CHAPTER XIX.

Arrival in Venice--The Water City--Gondola traffic--Past glories--Danieli's Royal Hotel--St. Mark's Piazza--The Sacred Pigeons--St. Mark's--Mosaics-- The Holy Columns--Treasures--The Chian Steeds--The modern Goth.

Arriving at the station, our luggage was quickly carried to the canal-side, where there were numbers of gondoliers awaiting us with their hearse-like gondolas, which, as Byron describes in one of his letters, "glide along the water, looking blackly just like a coffin clapt in a canoe, where none can make out what you say or do." (There is no name in either past or present times more sadly and inextricably associated with Venice than that of George Gordon, Lord Byron.) It was indeed a change from the usual noise and confusion at the end of a railway journey, and it seemed strange not to see the usual array of omnibuses. "The means of arrival in Venice, indeed, are commonplace enough, but, lo! in a moment you step out of the commonplace railway station into the lucid stillness of the water city--into poetry and wonderland." The gondoliers are quite as clamorous as the liveried omnibus legion. However, we soon found a representative of the Hotel Danieli with a handsome gondola waiting to receive us. We stepped in quickly, though most carefully--nay, even solemnly, and were soon gliding over the silent water. There was a momentary tremor and hesitation at first entering the long, slender, black craft with its funeral-like hood or canopy; but the inside was luxuriously easy, and the black cushions and drapery so comfortable that we speedily dismissed our gloomy ideas, and began to enter into the busy moving scene around us with the greatest delight and interest.

The gondolas were originally put into black by the order of the State, as a rebuke to the lavish magnificence of the Venetians: they look now as though they were in mourning for the past glories of the city. The dress of the gondoliers was fortunately not included in the statute; and the fine, stalwart fellow, who was quite winning our admiration by his graceful movements in propelling our gondola, was attired like a Venetian sailor, with a blue scarf round his waist, trimmed with silver lace. These gondoliers, for the most part, are a light-hearted and obliging race. They certainly hand you to your seat with a very solemn politeness, giving you somewhat the impression of being handed into your grave; but such thoughts are but for a moment, and soon disappear as a smile flits over the bronzed, sailor-like countenance, and as the boat glides rapidly between rows of great houses and marble palaces, which rise out of the water on your right and left, "Giacomo" obligingly pointing out the objects of interest as you pass along.

The aqueous road to our hotel lay for some distance down the Grand Canal, and then turned aside into some of the numerous narrow lanes of water which branch off in every direction; and it seemed truly marvellous to us how skilfully the rectangular corners were turned, the gondolier uttering a brief guttural shout of warning as we shot round, in case of another gondola approaching from an opposite direction. As it was, we had several very narrow shaves, and more than once stood in danger of colliding. We were amused at seeing some of the hotel gondolas that had preceded us from the station, stopping at the water-side post-office for letters--woman, the true letter-lover, generally being the most conspicuous applicant. And now we reach the steps of our hotel, and are soon comfortably housed.

I feel we are at last really in Venice, and the memory of all her former glory and greatness flits through my mind as we come under the fascination of her magical influence. First comes a faint echo from distant ages, of those ancient Veneti, who were powerful almost a thousand years before the present Venice came into existence; then a vision of the old Paduans, fleeing from their once wealthy city before the devastating conqueror Attila. Driven from the land, they seek the sea, and take refuge on the long spits of sand lying in a vast lagoon beyond the mouths of several rivers. Settling down on the Rivo Alto (Rialto), they commence to build a city, henceforth to be the wonder and admiration of the world. Then a thousand years of glorious and active life. There is a thrill almost of amazement at the magnificent courage and audacity of this wondrous city, risen like Aphrodite from the sea, and a shudder at the crimes that stain her annals--crimes as unique in their matchless horror as any other part of her singular history. Lastly, the gradual decay of her power, and the final catastrophe of her fall.

Since leaving the train, we had almost been in dreamland, wandering in the dark ages; but we were very suddenly brought back to bustling nineteenth-century life, when the dazzling lights of the hotel broke upon our visions, and we caught a glimpse of the numerous visitors thronging the staircase--old men and matrons, young men and maidens, all ascending to _table d'hôte_ in the great dining-room with an air of pleasing interest and excitement.

Danieli's Royal Hotel, which, I believe, was originally one of the Doge's palaces, is situated on the quay opposite the harbour, its side entrance being in one of the narrow canals. In the evening, after dinner, a band of musicians came into the inner court below, and serenaded the visitors with Venetian love-songs.

We enjoyed a peaceful night's rest after the fatigues of travel, fully anticipating a delightful awakening in this wonderful city.

The morrow came, with a lovely blue sky and bracing atmosphere, and after breakfast we took our first walk in Venice. Crossing the quay and certain of the little marble bridges that span the canals, and turning to the right, round the Doge's Palace, we found ourselves in _St. Mark's Piazza_--a great square, with colonnades of shops and _cafés_ running round three sides of it; the apartments of the royal palace rising some three stories on one side, and at the other end the beautiful Byzantine Temple of _St. Mark's_, with its antique mosaic arches, surmounted by the famous bronze horses and quaintly hooded domes, rising in exquisite outline against the clear blue sky. Around and above us flitted soft-hued pigeons in narrowing circles, alighting on the pavement in flocks to be fed by the visitors and children, not unfrequently perching on the hands of those who scattered food among them; and then flying off once more to "nestle among the marble foliage of St Mark's, mingling the soft iridescence of their living plumes with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years." These little feathered beings are supposed to have some mystic influence over the welfare of Venice, and are believed by the legend-loving people to fly three times round the city every day.

At the entrance of the piazza towards the sea are two solitary columns, supporting the mighty emblems of St. Mark.

"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her love; St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood, Spared but in mockery of his withered power."

The first step taken towards seeing Venice was to ascend the great tower. Though its size is imposing, being some 320 feet high, it is an ugly structure, but commands most splendid views. The ascent is most easy--no tiresome steps, but simply inclined planes with brick-work flooring. On arriving at the top and looking down, I saw Venice flooded with the noonday light--"a golden city paved with emerald," stretching before me like a realized dream; the innumerable canals running up from the sea at right angles, while around and beyond lay the Adrian Gulf and the great sea, dotted with tiny islands covered with buildings;--the whole one vast lagoon or delta formed by the alluvial soil washed down from the mountains and deposited by the rivers. The city is built upon thousands and thousands of piles, the hard and costly wood for which was brought with vast expense from the East, and driven down into the earth and sand below. It was at such cost that the Venetians obtained so admirable a position, and were enabled to command the commerce of the world. The harbours were full of well-protected shipping, the narrow passages of deep water by which alone large vessels could pass, being marked by piles. It was strange to see the city, with its large and solid buildings and churches, floating as it were on the water:

"Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies-- A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves."

When I descended the tower, I felt, as when on the Capitol of Rome, that I now understood more of the position of the city than many books could have told me.

Of course, it was not long ere we passed under the portal of St. Mark's, though we lingered long outside, admiring its beautiful proportions, described by Ruskin in a burst of pure poetry as "a multitude of pillars and grey-hooded domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of coloured light: a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaics and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory--sculpture, fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together in an endless network of buds and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn forms of angels, sceptred and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago."

This description of the great art-master, I of course accepted as from a highly cultured æsthetic source; but fear that, from want of true poetic light and art culture, I did not quite appreciate or realize it in the interior, though to me the exterior outline and architecture were always soft and beautiful. Unfortunately, one is greatly pestered outside by a voracious band of touts, miscalled guides, some of them mere uneducated-looking, parrot-like roughs, and whom it is laughable to suppose could have any pretensions to refined knowledge and art history--irreverent monsters who have no sympathy with, or appreciation of, anything, except what you may have in your pockets.

The interior of St Mark's reminded me more of an Eastern mosque than a Christian temple, with its heavy arches, arcades, galleries, colonnades, and Protean gloom. "A grave and dreamy structure," says Dickens, "of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in treasures 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."

When the eyes have grown accustomed to the darkness, the soft rainbow colours of the mosaics come stealing out to view one by one. Nearly the whole of the interior, more especially the vaulting, is beautified by these millions upon millions of tiny cubes of coloured and gilded glass, arranged with infinite labour and skill, and wonderfully illustrating the most beautiful and impressive parts of Holy Writ, with reference to the history of mankind, from the creation. To blend these soft, harmonious colours must have been the work of ages, especially those portions which necessitated the patient artist working on his back, while fixing each tiny cube into its proper place in the ceiling. The antique pavement, undulating from sheer age and tread of multitudes of worshippers in the past, and also probably from a sinking of the foundation, is likewise tessellated with all the colours of the prism, arranged in mystic symbols and intricate figuring. But it appeared to me, at least, that this wonderful, Mosque-like building only wanted great groups of monster idols, to complete a perfect resemblance to some vast Hindoo temple of a dark bygone age, when the people's conception of the Deity was of a being rather to be feared than loved, rather to be dreaded than trusted.

Various services were going on in the numerous little chapels; and when the principal morning service at the chancel was over, we ascended the steps of the high altar in order to examine and admire the ancient twisted red alabaster pillars, said to have been originally a part of Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem; for nearly every stone in St. Mark's has its history. The bronze folding doors came from the Mosque of St. Sophia at Stamboul; the pillars at the entrance of the baptistery were part of the booty of Arre; while there are three red flagstones on which Barbarossa knelt to do reverence to St. Peter, in the person of the Pope. The guide held a lighted taper on one side of the column, that we might observe its glowing transparency. I could well enter into the feeling of noble triumph which must have animated those great and powerful Doges of past times, in thus being able to beautify their own Christian temple in Venice at the expense of the unbelieving, barbarous Turk, whose usurpation of these sacred relics and of the Holy Land was righteously considered a scandal and a shame to the Christian world.

We visited the Treasure Chapel, and saw the precious things of the temple--offerings of princes, potentates, and devotees, collected from all ends of the world. Each apartment was secured by no end of bolts, bars, and locks. Among other curiosities we were shown a cover of the books of the Gospels, embellished with gold and jewels, from the Church of St. Sophia, Constantinople; a crystal vase containing the blood of the Saviour (!); a silver column supporting a fragment of the pillar at which Christ was scourged; a cup of agate containing a portion of the skull of St. John; the sword of the Doge Morocini; cuneiform writings from Persepolis; an episcopal throne of the seventh century, said to have been St. Mark's; and many other things, the genuineness of which to try and believe was of course next to impossible; and one could only marvel at the credulity of many good men and women, who must have dearly liked to be deceived, and who almost worshipped these lying relics, and would only look at them devoutly on their knees. One heartily wishes that a valiant Luther had arisen amongst them in those days, to set them free from this miserable bondage, and teach them that Christ's atonement was surely enough for them.

On leaving the chapel, we were allowed as an exceptional privilege to ascend the galleries round the interior, and look closely into the beautiful mosaic-work, most of which is in a wonderful state of preservation, though some of it is much defaced and decayed by damp. The mosaics now being used in the restoration are made on a new principle, being glazed over to preserve the surface and colour from the effect of the air. We next went out into the open façade gallery, overlooking the great Piazza, and stood between the famous bronze horses, whose Arab-like symmetry we greatly admired.

"Before St. Mark's still glow the steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun."

I hardly recognized the justice of Goethe's observation, of their appearing to be somewhat heavily and clumsily modelled on a close survey, considering their slender elegance when seen from below.

We found a great many masons and workmen employed, both inside and outside St. Mark's, on the restoration and repairs. Fragments of the beautiful mosaic were scattered about in heaps, which it seemed almost desecration to tread upon. I swept them carefully together, and called the attention of the workmen to the neglect of such precious bits of antique workmanship. I believe these restorations are greatly exciting the anger of lovers of art in England, by the imputed Vandalism of the committee who are employed in directing the work. As this outcry is principally raised by many eminent artists, who look on St. Mark's as a perfect gem of antiquity, there must be some good reason for this righteous anger, which, however, I much fear will be ineffectual to stay the hand of the Goth.

I must confess, though with secret misgiving as to how such heresy will be received, that as a whole, and apart from its antiquity and interesting historical associations, and the exquisite mosaics, so rich in colouring and design, I was rather disappointed in St. Mark's. Certainly the exterior is beyond praise in its beautiful curving outlines; but the interior is so exceedingly dark and heavy, that the radiant beauty of the mosaics can only succeed in very partially relieving the deep gloom. As a perfect specimen of the dark ages, commend me rather to that little ancient Mosque beside the new Cathedral modelled from it at Marseilles, with its low-arched domes and roofs, and "dim, religious light."