of the breeze expose their very existence. All civilized men seek those places by preference where they may meet the fair sex; the theatres, the conversazioni, the cafés, and the sheltered enclosure of the Piazzetta, about seven o’clock in the evening. Therefore few remain in the gardens, but grumbling old men, stupid smokers, or melancholy victims to bile. You may class me amongst whichever you like of these three classes.

Gradually, I found myself quite alone; the elegant café, which extends itself to the lagoons, extinguished its tapers placed in lilies and marine flowers made of the crystal of Murano.

The last time you saw this garden, it was damp and sad enough! As for me, I went not there to seek bright thoughts, nor hoping to disencumber myself of my spleen. But the spring! as you say, who can resist the influence of the month of April? and at Venice, my dear friend, it is yet more impossible.

[Pg 329] Even the stones are being clothed with verdure; those infected marshes which our gondolas so carefully avoided, two months since, are now watery meadows covered by cresses, seaweeds, reeds and flags, and all sorts of marine mosses, exhaling a peculiar perfume, beloved by those to whom the sea is a cherished memory; and harbouring thousands of sea-gulls, divers, and the lesser bustard. The petrel incessantly hovers over these floating meadows, where the ebb and flow bring the waters of the Adriatic every day, teeming with myriads of insects, madrepores, and shells.

Instead of the icy-cold alleys from which we so hastily fled, on the evening before your departure, and which I had never since had the courage to revisit, a half-warm sand, patches of Easter daisies, and groves of sumach and sycamores were just opening to the soft breezes from the Grecian shore. The little promontory, planted in the English fashion, is so beautiful, so thickly grown, so rich in flowers, perfume, and prospect, that I asked myself if it were not the promised land my dreams had revealed to me. But no, the promised land is pure from all sorrow, and this is already watered with my tears.

The sun had just sunk behind the Vicentine mountains. Blue mists were covering the whole heaven above Venice.

The tower of St. Mark, the cupolas of St. Mary, and little groves of pinnacles and minarets which rise from all quarters of the town, were defined like so many black points upon the vivid background of the horizon. The colour of the heavens changed through a wonderful gradation of softening tints, from crimson to blue; and the water, calm and limpid, faithfully[Pg 330] reflected the rainbow tints of colour. Below the town, the waves looked exactly like a large mirror of red copper. Never had I seen Venice so beautiful, so fairy-like. This black shadow thrown between the sky and the glowing waters, as though in a lake of fire, seemed one of those sublime aberrations of architecture which the poet of the Apocalypse saw, in his visions, floating on the shores of Patmos, when he dreamed his new Jerusalem, and compared her to a bride.

Little by little the bright colours faded, the outlines became more massive, the depths more mysterious. Venice assumed the aspect of an immense fleet, then of a lofty wood of cypresses, into which the canals flowed like high roads of silver sand. At such moments I delight in contemplating the distance. When the outlines become vague, when every object is trembling in the mist, when my imagination may disport in an immense field of conjecture and caprice, when, by merely half closing the eyes, one can in fancy destroy a city, turn it into a forest, a camp, or a cemetery, when I can metamorphose the high roads, white with dust, into peaceful rivers, and the rivulets, winding so serpent-like down the dark verdure of the hills, into rapid torrents, then it is that I really enjoy Nature, I play with her, I reign over her, with one glance I possess her and people her with my own fantasies.

GEORGE SAND.

MAY IN VENICE

May 17th, 4 p.m.—Looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity: the sky, which is pale blue, is in its reflection of the[Pg 331] same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the vessels’ hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea-green—i.e., the natural colour of the water under sunlight—while the orange masts of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected without change of colour, only not quite so bright as above. One ship has a white, another a red stripe (I ought to have said running horizontally along the gunwales), of these the water takes no notice.

What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright reflected sky.

A boat swinging near the quay casts an apparent shadow on the rippled water. This appearance I find to be owing altogether to the increased reflective power of the water in the shaded space; for the farther sides of the ripples therein take the deep pure blue of the sky, coming strongly dark on the pale green, and the nearer sides take the pale grey of the cloud, hardly darker than the green.

JOHN RUSKIN.

VENICE IN AUTUMN

AUTUMN AND VENICE

It was still the hour that in one of his books he had called ‘Titian’s hour,’ because in it all things seemed, like that painter’s nude creations, to shine with a rich glow of their own, and almost to illumine the sky rather than receive light from it. The strange, sumptuous octagonal temple drawn by Baldassare Longhena from the dream of Polifilo was now emerging from its blue-green shadow with its cupola, its scrolls, its statues, its columns, its balustrades, like a temple dedicated to Neptune, constructed after the pattern of tortuous marine shapes, and shading off into a haze of mother of pearl. In the hollows of the stone the wet sea-salt had deposited something fresh and silvery and jewel-like, that vaguely suggested pearl shells lying open in their native waters.... Does it not strike you that we seem to be following the princely retinue of dead Summer? There she lies, sleeping in her funeral boat, all dressed in gold like the wife of a Doge, like a Loredana, or a Morosina, or a Soranza, of the enlightened centuries. And the procession is taking her to the Island of Murano, where some masterly Lord of Fire will make her a crystal coffin. And the walls of the coffin shall be of opal, so that when once submerged in the Laguna, she may at least see the languid play of the seaweed through her transparent eyelids, and while awaiting[Pg 334] the hour of resurrection give herself the illusion of having still about her person the constant undulation of her voluptuous hair....

Indeed, that sudden allegory in both its form and rhythm truthfully expressed the feeling that was permeating all things. As the milky blue of the opal is filled with hidden fire, so the pale monotonous water of the harbour held dissimulated splendours that were brought to light by each shock of the oars. Beyond the straight forest of ships motionless on their anchors San Giorgio stood out like a vast rosy galley, its prow turned to the Fortuna that attracted it from the height of its golden sphere. A placid estuary opened out in the centre of the Giudecca. The laden boats that came down the rivers flowing into it brought with their weight of splintered trunks what seemed the very spirit of the woods that bend over the running waters of their far-away sources.

And from the Molo, from the twofold miracle of the porticoes open to the popular applause, where the red and white wall rose as if to enclose that dominant will, the Riva unfolded its gentle arch towards the shady gardens and the fertile islands, as if to lead away the thoughts excited by the arduous symbols of art to the restfulness of Nature. And almost as if still further to complete the avocation of Autumn there passed a string of boats laden with fruit, like great floating baskets that spread over the waters reflecting the perpetual foliage of the cusps and capitols, the fragrance of the island fruit gardens....

The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the Angelus, and their ponderous roll dilated in long waves along the mirror of the harbour, vibrated through the masts of the ships, spread afar towards[Pg 335] the infinite lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore, from San Giorgio dei Greci, from San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in Bragora, from San Moise, from the churches of the Salute and the Redentore and beyond, over the whole domain of the Evangelist, from the far towers of the Madonna dell’ Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant’ Andrea, bronze voices answered, mingling in one great chorus, spreading over the silent company of stones and water one great dome of invisible metal, the vibrations of which seemed to reach the twinkling of the earliest stars. In the purity of evening the sacred voices gave the City of Silence a sort of immensity of grandeur. From the summit of their temples they brought anxious mankind the message sent by the immortal multitudes hidden in the darkness of deep aisles, or mysteriously troubled by the light of votive lamps; they brought to spirits worn out by the day the message of the superhuman creatures figured on the walls of secluded chapels and in the niches of inner altars, who had announced miracles and promised worlds. And all the apparitions of the consoling Beauty invoked by unanimous Prayer, rose on that storm of sound, spoke in that aerial chorus, irradiated the face of the marvellous night.

One afternoon not long ago, returning from the Gardens along the warm bank of the Schiavoni, that must often have seemed to some wandering poet like I know not what golden magic bridge stretching out over a sea of light and silence to some infinite dream of beauty, I thought, or rather I stood by and watched my own thoughts as I would an intimate spectacle,—I[Pg 336] thought of the nuptial alliance of Autumn and Venice under those skies.

A sense of life was diffused everywhere; a sense of life made up of passionate expectation and restrained ardour, that surprised me by its vehemence, but yet could not seem new to me, because I had already found it gathered in some belt of shadow under the almost deathly immobility of summer, and I had also felt it here vibrating now and then like a mysterious pulsation under the strange, feverish odour of the waters. Thus, I thought, this pure City of Art truly aspires to the supreme condition of that beauty that is an annual return in her as is the giving forth of flowers to the forest. She tends to reveal herself in a full harmony as if she still carried in herself, powerful and conscious, that desire of perfection from which she was born and formed through the ages like some divine creature. Under the motionless fires of a summer sky she seemed pulseless and breathless, dead indeed in her green waters; but my feeling did not deceive me when I divined her secretly labouring under a spirit of life that would prove sufficiently powerful to renew the highest of older miracles....

The mutual passion of Venice and Autumn that exalts the one and the other to the highest degree of their sensuous beauty has its origin in a deep affinity; for the soul of Venice, the soul fashioned for the City Beautiful by its great artists is autumnal.

The correspondence between the external and the interior spectacle once discovered, my enjoyment found itself unspeakably multiplied. The crowd of imperishable forms that peoples its churches and palaces seemed from these latter to answer the harmony of daylight with a chord so deep and powerful[Pg 337] that it soon became dominant. And—because the light of Heaven alternates with shadows, but the light of Art lasts in the human soul and cannot be extinguished—when the miracle of the hour ceased to cover all those things, my spirit felt itself alone and ecstatic among the splendours of an ideal autumn.

GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO.

FROM A VENETIAN BALCONY

AUTUMN IN VENICE

It is now late in October. The days are short but luminous still when the mists do not drift in from the lagoons of the Lido, or from the marshes of the low-lying lands beyond Mestre and Fucina. Boats still come in with rosy sunrise reflection shed on their orange sails, and take their loads of autumn apples and pears and walnuts to the fruit-market above Rialto. But soon, very soon, it will be winter, and the gondolas will glide by with closed felze, and the water[Pg 339] will be a troubled waste between the city and the Lido, and men will hurry with muffled heads over the square of Saint Mark when the Alpine wind blows, and the strange big ships creep on their piloted course tediously and timidly through the snowstorms to their anchorage in the wide Giudecca.

OUIDA.

VENICE AT TWILIGHT

[Pg 340]

ALL SOULS’ DAY AT VENICE

They had put a bridge of boats from the northernmost quay of Venice to the cemetery island. A dense crowd, coming and going across it, black over the black anchored barges, each two with their yard of pale water between their tarred hulls. And, as we draw near, as we go beneath, the seeming silence turns into a murmur, and a rumble.

For this one day in all the year the cemetery island is bridged on to the islands of the living. This is no mere coincidence, but a real symbol.

The cloisters and the gardens are full as for a fair, crowds coming and going, buying tapers, lighting them at the glittering wax-lights before the chapel, bringing a few flowers.... Surely for these poor folk there is a reality, if only a negative one, in this suspending of the labour, cares, the empty grind of life; and their hour of watching by the dead may be, in some way deeper than words can say, an hour of communing with the eternities.

While thus the cemetery was given up to the living and to the long dead, the scarcely dead, the real dead, were arriving here and there with the real mourners. I noted a mound of fresh earth, with the ritual trowel sticking in it, a couple of surpliced and shaven Franciscans reciting the prayers to a few blear, red-eyed people (a nun among them); all these new-comers and their ministering clergy seeming a little scared by intruding their own dead man or woman into this great public feast of those who have long passed beyond. And the crowd, on its side, looked surprised at this new and definite reality of loss in the midst of its vaguer mournings; this man[Pg 341] or woman, only just dead, carried in among those shadowy memories.

Very touching also were the little framed photographs, clean and evidently taken off some poor table or wall, and hung on the cross for the afternoon; the dead pauper having his effigy also on his grave, like the rich man among his marble, if only for those few hours.

As we got back into the gondola the crowd was streaming only one way along the black bridge; away from the cemetery, back into life.

VERNON LEE.

VENICE IN WINTER

In Venice only the melancholy drenching rain of a winter’s day brings rest to the eye, when water meets water, and sky is washed into sea and the city lies soaking and dripping between two floods. But soon the wind shifts to the north-east, out breaks the sun again, and all Venice is instantly in a glare of light and colour and startling distinctness, like the sails and rigging of a ship at sea on a clear day.

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.

VENICE: THE END OF WINTER

There is joy in the heart of each Venetian when the end of winter is reached at last, and once more are visible, lying like pearls on the spring-blue ocean, the islands of Murano and Malamocco. They have long been veiled from view by opal mists, sometimes but half obscured and lying like a ghostly mirage in the distance. But now they stand out like bright[Pg 342] and beautiful cameos, glistening white on a surface of blue. Tower and wall and roof, washed clean and new by the refreshing winter mists, stand ready to receive the sunlight. For these sun-loving and warmth-loving people the year should be always summer! This first bright burst of warm sunshine has set the spirit of cheer in the heart of each gondolier as he stands by his own favourite traghetto, furbishing up his gondola and preparing for the coming glorious seasons of spring and summer in Venice! He smiles and jokes again; he shouts once more in his old way to his brother gondolier across the opposite shore—É primavera! é primavera!

ENRICO ALBINI.

[Pg 345]

THE ORIGIN OF VENICE

Venice, being a republic, which, both on account of its power and internal regulations, deserves to be celebrated above any principality of Italy.... I speak of their (the Venetians’) city from a remote period.... When Attila, king of the Huns, besieged Aquileia, the inhabitants, after defending themselves a long time, began to despair of effecting their safety, and fled for refuge to several uninhabited rocks, situate at the point of the Adriatic Sea, now called the Gulf of Venice, carrying with them whatever moveable property they possessed. The people of Padua, finding themselves in equal danger, and knowing that, having become master of Aquileia, Attila would next attack themselves, also removed with their most valuable property to a place on the same sea, called Rivo Alto, to which they brought their women, children, and aged persons, leaving the youth in Padua to assist in her defence. Besides these, the people of Monselice, with the inhabitants of the surrounding hills, driven by similar fears, fled to the same rocks. But after Attila had taken Aquileia, and destroyed Padua, Monselice, Vicenza, and Verona, the people of Padua and others who were powerful continued to inhabit the marshes about Rivo Alto; and in like manner all the people of the province anciently called Venetia, drived by the same events, became collected in these marshes. Thus, under the pressure of necessity, they left an agreeable and[Pg 346] fertile country to occupy one sterile and unwholesome. However, in consequence of a great number of people being drawn together into a comparatively small space, in a short time they made those places not only habitable, but delightful; and having established among themselves laws and useful regulations, enjoyed themselves in security amid the devastations of Italy, and soon increased both in reputation and strength. For, besides the inhabitants already mentioned, many fled to these places from the cities of Lombardy, principally to escape from the cruelties of Clefis, king of the Lombards, which greatly tended to increase the numbers of the new city; and in the conventions which were made betwixt Pepin, king of France, and the emperor of Greece when the former, at the entreaty of the pope, came to drive the Lombards out of Italy, the duke of Benevenuto and the Venetians did not render obedience to either the one or the other, but alone enjoyed their liberty. As necessity had led them to dwell on sterile rocks, they were compelled to seek the means of subsistence elsewhere; and voyaging with their ships to every port of the ocean, their city became a depository for the various products of the world, and was itself filled with men of every nation.

For many years the Venetians sought no other dominion than that which tended to facilitate their commercial enterprises, and thus acquired many ports in Greece and Syria; and as the French had made frequent use of their ships in voyages to Asia, the island of Candia was assigned to them, in recompense for these services. Whilst they lived in this manner, their name spread terror over the seas, and was held in veneration throughout Italy. This was so completely[Pg 347] the case, that they were generally chosen to arbitrate in controversies arising betwixt the states, as occurred in the difference betwixt the Colleagues, on account of the cities they had divided amongst themselves; which being referred to the Venetians, they awarded Brescia and Bergamo to the Visconti. But when, in the course of time, urged by their eagerness for dominion, they had made themselves masters of Padua, Vicenza, Trevisa, and afterwards of Verona, Bergamo, and Brescia, with many cities in Romanga, and the kingdom of Naples, other nations were impressed with such an opinion of their power, that they were a terror, not only to the princes of Italy, but to the Ultramontane kings. These states entered into an alliance against them, and in one day wrested from them the provinces they had obtained with so much labour and expense; and although they have in latter times re-acquired some portions, still, possessing neither power nor reputation, like all the other Italian powers, they live at the mercy of others....

Amongst the great and wonderful institutions of the republics and principalities of antiquity that have now gone into disuse, was that by means of which towns and cities were from time to time established; and there is nothing more worthy the attention of a great prince, or of a well-regulated republic, or that confers so many advantages upon a province, as the settlement of new places, where men are drawn together for mutual accommodation and defence. This may easily be done, by sending people to reside in recently acquired or uninhabited countries. Besides causing the establishment of new cities, these removals render a conquered country more secure, and keep the inhabitants of a province properly[Pg 348] distributed. Thus deriving the greatest attainable comfort, the inhabitants increase rapidly, are more prompt to attack others, and defend themselves with greater assurance. This custom, by the unwise practice of princes and republics, having gone into desuetude, the ruin and weakness of territories has followed; for this ordination is that by which alone empires are made secure, and countries become populated. Safety is the result of it; because the colony which a prince establishes in a newly acquired country is like a fortress and a guard, to keep the inhabitants in fidelity and obedience. Neither can a province be wholly occupied and preserve a proper distribution of its inhabitants without this regulation; for all districts are not equally healthy, and hence some will abound to overflowing, whilst others are void.... With cultivation the earth becomes fruitful, and the air is purified with fires—remedies which Nature cannot provide. The city of Venice proves the correctness of these remarks. Being placed in a marshy and unwholesome situation, it became healthy only by the number of industrious individuals who were drawn together.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI.

A PILGRIM’S DESCRIPTION OF VENICE

On Wednesday, the 21st of May [1494], I took one of the Milanese couriers to guide me about Venice, and went to the houses of the merchants for whom I had letters, and to each one I gave his own. Then, as I was afraid of not finding a place in the galley, I was immediately introduced to the Magnificent Don Agostino Contarini, a Venetian patrician and captain of the Jaffa galley—thus the galley is named which[Pg 349] carries the pilgrims going to Jerusalem—and he ordered my name to be written in the Pilgrims’ Book. At this time I found that I had been in too great a hurry to leave home, and that I must wait several days before the departure of the said galley.

In order that the tediousness of waiting should not make me desire to turn back and do as the children of Israel did when they went into the Promised Land, I determined to examine carefully the city of Venice, about which so much has been said and written, not only by learned men, but also by great scholars, that it appears to me there is nothing left to say. And I did this solely to amuse myself during the time I had to spend in such a great port. I wanted to see everything it was possible for me to see; and I was aided continually by the company given me by the Magnificent Doctor and Cavalier, the Lord Tadiolo de Vicomercato, Ambassador to the aforesaid Signoria of Venice for our most illustrious Lord the Duke of Milan. I paid him a visit, as was my duty, as soon as I arrived, and from him, although I did not merit it, I received more than common attention.

Before going further, I must make excuses to the readers of this my itinerary, if it should seem to them that I have overpraised this city of Venice. What I write is not written to win the goodwill of the Venetians, but to set down the truth. And I declare that it is impossible to tell or write fully of the beauty, the magnificence or the wealth of the city of Venice. Something indeed can be told and written to pass the time as I do, but it will be incredible to anyone who has not seen the city.

I do not think there is any city to which Venice, the city founded on the sea, can be compared; nevertheless[Pg 350] I appeal always to the judgment of every person who has been there some time. Although this city is built entirely in the water and the marshes, yet it appears to me that whoever desires to do so can go everywhere on foot, as it is well kept and clean. Anyone, however, who does not want to endure the fatigue can go by water, and will be entreated to do so, and it will cost him less than he would spend elsewhere for the hire of a horse. As to the size of the city, I may say that it is so large, that, after being there so many days as I was, I made but little acquaintance with the streets. I cannot give the dimensions of this city, for it appears to me not one city alone but several cities placed together.

I saw many beautiful palaces, beginning with the Palace of St. Mark, which is always inhabited by the Doge and his family. The façade of the said palace has been renovated in part with a great display of gold; and a new flight of steps is being built there—a stupendous and costly work—by which to ascend to the said palace from the side of the Church of St. Mark.... Besides the other notable things in the said palace, I saw a very long hall whose walls are painted very ornately. And there is painted the story how Frederick Barbarossa drove away Pope Alexander the Fourth, who fled in disguise to Venice, and was recognized in a monastery called the Monastery della Carità. The whole story is represented with such richness and naturalness in the figures that I think little could be added. The ceiling of the said hall is decorated with great gilded pictures. Seats are placed round the said hall, and in addition there are three rows of double seats, in the body of the hall, placed back to back. There are two magnificent[Pg 351] gilded seats, one at each end of the said hall; I was told they were for seating the Doge, one for the winter and the other for the summer. In this hall sit the Great Council of all the gentlemen, who, it is said, are two thousand five hundred in number....

I will not attempt to describe the number of large and beautiful palaces splendidly decorated and furnished, worth, some a hundred, some fifty, some thirty thousand ducats, and the owners of the same, because it would be too hard an undertaking for me, and better suited to someone who had to remain a long time in the said city of Venice. On the Grand Canal there is the most remarkable beginning of a palace for the Sforza family, and for the honour of the Milanese I am very sorry it has not been finished. For after seeing the said foundations, I am sure that the palace would be very magnificent if it were completed.

The said city, although it is in the water, as I said, has so many beautiful piazzas, beginning with that of St. Mark, that they would suffice for any great city placed on the mainland. It is a marvel to see how long and spacious they are. I have observed that the said city is so well ordered and arranged, that however much it rains, there is never any mud.

Something may be said about the quantity of merchandise in the said city, although not nearly the whole truth, because it is inestimable. Indeed, it seems as if all the world flocks there, and that human beings have concentrated there all their force for trading....

As the day of our departure was drawing near, I determined to leave everything else and study the owners of the many beautiful things I have noted—that is,[Pg 352] the Venetian gentlemen, who give themselves this title. I have considered the qualities of these Venetian gentlemen. For the most part they are tall, handsome men, astute and very subtle in their dealings, and whoever has to do business with them must keep his eyes and ears well open. They are proud—I think this is on account of their great dominions—and when a son is born to a Venetian gentleman they say to themselves, ‘A Lord is born into the world’ (E le nato un Signore al Mondo). They are frugal and very modest in their manner of living at home; outside the house they are very liberal.

The city of Venice preserves its ancient fashion of dress—which never changes—that is, a long garment of any colour that is preferred. No one would leave the house by day if he were not dressed in this long garment, and for the most part in black. They have so observed this custom, that the individuals of every nation in the world—which has a settlement in Venice—all adopt this style, from the greatest to the least, beginning with the gentlemen, down to the sailors and galeotti. Certainly it is a dress which inspires confidence, and is very dignified. The wearers all seem to be doctors in law, and if a man should appear out of the house without his toga, he would be thought mad....

When the Venetian gentlemen take office or go on some embassy, they wear very splendid garments; in truth, they could not be more magnificent. They are of scarlet, of velvet, of brocade, if the wearers hold high office; and all the linings of every kind are very costly.... The Venetian women, especially the pretty ones, try as much as possible in public to show their[Pg 353] chests—I mean their breasts and shoulders—so much so, that several times when I saw them I marvelled that their clothes did not fall off their backs. Those who can afford it, and also those who cannot, dress very splendidly, and have magnificent jewels and pearls in the trimming round their collars. They wear many rings on their fingers, with great balass rubies, rubies and diamonds. I said also those who cannot afford it, because I was told that many of them hire these things. They paint their faces a great deal, and also the other parts they show, in order to appear more beautiful.... I thought it my duty to seek out the churches and monasteries and go and see the relics which are very numerous; and this seemed to me a meritorious work for a pilgrim who was awaiting the departure of the galley to go to the Holy Sepulchre—thus finishing the time as well as I could.

CANON PIETRO CASOLA.

‘Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494,’
Translated by M. Margaret Newett, B.A.

VENICE: SOME SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS

I came to Venice at the time of a Faire, which lasted fourteene dayes, wherein I sawe very many, and faire shewes of wares. I came thither too short for the first passage, which went from Venice about the seventh or eighth of May, and with them about three score pilgrims, which shippe was cast away at a towne called Estria, two miles from Venice, and all the men in hers, saving thirtie, or thereabouts, lost.

Within eight dayes after fell Corpus Christi day, which was a day amongst them of procession, in which was shewed the plate and treasurie of Venice,[Pg 354] which is esteemed to be worth two millions of pounds, but I do not accompt it woorth halfe a quarter of that money, except there be more than I sawe. To speake of the sumptuousnesse of the copes and vestments of the Church, I leave, but the trueth is, they bee very sumptuous, many of them set all over with pearle, and made of cloth of gold....

To tell you of the duke of Venice, and of the Seigniory: there is one chosen that ever beareth the name of duke, but in trueth hee is but servant to the Seigniorie, for of himselfe hee can doe little: it is no otherwise with him, then with a priest that is at Masse upon a festival day, which putting on his golden garment, seemeth to be a great man, but if any man came unto him, and crave some friendship at his handes, hee will say, you must goe to the Masters of the parish, for I can not pleasure you, otherwise then by preferring of your suite: and so it is with the duke of Venice, if any man having a suite, came to him, and make his complaint, and deliver his supplication, it is not in him to help him, but hee will tell him, You must come this day, or that day, and then I will preferre your suite to the Seigniorie, and doe you the best friendship that I may. Furthermore, if any man bring a letter unto him, he may not open it, but in the presence of the Seigniorie, and they are to see it first, which being read, perhaps they will deliver it to him, perhaps not. Of the Seigniory there be about three hundred, and about fourtie of the privie Counsell of Venice, who usually are arayed in gownes of crimsen Satten, or crimsen Damaske, when they sit in Counsell.

In the Citie of Venice, no man may weare a weapon, except he be a soldier for the Seigniorie, or a skoller[Pg 355] of Padua, or a gentleman of great countenance, and yet he may not do that without licence.

As for the women of Venice, they be rather monsters, then women. Every Shoemakers or Taylors wife will have a gowne of silke, and one to carrie up her traine, wearing their shooes very neere halfe a yard high from the ground: if a stranger meete one of them, he will surely think by the state that she goeth with, that he meeteth a Lady.

LAURENCE ALDERSEY (1581).

THE BEAUTIE AND MAGNIFICENCE OF VENICE

I having oftentimes observed many strangers, men wise and learned, who arriving newly at Venice, and beholding the beautie and magnificence thereof, were stricken with so great an admiration and amazement, that they woulde, and that with open mouth, confesse, never any thing which before time they had seene, to be thereunto comparable, either in glory or goodlinesse. Yet was not every one of them possessed with the like wonder of the same particular thing: for to some it seemed a matter of infinite marvaile, and scarcely credible to behold, so unmeasurable a quantity of all sorts of merchandise to be brought out of all realmes and countries into this Citie, and hence againe to be conveyed into so many strange and far distant nations, both by land and sea. Others exceedingly admired the wonderful concourse of strange and forraine people, yea, of the farthest and the remotest nations, as though the City of Venice onely were a common and general market to the whole world. Others were astonished at the greatnesse of the empire thereunto belonging, and the mightinesse[Pg 356] of their state both by land and sea: but the greater part of the most wise and judiciall sort were rather in themselves confounded with amazement at the new and strange manner of the situation of this Citie, so fitte and convenient for all things, that it seemed unto them a thing rather framed by the hands of the immortall gods, than any way by the arte, industry, or invention of men. And for this only cause deemed the Citie of Venice to excell all those, that in this age are to be found, or at any time ever were.... The situation of Venice being rather to be attributed to some divine providence, than to any human industry, is (beyond the beliefe of all those that have not seene this cittie) not onely most safe and secure, both by land and sea from all violence, but also in the highest degree opportune and commodious to the aboundance of all thinges that are behoovefull to the citizens, as also for traffique of all sortes of merchandise, in manner with all nations of the worlde. For it is seated in a remote and secrete place of the Adriatike sea, where on that side (where the sea beholdeth the continent) there are mightie great lakes; fortified with an admirable artifice of nature. For twelve miles off the continent, the sea beginneth to be shallow: the banke which ariseth behind these shallowes, reacheth almost three score miles, and incloseth the lakes within.... In this manner therefore are the lakes of the Citie of Venice inclosed, partly with firme ground, partly with this banke and shallowes: in middle of the which, in that place, which of our ancestors was called Rialta, and as yet retaineth the name, was the Citie of Venice budded, at such time as the Hunnes under the conduct of Atyla did spoile with fire and sword the territory of Venetia, a noble province of[Pg 357] Italie, which bordered upon those lakes: in which calamitous time the citizens of Padua, of Aquilea, of Concordia, and of Altina, being all faire and goodly cities of Venetia, such of them as were chiefe in riches, and nobility, did first get themselves with their families into certaine islands, or rather little hills, which did appear out somewhat above the sea, and there built them places of abode, in which as in a secure haven they avoyded the ragefull tempest of the Hunnes.

SIR LEWES LEWKENOR (1599).

FAYRE VENICE

SOME MARVELS OF VENICE

This stately City built on the bottome of the gulfe of the Adriatique Sea, in the midst of marshes upon many ilands, is defended on the East side against the sea, by a banke of earthe, which hath five (or some say seven) mouths or passages into the sea, and is vulgarly called Il Lido: and being so placed by nature, not made by art, bendeth like a bowe, and[Pg 358] reacheth thirty-five miles.... Venice hath thirty one Cloysters of Monkes, and twenty eight of nunnes, besides chappels and almes-houses. Channels of water passe through this city (consisting of many ilands joyned with bridges) as the bloud passeth through the veines of a man’s body; so that a man may passe to what place he will both by land and water. The great channell is in length about one thousand three hundred paces, and in breadth forty paces, and hath only one bridge called Rialto, and the passage is very pleasant by this channel; being adorned on both sides with stately pallaces. And that men may pass speedily, besides this bridge, there be thirteen places called Traghetti, where boats attend called gondole, which being of incredible number give ready passage to all men. The rest of the channels running through lesse streets, are more narrow, and in them many bridges are to be passed under. The aforesaid boats are very neat, and covered all save the ends with black cloth, so as the passengers may goe unseene and unknowne, and not bee annoyed at all with the sunne, winde, or raine. And these boats are ready at call any minute of the day or night. And if a stranger know not the way, hee shall not need to aske it, for if he will follow the presse of people, hee shall be sure to bee brought to the market place of Saint Mark, or that of Rialto; the streets being very narrow (which they pave with bricke), and besides if hee onely know his host’s name, taking a boat, he shall be safely brought thither at any time of the night.... Saint Marke is the protecting saint of this city. The body of which saint being brought hither by merchants from Alexandria: this church was built in the year 829 at the charge of the Duke Justinian, who dying,[Pg 359] gave by his last will great treasure to that use, and charged his brother to finish the building, which was laid upon the ruines of Saint Theodore’s Church, who formerly had been the protecting saint of the city.... The building is become admirable, for the singular art of the builders and painters, and the most rare peeces of marble, porphyry, ophites (stones so called of speckles like a serpent) and like stones; and they cease not still to build it, as if it were unfinished, lest the revenues given by the last wils of dead men to that use, should return to their heirs (as the common report goes).... Upon the ground neere the great door, is a stone, painted as if it were engraven, which painting is vulgarly called, a la mosaica, and upon this stone Pope Alexander set his foot upon the necke of the Emperor Frederick Barbaross, adoring him after his submission. The outward part of the church is adorned with one hundred and forty eight pillars of marble, whereof some are ophytes, that is speckled, and eight of them are porphyry neere the great doore, which are highly esteemed. And in all places about the church, there be some six hundred pillars of marble, besides some three hundred in the caves under ground. Above these pillars on the outside of the church is an open gallery, borne up with like pillars, from whence the Venetians at times of feasts, behold any shewes in the market place. And above this gallery, and over the great door of the church, be foure horses of brass, gilded over, very notable for antiquity and beauty; and they are so set, as if at the first step they would leap into the market place. They are said to be made to the similitude of the horses of Phœbus, drawing the Chariot of the Sunne, and to have been put upon the triumphal arch of[Pg 360] Nero, by the people of Rome, when he had overcome the Parthians.... Above this gallery the image of Saint Marke, of marble, and like images of the other Evangelists and of the Virgin Mary, and of the Angel Gabriell, are placed, and there is a bell upon which the houres are sounded, for the church hath his clock, though another very faire clocke in the market place be very neere.... I passe over the image of Saint Marke of brass in the forme of a lion, guilded over, and holding a booke of brasse. Likewise the artificiall images of the Doctors of the Church, and others. I would passe over the image of the Virgin Mary, painted a la mosaica, that is as if it were engraven, but that they attribute great miracles to it, so as women desirous to know the state of their absent friends, place a wax candle burning in the open air before the image, and beleeve that if their friend be alive, it cannot be put out with any force of wind; but if he be dead, that the least breath of wind puts it out, or rather of it self it goes out: and besides for that I would mention that those who are adjudged to death, offer waxe candles to this image, and as they passe by, fall prostrate to adore the same. To conclude, I would not omit mention thereof, because all shippes comming into haven, use to salute this image, and that of Saint Marke, with pieces of ordinance, as well and more than the Duke. A merchant of Venice saved from shipwracke, by the light of a candle in a darke night, gave by his last will to this image, that his heires for ever should find a waxe candle to burne before the same.... Touching the inside of the church: In the very porch thereof is the image of Saint Marke, painted with wonderfull art, and the Images of Christ crucified, of Him[Pg 361] buried, and of the foure Evangelists, highly esteemed; besides many other much commended for the said painting like engraving, and for other workemanship. And there be erected foure great pillars of ophites, which they say were brought from the Temple of Salomon. At the entery of the doore, is an old and great sepulcher, in which lies the Duke Marino Morosini. Not far thence is the image of Saint Geminian in pontificall habit, and another of Saint Katherine, both painted with great art. When you enter the body of the church there is the great altar, under which lies Saint Marke, in a chest of brasse, decked with images of silver guilded, and with plates of gold, and images enamelled, and with the image of Christ sitting upon a stately throne, adorned with pillars of most white marble, and many precious stones, and curiously engraven. At the back of this altar there is another, which they call the altar of the most Holy Sacrament, made of best marble, with a little doore of brasse, decked with carved images, and with foure pillars of alabaster, transparent as christall, and highly esteemed; and upon the same hang every day two lampes of copper: and at the times of feasts there hang two of pure silver.... At the entry of the chancell, is the throne of the dukes, make of walnut-tree, all carved above the head, and when the dukes sit there, it was wont to be covered with carnation satten, but now it is covered with cloth of gold, given by the King of Persia. There be two stately pulpits of marble, with histories carved in brass, where they sing the Epistles and Gospels. On the left hand by the altar of Saint James is a place, where (if a man may beleeve it) the body of Saint Marke, by a crevice suddenly breaking through the[Pg 362] marble stone, appeared in the yeere 1094, to certaine priests who had fasted and praied to find the same, the memory of the place where it was laied at the building of the church about 829 being utterly lost....

The foure square market place of Rialto is compassed with publike houses, under the arches whereof, and in the middle part lying open, the merchants meet. And there is also a peculiar place where the gentlemen meet before noone, as they meet in the place of Sainte Marke towards evening; and here to nourish acquaintance, they spend an houre in discourses, and because they use not to make feasts one to another, they keepe this meeting as strictly as merchants, lest their friendship should decay. The gold-smiths shoppes lie thereby, and over against them shoppes of jewellers, in which art the Venetians are excellent.... To conclude: this most noble city, as well for the situation, freeing them from enemies, as for the freedome of the Common-wealth, preserved from the first founding, and for the freedome which the citizens and very strangers have, to enjoy their goods, and dispose of them, and for manifold other causes, is worthily called in Latine Venetia, as it were Veni etiam, that is, come again.

Fynes Moryson.

ADDRESSED TO VENICE

SCENE IN VENICE

THE MARRIAGE OF VENICE WITH THE SEA

HOW THE CEREMONY WAS FIRST INSTITUTED

From Venice wee departed on the twentieth of August 1610, in the Little Defence of London. The Venetians[Pg 364] are Lords of this Sea, but not without contention with the Papacie. On Ascention Day, the Duke accompanyed with the Clarissimoes of that Signiory, is rowed thither in the Bucentoro, a triumphall Galley, richly, and exquisitely gilded: above a roome (beneath which they row) comprehending the whole length and breadth of the Galley; neere the poope a throne, and the rest accommodated with seates, where he solemnely espouseth the Sea: confirmed by a Ring throwne therein, the Nuptiall Pledge and Symboll of subjection. The Ceremonie received a beginning from the Sea-battell fought and wonne by the Venetians, under the conduct of Sebastiano Zani, against the forces of Fredericke Barbarossa, in the quarrell of Pope Alexander the Third. Who flying his furie in the habit of a Cooke repayred to Venice, and there long lived disguised in the Monastery of Charitie. Zani returning in triumph with the Emperours Sonne, was met by the Pope, and saluted in this manner: Here take, O Zani, this Ring of Gold, and by giving it to the Sea, oblige it unto thee. A ceremonie shall on this day bee yearly observed, both by thee and thy Successors, that Posteritie may know how you have purchast the Dominion thereof by your valours, and made it subject unto you, as a Wife to her Husband.

GEORGE SANDYS (1610).

THE DOGE OF VENICE GOES IN STATE

I was present at high mass this morning, October 6th, which annually on this day the Doge must attend, in the church of St. Justina, to commemorate an old victory over the Turks. When the gilded barks, which carry the princes and a portion of the nobility,[Pg 365] approach the little square, when the boatmen, in their rare liveries, are plying their red-painted oars, when on the shore the clergy and the religious fraternities are standing, pushing, moving about, and waiting with their lighted torches fixed upon poles and portable silver chandeliers; then, when the gangways, covered with carpets, are placed from the vessels to the shore, and first the full violet dresses of the Savii, next the ample red robes of the Senators are unfolded upon the pavement, and lastly when the old Doge—adorned with his golden Phrygian cap, in his long golden talar and his ermine cloak, steps out of the vessel—when all this, I say, takes place in a little square before the portal of a church, one feels as if one were looking at an old worked tapestry, exceedingly well designed and coloured. To me, northern fugitive as I am, this ceremony gave a great deal of pleasure. With us, who parade nothing but short coats in our processions of pomp, and who conceive nothing greater than one performed with shouldered arms, such an affair might be out of place. But these trains, these peaceful celebrations, are all in keeping here.

The Doge is a well-grown and well-shaped man, who, perhaps, suffers from ill health, but, nevertheless, for dignity’s sake, bears himself upright under his heavy robe. In other respects he looks like the grandpapa of the whole race, and is kind and affable. His dress is very becoming, the little cap, which he wears under the large one, does not offend the eye, resting as it does upon the whitest and finest hair in the world.

About fifty nobili, with long, dark-red trains, were with him. For the most part they were handsome[Pg 366] men, and there was not a single uncouth figure among them. Several of them were tall with large heads, so that the white curly wigs were very becoming to them. Their features are prominent; the flesh of their faces is soft and white, without looking flabby and disagreeable. On the contrary, there is an appearance of talent without exertion, repose, self-confidence, easiness of existence, and a certain joyousness pervades the whole.

When all had taken their places in the church, and mass began, the fraternities entered by the chief door, and went out at the side door to the right, after they had received holy water in couples, and made their obeisance to the high altar, to the Doge, and the nobility.

GOETHE.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC

[Pg 367]

VENETIAN DAMES

It was now Ascension Weeke, and the greate Marte or Faire of the whole yeare was now kept, every body at liberty and jollie. The noblemen stalking with their ladys on choppines; these are high-heel’d shoes, particularly affected by these proude dames, or, as some may say, invented to keepe them at home, it being very difficult to walke with them; whence one being asked how he liked the Venetian dames, replied that they were mezzo carne, mezzo ligno, half flesh, half wood, and he would have none of them. The truth is, their garb is very odd, as seeming allwayes in masquerade; their other habits are also totally different from all nations. They weare long crisped haire, of severall strakes and colours, which they make so by a wash, dishevelling it on the brims of a broade hat that has no head, but an hole to put out their heads by; they drie them in the sunne, as one may see them at their windows. In their tire they set silk flowers and sparkling stones, their peticoates coming from their very arme-pits, so that they are neere three-quarters and an half apron; their sleeves are made exceedingly wide ... and commonly tucked up to the shoulder, showing their naked armes, thro’ false sleeves of tiffany, girt with a bracelet or two, with knots of points richly tagged about their shoulders and other places of their body, which they usually cover with a kind of yellow vaile of lawn very transparent. Thus attir’d they set their hands on the heads of two matron-like servants or old women, to support them, who are mumbling their beades. ’Tis ridiculous to see how these ladys crawle in and out of their gondolas by reason of their choppines, and what[Pg 368] dwarfs they appeare when taken downe from their wooden scaffolds; of these I saw nearly thirty together, stalking half as high again as the rest of the world, for courtezans or the citizens may not weare choppines, but cover their bodies and faces with a vaile of a certaine glittering taffeta or lustreè, out of which they now and then dart a glaunce of their eye, the whole face being otherwise entirely hid with it; nor may the common misses take this habit, but go abroad bare-fac’d. To the corners of these virgin-vailes hang broad but flat tossells of curious Point de Venize; the married women go in black vailes. The nobility weare the same colour, but of fine cloth lin’d with taffeta in summer, and fur of the bellies of squirrels in the winter, which all put on at a certaine day girt with a girdle emboss’d with silver; the vest not much different from what our Bachelors of Arts weare in Oxford, and a hood of cloth made like a sack, cast over their left shoulder, and a round cloth black cap fring’d with wool which is not so comely; they also weare their collar open to shew the diamond buttons of the stock of their shirt. I have never seene pearles for colour and bignesse comparable to what the lady’s wear, most of the noble families being very rich in jewells, especially pearles.

JOHN EVELYN.

THE VENICE OF CARLO GOLDONI

A PRINCE AMONG WRITERS OF COMEDY

I was born at Venice, in the year 1707, in a large and beautiful house between the bridges of Nomboli and Donna Onesta, at the corner of the street Cà cent’anni, in the parish of St. Thomas. Julius Goldoni, my[Pg 369] father, was born in the same city; but all his family were of Modena.

Venice is so extraordinary a city, that it is impossible to form a correct idea of it without seeing it. Maps, plans, models, and descriptions, are insufficient; it must be seen. All other cities bear more or less resemblance to one another, but Venice resembles none; and every time I have seen it after a long absence, it has been a new subject of astonishment and surprise for me. As I advanced in years, and my knowledge increased and furnished me with more numerous objects of comparison, I ever discovered new singularities and new beauties in it.

But I then saw it as a youth of fifteen, who could not be supposed to be struck with what in reality was the most remarkable, and who could only compare it with the small towns which he had lived in. What I was most astonished at was the surprising view which it presents on a first approach. On seeing the extent of small islands so close together and so admirably connected by bridges, we imagine we behold a continent elevated on a plain, and washed on every side by an immense sea which surrounds it.

This is not the sea, but a very extensive marsh more or less covered with water, at the mouth of several ports, with deep canals which admit large and small vessels into the town and its environs. If you enter by the quarter of St. Mark through a prodigious quantity of vessels of every description, ships of war, merchantmen, frigates, galleys, barks, boats, and gondolas, you land at the Piazzetta where in one direction you see the palace and the ducal church, which announce the magnificence of the republic, and in another, the place or square of St. Mark, surrounded[Pg 370] with porticos from designs by Palladio and Sansovino.

In going through the streets where haberdashery goods are sold, you tread on flags of Istrian marble, carefully roughened by the chisel to prevent them being slippery. The whole quarter is a perpetual fair till you arrive at the bridge of a single arch, ninety feet in breadth, over the great canal, which, from its elevation, allows the passage of barques and boats in the highest tides, which offer three different roads to passengers, and which upholds twenty-four ships with lodgings, the roofs of which are covered with lead....

In Italy, their places of public amusement are called theatres. There are seven in Venice, each bearing the name of the titular church of its parish. The theatre of St. John Chrysostom was then the first in the town, where the grand operas were represented, where Metastasio opened his dramatical, and Farinello, Faustine, and Cozzoni their musical career. At present, the theatre of St. Benedict is highest in rank. The five other are St. Samuel, St. Luke, St. Angelo, St. Cassian, and St. Moses. Of these seven, two generally are dedicated to grand operas, two to comic operas, and three to plays.... There are none of them which have not had works of mine, and which have not contributed both to my honour and profit.

CARLO GOLDONI (1707-1793).

[Pg 373]

AT VENICE

THE GOLDEN BOOK OF VENICE

[5] Il Libro d’Oro, the Venetian Peerage.

[Pg 375]

TO AN OLD VENETIAN WINEGLASS

ROSE-COLOURED AT THE BRIM

DANTE AT THE ARSENAL AT VENICE

MENDELSSOHN AT VENICE

Venice, October 10, 1830.

Italy at last! and what I have all my life looked forward to as the greatest possible felicity is now begun, and I am basking in it. The day has been so fruitful in enjoyment that I must, now that it is evening, endeavour to collect my thoughts a little[Pg 377] to write to you, my dear parents, and to thank you for having bestowed such happiness on me.... I shall, however, become quite bewildered, if things are to go on as they have done on this first day, when every hour brought with it so much never to be forgotten, that I do not know where to find senses sufficient to comprehend it all properly. I saw the ‘Assumption,’ then a whole gallery of paintings in the Manfrini Palace; then a festival in the church where hangs Titian’s ‘St. Peter’; afterwards St. Mark’s, and in the afternoon I had a row on the Adriatic, and visited the public gardens, where the people lie on the grass and eat. I then returned to the Piazza of St. Mark, where in the twilight there is always an immense crowd and crush of people; and all this I was obliged to see to-day, because there is so much that is novel and interesting to be seen to-morrow.

But I must now relate methodically how I came hither by water.... In Treviso there was an illumination, paper lanterns suspended in every part of the great square, and a large gaudy transparency in the centre. Some most lovely girls were walking about, in their long white veils and scarlet petticoats. It was quite dark when we arrived at Mestre last night, when we got into a boat, and in a dead calm gently rowed across to Venice. On our passage thither, where nothing but water is to be seen, and distant lights, we saw a small rock which stands in the midst of the sea; on this a lamp was burning; all the sailors took off their hats as we passed, and one of them said, this was the ‘Madonna of Tempests,’ which are often most dangerous and violent here. We then glided quietly into the great city, under innumerable bridges, without sound of post-horns, or rattling of wheels, or tollkeepers;[Pg 378] the passage now became more thronged, and numbers of ships lying near; past the theatre, where gondolas in long rows lie waiting for their masters, just as our own carriages do at home, then into the great canal, past the church of St. Mark, the Lions, the palace of the Doges, and the Bridge of Sighs. The obscurity of night only enhanced my delight on hearing the familiar names and seeing the dark outlines.

And so I am actually in Venice! Only think: to-day I have gazed upon the finest pictures in the world, and have at last personally made the acquaintance of a very admirable man, whom hitherto I only knew by name—I allude to a certain Signor Giorgione, a splendid fellow—and also to Pardenone, who displays the most noble pictures, and portrays both himself and many of his simple scholars, in such a devout, faithful, and pious spirit, that you seem to converse with and grow fond of him. Who would not have been confused by all this? But if I am to speak of Titian, I must do so in a more reverent mood. Till now, I never knew that he was the felicitous artist I have this day seen him to be. That he thoroughly enjoyed life, in all its beauty and fulness, the picture in Paris proves; but he has fathomed the depths of human sorrow, as well as the joys of Heaven. His glorious ‘Entombment,’ and also the ‘Assumption,’ fully evince this. How Mary floats on the cloud, while an actual air seems to pervade the whole picture; how you see at a glance her very breathing, her awe, her devotion, and in short a thousand feelings,—all words seem poor and commonplace in comparison. The three heads of angels too, on the right of the picture, are of the highest order of beauty,—pure,[Pg 379] serene loveliness, so unconscious, so bright and so seraphic. But no more of this! or I must perforce become poetical, if I be not so already, and that is a mood which does not at all suit me. I shall certainly see that picture every day.... What a man that Titian was! Everyone must be edified by his works, as I shall try to be, and I rejoice that I am in Italy. At this moment the gondoliers are shouting to each other, and the lights are reflected in the depths of the waters; one man is playing a guitar, and singing to it. It is a charming night. Farewell! and think of me in every happy hour as I do of you.—Felix.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY.

SHELLEY IN VENICE

WRITTEN TO MARY SHELLEY

We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of the post.... We have now got a comfortable carriage, and two mules, and, thanks to Paolo, have made a very decent bargain, comprising everything to Padua. I should say we had delightful fruit for breakfast, figs, very fine, and peaches, unfortunately gathered before they were ripe, whose smell was like what one fancies of the wakening of Paradise flowers.... I came from Padua [to Venice] in a gondola, and the gondolier, among other things, without any hint on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. He said he was a giovinotto Inglese, with a nome stravagante, who lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of money. This man, it seems, was one of Lord B.’s gondoliers.... These gondolas are the most beautiful and convenient boats in the world. They are finely carpeted and furnished with black, and painted black.[Pg 380] The couches on which you lean are extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed as to be the most comfortable to those who lean or sit. The windows have at will either Venetian plate-glass flowered, or Venetian blinds, or blinds of black cloth to shut out the light.... I called on Lord Byron: he was delighted to see me. He took me in his gondola across the lagoon to a long sandy island, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

THE VENETIAN SERENADE

FAREWELL TO VENICE

• Albini, Enrico, 341
• Aldersey, Laurence, 353
• Andersen, Hans, 17, 67, 237, 266
• Anon., 135
• Ashley, J., 362
• Beaconsfield, Lord, 99, 131, 235, 305
• Beckford, William, 72, 214, 228
• Bell, Mackenzie, 224
• Bowles, Fred. G., 339
• Braddon, M. E., 2, 262
• Brooke, Stopford A., 90, 186, 197, 309, 311
• Brown, Horatio F., 76, 108
• Browning, Robert, 121, 136, 190
• Byron, Lord, 19, 108, 119, 145, 232, 260, 313
• Carpenter, J. E., 29
• Casola, Canon Pietro, 348
• Clough, Arthur Hugh, 148, 304, 315
• Coryat, Thomas, 23, 62, 171, 263, 291
• Crawford, Francis Marion, 3, 304, 341
• D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 134, 333, 344
• Dante, 375
• Dickens, Charles, 239
• D’Israeli, Isaac, 162
• Duclaux, Madame, 315
• Eden, F., 233
• Eliot, George, 57
• Evelyn, John, 232, 296, 367
• Goethe, 134, 149, 206, 364
• Goldoni, Carlo, 368
• Gray, David, 14
• Harrington, John, 66
• Hemans, Mrs., 35, 38, 153
• Henderson, May Sturge, 108, 109, 111
• Houghton, Lord (Richard Monckton Milnes), 5, 52, 134, 146, 212, 220, 290, 373, 380
• Howell, James, 39, 62, 177, 185
• Howells, W. D., 96, 221, 325
• Hunt, Leigh, 234
• James, Henry, 322
• Jameson, Mrs., 299
• Johnson, R. U., 55
• Landor, Walter Savage, 2
• Lee, Vernon, 256, 301, 340
• Lee-Hamilton, Eugene, 373
• Lewkenor, Sir Lewes, 355
• Lindsay, Lady, 108, 110, 337
• Longfellow, H. W., 9, 375
• Lowell, James Russell, 255
• Machiavelli, Niccolo, 345
• Mackay, Charles, 344
• Mendelssohn, 376
• Meredith, Owen, 113
• Mifflin, Lloyd, 53, 237, 284, 375
• Milnes, Richard Monckton. See Houghton, Lord
• Molmenti, Pompeo, 279
• Montagu, Lady M. W., 271
• Moore, Thomas, 211, 224
• Morandi, Cesare, 131
• Moryson, Fynes, 357
• Moulton, Louise Chandler, 2, 10, 276
• Musset, Alfred de, 46, 209
• Negri, Antonio, 116
• Newett, B.A., Margaret, 348
• Oliphant, Mrs., 7
• Ouida, 2, 188, 338
• Pinkerton, Percy, 198, 208, 284, 310, 331
• Piozzi, Mrs., 37, 165
• Radcliffe, Mrs., 103
• Reade, Charles, 48
• Ritchie, Lady (Thackeray, Anne), 120, 226
• Robinson, A. Mary F., 315
• Rogers, Samuel, 30, 151
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 280
• Ruskin, John, 77, 78, 128, 154, 172, 180, 209, 226, 281, 288, 330, 344
• Sand, George, 33, 66, 158, 159, 166, 270, 278, 304, 323, 326
• Sandys, George, 363
• Schiller, 170
• Sélincourt, Beryl de, 108, 109, 111
• Shakespeare, 2, 372
• Shelley, P. B., 69, 91, 379, 381
• Spencer, Edw., 66, 357
• Sullivan, Alan, 56
• Swift, Baroness, 116
• Symons, Arthur, 114, 126, 134, 316, 317, 320
• Symonds, John Addington, 2, 74, 144, 193, 198, 202, 247, 278, 318
• Thackeray, Anne. See Ritchie, Lady
• Trollope, T. Adolphus, 249
• Vacaresco, Hélène, 339
• Vasari, 285
• Wordsworth, William, 363, 366
• Yriarte, Charles, 66, 116, 123, 129, 134, 227, 306

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

ALSO UNIFORM IN SIZE AND PRICE
THE CHARM OF EDINBURGH

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 St. Martin’s Lane, W.C.

By Sir WALTER BESANT.

• London.
• Westminster.
• All Sorts and Conditions of Men.
• Sir Richard Whittington.
• Gaspard de Coligny.

By Sir WALTER BESANT
and E. H. PALMER.

Jerusalem.

By BOCCACCIO.

The Decameron.

By ROBERT BUCHANAN.

The Shadow of the Sword.

By HALL CAINE.

The Deemster.

By WILKIE COLLINS.

The Woman in White.

By DANIEL DEFOE.

Robinson Crusoe. With 37 Illustrations by Geo. Cruikshank.

By CHARLES DICKENS.

Speeches. With a Portrait.

By AUSTIN DOBSON.

Eighteenth Century Vignettes. In Three Series. With Illusts.

By THOMAS HARDY.

Under the Greenwood Tree.

By BRET HARTE.

Condensed Novels.

By O. W. HOLMES.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. With Illustrations.

Compiled by A. H. HYATT.

• The Charm of London.
• The Charm of Edinburgh.
• The Charm of Venice.

By RICHARD JEFFERIES.

• The Life of the Fields.
• The Open Air.
• Nature near London.

By CHARLES LAMB.

The Essays of Elia.

By LORD MACAULAY.

History of England from the Accession of James II. to the Death of William III. 5 vols.

By JUSTIN McCARTHY.

Reign of Queen Anne, 1 vol.

A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to 1897. In 3 volumes.

A History of the Four Georges and of William IV. In 2 volumes.

By GEO. MACDONALD.

Works of Fancy and Imagination. In 10 volumes.

By W. H. MALLOCK.

The New Republic.

By CHARLES READE.

The Cloister and the Hearth. With 32 Full-page Illustrations.

‘It is Never Too Late to Mend.’

By R. L. STEVENSON.

• Travels with a Donkey.
• An Inland Voyage.
• Memories and Portraits.
• Virginibus Puerisque.
• Studies of Men and Books.
• New Arabian Nights.
• Across the Plains.
• The Merry Men.
• Prince Otto.
• In the South Seas.
• Collected Poems.

By H. A TAINE.

History of English Literature. In 4 volumes. With 32 Portraits.

By MARK TWAIN.

Sketches.

By WALTON and COTTON.

The Complete Angler.

POCKET AUTHORS.

• The Pocket R. L. S.
• The Pocket Richard Jefferies.
• The Pocket George Macdonald.
• The Pocket Dickens.
• The Pocket Thackeray.
• The Pocket Emerson.
• The Pocket Thomas Hardy.
• The Pocket George Eliot.
• The Pocket Charles Kingsley.
• The Pocket Ruskin.
• The Pocket Beaconsfield.
• The Flower of the Mind.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 St. Martin’s Lane, W.C.

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent diacriticals and hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged. Jargon, dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.

Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, reversed order, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added.

One page of advertisements was moved from the beginning to the end of the book.