II.
Your gondola--let Zorzi wreathe A mesh of water-weeds about Its prow, as if he unaware Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair; That I may throw a paper out As you and he go underneath. There’s Zanze’s vigilant taper; safe are we! Only one minute more to-night with me? Resume your past self of a month ago! Be you the bashful gallant, I will be The lady with the colder breast than snow: Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand More than I touch yours when I step to land, And say, ‘All thanks, Siora!’-- Heart to heart, And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me, and make me thine, as mine thou art!
_He is surprised, and stabbed._
It was ordained to be so, Sweet,--and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, and on thy breast. Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn To death, because they never lived: but I Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss)--can die!
ROBERT BROWNING.
THE INVITATION TO THE GONDOLA
Come forth; for Night is falling, The moon hangs round and red On the verge of the violet waters, Fronting the daylight dead.
Come forth; the liquid spaces Of sea and sky are as one, Where outspread angel flame-wings Brood o’er the buried sun.
Bells call to bells from the islands, And far-off mountains rear Their shadowy crests in the crystal Of cloudless atmosphere.
A breeze from the sea is wafted; Lamp-litten Venice gleams With her towers and domes uplifted Like a city seen in dreams.
Her waterways are atremble With melody far and wide, Borne from the phantom galleys That o’er the darkness glide.
There are stars in heaven, and starry Are the wandering lights below: Come forth! for the Night is calling, Sea, city, and sky are aglow!
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE GONDOLA
Didst ever see a gondola? For fear You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly: ’Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here, Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly, Rowed by two rowers, each called ‘Gondolier,’ It glides along the water looking blackly, Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe, Where none can make out what you say or do.
And up and down the long canals they go, And under the Rialto shoot along, By night and day, all paces, swift or slow, And round the theatres, a sable throng, They wait in their dusk livery of woe,-- But not to them do woeful things belong. For sometimes they contain a deal of fun, Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done.
LORD BYRON.
A DREAM IN A GONDOLA
I had a dream of waters: I was borne Fast down the slimy tide Of eldest Nile, and endless flats forlorn Stretched out on either side,-- Save where from time to time arose Red pyramids, like flames in forced repose, And Sphinxes gazed, vast countenances bland, Athwart the river-sea and sea of sand.
It is the nature of the Life of Dream, To make all action of our mental springs, Howe’er unnatural, discrepant and strange, Be as the unfolding of most usual things; And thus to me no wonder did there seem, When by a subtle change, The heavy ample hyblus-wingèd boat In which I lay afloat, Became a deft canoe, light-wove Of painted bark, gay-set with lustrous shells, Faintingly rocked within a lonesome cove, Of some rich island where the Indian dwells; Below, the water’s pure-white light Took colour from reflected blooms, And, through the forest’s deepening glooms, Birds of illuminated plumes Came out like stars in summer night: And close beside, all fearless and serene, Within a niche of drooping green, A girl, with limbs fine-rounded and clear-brown, And hair thick-waving down, Advancing one small foot, in beauty stood, Trying the temper of the lambent flood.
* * * * *
Yet not less favoured when awake,--for now, Across my torpid brow Swept a cool current of the young night’s air, With a sharp kiss, and there Was I all clear awake,--drawn soft along There in my dear gondola, among The bright-eyed Venice isles, Lit up in constant smiles.-- What had my thoughts and heart to do With wild Egyptian bark, or frail canoe, Or mythic skiff out of Saturnian days, When I was there, with that rare scene to praise, That gondola to rest in and enjoy, That actual bliss to taste without alloy? Cradler of placid pleasures, deep delights, Bosomer of the poet’s wearied mind, Tempter from vulgar passions, scorns and spites, Enfolder of all feelings that be kind,-- Before our souls thy quiet motions spread, In one great calm, one undivided plain, Immediate joy, blest memories of the dead, And iris-tinted forms of hope’s domain, Child of the still lagoons, Open to every show Of summer sunsets and autumnal moons, Such as no other space of world can know,-- Dear boat, that makest dear Whatever thou comest near,-- In thy repose still let me gently roam, Still on thy couch of beauty find a home; Still let me share thy comfortable peace With all I have of dearest upon Earth, Friend, mistress, sister; and when death’s release Shall call my spirit to another birth, Would that I might thus lightly lapse away, Alone,--by moonlight,--in a gondola.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
WERE LIFE BUT AS THE GONDOLA!
Afloat; we move. Delicious! Ah, What else is like the gondola? This level floor of liquid glass Begins beneath us swift to pass. It goes as though it went alone By some impulsion of its own. (How light it moves, how softly! Ah, Were all things like the gondola!)
How light it moves, how softly! Ah, Could life, as does our gondola, Unvexed with quarrels, aims and cares, And moral duties and affairs, Unswaying, noiseless, swift, and strong, For ever thus--thus glide along! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!)
With no more motion than should bear A freshness to the languid air; With no more effort than exprest The need and naturalness of rest, Which we beneath a grateful shade Should take on peaceful pillows laid! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!)
In one unbroken passage borne To closing night from opening morn, Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark Some palace front, some passing bark; Through windows catch the varying shore, And hear the soft turns of the oar! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!) ...
How light we go, how soft we skim! And all in moonlight seem to swim. In moonlight is it now, or shade? In planes of sure division made, By angles sharp of palace walls The clear light and the shadow falls; O sight of glory, sight of wonder! Seen, a pictorial portent, under. O great Rialto, the vast round Of thy thrice-solid arch profound! (How light we go, how softly! Ah, Life should be as the gondola!)
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
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 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 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
Boy, call the gondola; the sun is set.-- It came, and we embarked; but instantly, As at the waving of a magic wand, Though she had stept on board so light of foot, So light of heart, laughing she knew not why, Sleep overcame her; on my arm she slept. From time to time I waked her; but the boat Rocked her to sleep again. The moon was now Rising full-orbed, but broken by a cloud. The wind was hushed, and the sea mirror-like. A single zephyr, as enamoured, played With her loose tresses, and drew more and more Her veil across her bosom. Long I lay Contemplating that face so beautiful.... I went alone beneath the silent moon; Thy square, St. Mark, thy churches, palaces, Glittering and frost-like, and, as day drew on, Melting away, an emblem of themselves. Those porches passed, thro’ which the water-breeze Plays, though no longer on the noble forms That moved there, sable-vested--and the quay, Silent, grass-grown--adventurer-like, I launched Into the deep, ere long discovering Isles such as cluster in the Southern seas, All verdure.... In Venice, when again In that strange place, so stirring and so still, Where nothing comes to drown the human voice But music, or the dashing of the tide, Ceased I to wonder. Now a Jessica Sung to her lute, her signal as she sate At her half-open window. Then, methought, A serenade broke silence, breathing hope Thro’ walls of stone, and torturing the proud heart Of some Priuli. Once, we could not err, (It was before an old Palladian house, As between night and day we floated by), A gondolier lay singing: and he sung, As in the time when Venice was herself, Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars, We rested; and the verse was verse divine! We could not err--perhaps he was the last-- For none took up the strain, none answered him; And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear A something like the dying voice of Venice! The moon went down; and nothing now was seen Save where the lamp of a Madonna shone Faintly--or heard, but when he spoke, who stood Over the lantern at the prow and cried, Turning the corner of some reverend pile, Some school or hospital of old renown, Tho’ haply none were coming, none were near, ‘Hasten or slacken.’ But at length Night fled; And with her fled, scattering, the sons of pleasure. Star after star shot by, or, meteor-like, Crossed me and vanished--lost at once among Those hundred isles that tower majestically, That rise abruptly from the water-mark, Nor with rough crag, but marble, and the work Of noblest architects.
SAMUEL ROGERS.
SING TO ME, GONDOLIER
Sing to me, Gondolier! Sing words from Tasso’s lay; While blue, and still, and clear, Night seems but softer day. The gale is gently falling, As if it paused to hear Some strain the past recalling-- Sing to me, Gondolier!
Oh, ask me not to wake The memory of the brave; Bid no high numbers break The silence of the wave. Gone are the noble-hearted, Closed the bright pageants here; And the glad song is departed From the mournful Gondolier!
MRS. HEMANS.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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:
‘Con lei sull’ onda placida Errai dalla laguna, Ella gli sguardi immobili In te fissava o luna! E a che pensava allor? Era un morrente palpito? Era un nascente amor?’
GEORGE SAND.
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 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, 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 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.
‘In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more.’
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, 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....
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
‘Pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure’--
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, 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 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 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.
ISLAND AND LAGOON
My windows look upon a garden, the west side of which is bounded by the walls of a convent, while towards the east it juts out into the lagoon, in the form of a little peninsula. The garden is charmingly situated, but little frequented. It is my custom every morning ... to spend a few moments at the window ... to see the sun rise over the Adriatic.... I recommend exactly this station, the most eligible one, perhaps, in all Venice, to enjoy so splendid a prospect in perfection. A purple twilight hangs over the deep, and a golden mist on the lagoon announces the sun’s approach. The heavens and the sea are wrapped in expectant silence. In two seconds the orb of day appears, casting a flood of fiery light upon the waves. It is a sight of enchantment! SCHILLER.
Chioggia, like Venice, is built upon a foundation of wooden piles.... One meets sailors and fishermen at every step. Whoever appears in a perruque, or a cloak, is regarded as an aristocrat--a rich man; the cap and overcoat are here the insignia of the poor. The situation is certainly extremely lovely, but it does not bear comparison with Venice. SCHILLER.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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....
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.
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 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 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 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 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:
‘The sea is His, and He made it; And His hands prepared the dry land.’
JOHN RUSKIN.
UPON A CUPBOARD OF VENICE-GLASSES
SENT FOR A NEW YEAR’S GIFT TO A CHOICE LADY
MADAME,
If on this New Year’s gift you cast your eye, You plainly may therein at once descry A twofold quality; for there will appear A brittle substance, but the Object clear.
So in the donor, Madame, you may see These qualities inherent for to be; His pow’r which brittle little is, Helas, His mind sincere, and pure as any glass.
The old philosopher did wish there were A window in his heart of chrystal clear, Through which his friends might the more clearly see His inward passions, and integrity.
I wish the like, for there you sure would rest Of my clear mind, and motions of my breast.
But if it question’d be to what intent With _Venice_-glasses I do you present, I answer, that I could no gift perceive So fit for me to give, you to receive: For those rare Graces that in you excel, And _you_ that hold them, one may parallel Unto a _Venice_-glass, which as ’tis clear, And can admit no poyson to come near, So virtue dwells in you, nor can endure That vice should harbour in a breast so pure.
JAMES HOWELL.
SAN FRANCESCO DEL DESERTO
Two years have gone since on this desert place We landed, she and I, alone, at one; But now the wild sea-marshes have no grace, For she who made their beauty--she is gone.
That day the island in the afternoon Shone like a gem, and on its point the pine Kept steadfast watch, while in the clear lagoon Unwavering lay the shadow and the shrine.
‘How lonely,’ so she said, ‘how still, how fair! Tell me the story why they call this place St. Francis of the Desert. Silent air, And silent light sleep here, and silent space.’
‘Once in his wanderings,’ thus I told the tale, ‘St. Francis, overtaken by the night, Pushed here his bark to shore and furled his sail, And wearied, slumbered till the morning light.
‘He woke, and saw his brother, the great Sun Rise up, full-orbed, refreshed, to praise the Lord, And so began the Matins: “Is there none To sing,” he said, “responses?” At the word,
‘The nightingale, the blackbird and the thrush, And all the little fowl with dancing notes, Perched joyous on the low acacia bush, Whereby he knelt, and with full-swelling throats
‘Sang a clear service like the boys in quire; And Francis, happy as a child, gave thanks To those sweet children of the heavenly Sire-- Hence grew this shrine upon the wan sea-banks.’
The story pleased her; and the low-roofed church, The bricked-paved cloister set with balsams round, The marble well, and silence-guarded porch, The cypresses that clasped the garden ground,
The soft-leaved poplars rippling in the air, The white narcissus tufts beneath the trees, And the lonely waters whispering everywhere; The blue sky filled to brimming with the breeze
That drove the red-sailed barks along the wave-- All pleased, but most the silent solitude; The still Franciscan walking slow and grave, The absent life wherein no cares intrude,
Obedient, chaste and poor--alone with sea And sky and clouds and winds and God’s still voice; Unvexèd by the clamorous world, and free For worship and for work, to die or to rejoice.
‘I would not choose,’ she said, ‘this quiet life; But if my wheels were broken in the race, If, having done my best, I failed in the strife, It would be well to work in this sweet place.
‘But you and I are one--our hopes and need, Our joy and love are in the world of men; Let fall the sail and bid the rowers speed, Life calls aloud--Back to the city then.’
So spake she, bathed in sunshine and delight, Her hand upon the wooden cross whose shade Falls on the landing-place. She was so bright That when I looked on her I was afraid.
Good cause for fear--one little month and then Dark Ocean quenched her light, and now no more I see this island in the salt sea-fen, And think what joy, what love I had of yore.
’Twas summer then and glorious afternoon, And now ’tis autumn and a dusky eve; Night rushes swiftly o’er the pale lagoon, The wet seaweed and lapping waters weave
A mournful song together, and I walk Beneath the solemn cypress-trees alone; High overhead the tinkling poplars talk Of me, and wonder where my love has flown.
I cannot tell them, I have never heard; My boat has drawn unto a silent shore; But could she speak to me one little word, Or could I hope to love her evermore,
Then I might see the sun arise, and sing Matins of praise, like Francis, o’er the sea; And every happy bird upon the wing, And all the angels, would rejoice with me.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
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, 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 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
Oh, Galuppi,[2] Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I give you credit, ’tis with such a heavy mind!
Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings, Where St. Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by ... what you call ... Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival! I was never out of England--it’s as if I saw it all!
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,-- On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed, O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?
Well (and it was graceful of them) they’d break talk off and afford --She, to bite her mask’s black velvet, he to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--‘Must we die?’ Those commiserating sevenths--‘Life might last! we can but try!’
‘Were you happy?’--‘Yes.’--‘And are you still as happy?’--‘Yes--And you?’ --‘Then more kisses’--‘Did _I_ stop them, when a million seemed so few?’ Hark--the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to!
So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! ‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.’
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
But when I sit down to reason,--think to take my stand nor swerve Till I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve, In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve,
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned-- ‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned! The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.
‘Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; Butterflies may dread extinction,--you’ll not die, it cannot be!
‘As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop. What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
ROBERT BROWNING.
[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 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, 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 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 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.
LAGOON MESSAGE
Not now, but later, when the road We tread together breaks apart, When thou, my dearest, distant art, And tedious days have swelled the load Upon my heart.
Or haply after that, when I Am sealed within an earthy bed, Resting and unrememberèd, This scene will speak and easily The whole be said.
Some eve, when from his burning chair The sun below Fusina slips, And all the sable poplar-tips Wave in the warm, vermilion air, The wind, the lips
Of the soft breeze with wayward touch Shall tell thee all I longed to own; And thou, on lurid lakes alone, Wilt say: ‘Poor soul, he loved me much; And he is gone.’
PERCY PINKERTON.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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:
‘Corruption most abhorred Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.’
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. 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 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
My gondola goes sailing Over the ruffled brine, While in the west are paling The purple and carmine.
The light yet burns and blazes With richest, rosiest hue Where red San Giorgio raises Its belfry in the blue.
As soft scirocco tosses Foam to my face and spray Athwart my _ferro_ crosses, Along the water-way,
In cage-like _barca_ seated, A soldier, pale and bent, One to whom has been meted Long, lonely punishment.
I catch the look imploring That he to me has cast, As, indolently oaring, His sullen guards go past.
Not any word is spoken, Only a smile from me Gives the poor prisoner token Of my heart’s sympathy.
Brief, brief has been our meeting, And, as the sea grows grey, Amid the rose light fleeting We pass upon our way.
PERCY PINKERTON.
À LA ZUECCA
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca, Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise À Saint-Blaise. À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca, Nous étions bien là.
Mais de vous en souvenir Prendrez vous la peine? Mais de vous en souvenir Et d’y revenir,
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca, Dans les prés fleuris cueillir la verveine; À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca, Vivre et mourir là.
ALFRED DE MUSSET.
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._
Around her shrine no earthly blossoms blow, No footsteps fret the pathway to and fro; No sign nor record of departed prayer, Print of the stone, nor echo of the air; Worn by the lip, nor wearied by the knee,-- Only a deeper silence of the sea: For there, in passing, pause the breezes bleak, And the foam fades, and all the waves are weak. The pulse-like oars in softer fall succeed, The black prow falters through the wild seaweed-- Where, twilight-borne, the minute thunders reach, Of deep-mouthed surf, that bays by Lido’s beach. With intermittent motion traversed far, And shattered glancing of the western star, Till the faint storm-bird on the heaving flow Drops in white circles, silently like snow. Not here the ponderous gem nor pealing note, Dim to adorn--insentient to adore-- But purple-dyed, the mists of evening float, In ceaseless incense from the burning floor Of ocean, and the gathered gold of heaven Laces its sapphire vault, and, early given The white rays of the rushing firmament Pierce the blue-quivering night through wreath or rent Of cloud inscrutable and motionless,-- Hectic and wan, and moon-companioned cloud! Oh! lone Madonna, angel of the deep, When the night falls, and deadly winds are loud, Will not thy love be with us while we keep Our watch upon the waters, and the gaze Of thy soft eyes, that slumber not, nor sleep? Deem not then, stranger, that such trust is vain; Faith walks not on these weary waves alone, Though weakness dread or apathy disdain The spot which God has hallowed for His own. They sin who pass it lightly, ill-divining The glory of this place of bitter prayer; And hoping against hope, and self-resigning, And reach of faith, and wrestling with despair, And resurrection of the last distress, Into the sense of Heaven, when earth is bare, And of God’s voice, when man’s is comfortless.
JOHN RUSKIN.
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 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
I went to greet the full May-moon On that long narrow shoal Which lies between the still lagoon And the open ocean’s roll.
How pleasant was that grassy shore, When one for months had been Shut up in streets,--to feel once more One’s footfall on the green!
There are thick trees too in that place; But straight from sea to sea, Over a rough uncultured space, The path goes drearily.
I pass along with many a bound To hail the fresh free wave; But, pausing, wonderingly found I was treading on a grave.
Then, at one careless look, I saw That, for some distance round, Tombstones, without design or law, Were scattered on the ground:
Of pirates or of mariners I deemed that these might be The fitly-chosen sepulchres, Encircled by the sea.
But there are words inscribed on all, In the tongue of a far land, And marks of things symbolical, I could not understand.
They are the graves of that sad race, Who, from their Syrian home, For ages, without resting-place, Are doomed in woe to roam;
Who, in the days of sternest faith, Glutted the sword and flame, As if a taint of moral death Were in their very name:
And even under laws most mild, All shame was deemed their due, And the nurse told the Christian child To shun the cursèd Jew.
Thus all their gold’s insidious grace Availed not here to gain, For their last sleep, a seemlier place Than this bleak-featured plain.
Apart, severely separate. On the verge of the outer sea, Their home of death is desolate As their life’s home could be.
The common sand-path had defaced And prest down many a stone; Others can be but faintly traced In the rank grass o’er them grown.
I thought of Shylock,--the fierce heart Whose wrongs and injuries old Temper, in Shakespeare’s world of art, His lusts of blood and gold;
Perchance that form of broken pride Here at my feet once lay,-- But lay alone,--for at his side There was no Jessica!
Fondly I love each island-shore, Embraced by Adrian waves; But none has memory cherished more Than Lido and its graves.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
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.’
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 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 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 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.
CANAL AND BRIDGE
From the Rialto’s edge, I looked into the waters, on whose face Glimmered the reflex of some few faint stars, And two far-flitting lamps of gondoliers, That seemed on that black flat to move alone, While, on each side, each well-known building lost Its separate beauty in one dark long curve. RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandise. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
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.
‘All has suffered a sea-change Into something rich and strange,’
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 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, 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
‘The light aerial gallery, golden railed, Burnt like a fringe of fire.’
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.
BROWNING’S FUNERAL
VENICE, DEC. 15, 1889
Now ‘past they glide,’ and bear the flower-wreathed bier Across the soundless waters, cold and grey, Ere Night falls, sable-vestured and austere, And Day dies in one roseate flush away, While they who follow, tearful, in the train See wonted sights with unfamiliar eyes;-- Like dreams, amid the fevered sleep of pain, Rich domes and frescoed palaces arise. Yet haply, mixed with sorrow, dawns the thought How fit such obsequies for him whose pen Hath given a wondrous poem,[3] passion-fraught,-- Breathing of love and Venice,--unto men: And so hath added to her deathless glory A shining scroll of pure and ageless story.
MACKENZIE BELL.
[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 had lately given a new life to its glories, and sung of that fair City of the Sea, thus grandly:
‘I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs.’
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 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 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 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 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 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.
SOME VENETIAN PHASES
Venice ... is a poetical place; and classical, to us, from Shakespeare and Otway.... Venice pleases me as much as I expected, and I expected much. It is one of those places which I know before I see them, and has always haunted me the most, after the East. I like the gloomy gaiety of their gondolas, and the silence of their canals. I do not even dislike the evident decay of the city, though I regret the singularity of its vanished costume. LORD BYRON.
All the world repaire to Venice to see the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall; the women, men, and persons of all conditions disguising themselves in antiq dresses, with extravagant musiq and a thousand gambols, traversing the streetes from house to house, all places being there accessible and free to enter. Abroad, they fling eggs fill’d with sweete water.... The youth of the severall wards and parishes contend in other masteries and pastimes, so that ’tis impossible to recount the universal madnesse of this place during this time of licence. The greate banks are set up for those who will play bassett; the comedians have liberty, and the operas are open; witty pasquils are thrown about, and the mountebanks have their stages at every corner. JOHN EVELYN.
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 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 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 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 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
She is a chrysolite! her manners, too, Are pure Venetian, haughty, yet endearing. Didst ever see, my Claudio, such a bearing? Just watch her as the pigeons round her woo For more caresses,--voice like some dove’s coo, And with that face so saint-like yet so daring-- By Bacchus! as you say here in your swearing, She is as perfect as a drop of dew! Yet she is of the South--the counterpart Of vengeance with its hidden venomed dart.... Hush! for the gargoyles hear!... Though white as curds That sweet soft hand--the hand that feeds the birds-- If you should hint about it certain words, Would plunge its poisoned poniard through your heart.
LLOYD MIFFLIN.
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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.
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 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, 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 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 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 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
Amid these fragments of heroic days, When thought met deed with mutual passions’ leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumour of ourselves we raise; They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their soul so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways; In this grave presence to record my name, Something within me hangs the head and shrinks; Dull were the soul without some joy in Fame: Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who in the desert’s awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the sphinx.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
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 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 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 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. 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
Of all the places where the Carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all, Venice the bell from every city bore,-- And at the moment when I fix my story, That sea-born city was in all her glory.
They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, Black eyes, arch’d brows, and sweet expressions still; Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, In ancient arts by moderns mimick’d ill; And like so many Venuses of Titian’s (The best’s at Florence--see it, if ye will), They look when leaning over the balcony, Or stepp’d from out a picture by Giorgione,
Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best; And when you to Manfrini’s palace go, The picture (howsoever fine the rest) Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; It may perhaps be also to _your_ zest, And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so: ’Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self; but _such_ a woman! love in life!...
I said that, like a picture by Giorgione Venetian women were, and so they _are_, Particularly seen from a balcony (For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar), And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni, They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar; And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!
LORD BYRON.
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--
‘Sunshine at Carnival, Fireside at Easter.’
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.
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 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, 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 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, 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.
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.
‘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 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 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 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 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 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; 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 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
In Venice once they lived and loved-- Fair women with their red-gold hair-- Their twinkling feet to music moved, In Venice where they lived and loved, And all Philosophy disproved, While hope was young and life was fair, In Venice where they lived and loved.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
ARCHITECTURE AND ART
Venice is the finest city in the world. What could we wish for better than its Moorish architecture in white marble in the midst of the limpid waters, and under a sky truly magnificent; its people so gay, so heedless, so witty, and fond of its music; its gondolas, churches, and picture galleries; those good-looking and elegant women; the murmurs of the sea breaking upon the ear; the moonlights nowhere else to be seen; choruses of gondoliers, sometimes very correct, serenading under every window; cafés full of Turks and Armenians; fine and spacious theatres where you can hear Pasta and Donzelli; gorgeous palaces; a Punch and Judy show far above that of Gustave Malus; delicious oysters, which you can gather on the steps of every house; Cyprian wine at twenty-five _sous_ a bottle; flowers in the heart of winter, and, in the month of February, a heat as great as that of our month of May? GEORGE SAND.
Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all over Venice--in the church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco; in the ‘Temptation of St. Anthony’ at St. Trovaso no less than in the Temptations of Eve and Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Scala del Senato, and in the Paradisal vision of the Scala del Gran Consiglio. Yet, after all, there is one of his most characteristic moods, to appreciate which fully we return to the Madonna dell’ Orto. I have called him ‘the painter of impossibilities.’ At rare moments he rendered them possible by sheer imaginative force. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE BIRTH OF VENETIAN ART
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 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]
Water, for anguish of the solstice,--yea, Over the vessel’s mouth still widening, Listlessly dipt to let the water in With slow, vague gurgle. Blue, and deep away, The heat lies silent at the brink of day. Now the hand trails upon the viol-string That sobs; and the brown faces cease to sing, Mournful with complete pleasure. Her eyes stray In distance; through her lips the pipe doth creep And leaves them pouting; the green shadowed grass Is cool against her naked flesh. Let be: Do not now speak unto her lest she weep, Nor name this ever. Be it as it was: Silence of heat, and solemn poetry.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
[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; 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 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.
TO AN OLD VENETIAN PAINTING
Who _was_ she--this rare Beauty of appealing face?... The eyes are laden with the weight of Love’s fond burden, The heart, with tremulous hope of Love’s alluring guerdon. Had she some wound,--some grief which nothing could erase,-- She whose impassioned look is raised in suppliant grace? Perhaps some erring penitent in saintly adoration, Or Doge’s wilful daughter offering supplication In all the sumptuous beauty of her languorous race? The plaintive mouth is saddened now from farewell-taking, The sob still lingers in her smile,--the eyes brim o’er, As if sweet love, with her, had broken faith and trust. How _could_ such beauty be unless her heart were breaking?... Peace! draw the veil: seek no revealment: ask no more: Such loveliness shall sanctify her very dust.
LLOYD MIFFLIN.
TO GIAN BELLINI
Though ne’er a catchword for the shallow throng, His name shall shine eternally with those That light the world. Resplendent Venice shows Not one sublimer all her sons among.
He taught the true in art, nor knew the wrong. His lofty purity, his sweet repose Sprang from a faith that no misgiving knows By this his soul was nourished and grew strong.
Gentle Venetian! I must envy thee, Who stand alone in this cool sacristy, Confronted with the radiance of thine art. Shrined in these marbles amid ocean foam, The light of thy pure spirit here has home, Firing the good in each distempered heart.
PERCY PINKERTON.
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, 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 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 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 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.
VENICE
Walk in St. Mark’s, the time and ample space Lies in the freshness of the evening shade, When, on each side, with gravely-darkened face, The masses rise above the light arcade; Walk down the midst with slowly-timèd pace, But gay withal,--for there is high parade Of fair attire and fairer forms, which pass Like varying groups on a magician’s glass....
Walk in St. Mark’s again, some few hours after, When a bright sleep is on each storied pile,-- When fitful music, and inconstant laughter, Give place to Nature’s silent moonlight smile: Now fancy wants no faery gale to waft her To Magian haunt, or charm-engirdled isle, All too content, in passive bliss, to see This show divine is visible poetry.
On such a night as this impassionedly The old Venetian sung those verses rare, ‘That Venice must of needs eternal be, For heaven had looked through the pellucid air, And cast its reflex in the crystal sea, And Venice was the image pictured there;’ I hear them now, and tremble, for I seem As treading on an unsubstantial dream.
Who talks of vanished glory, of dead power, Of things that were, and are not? Is he here? Can he take in the glory of this hour, And call it all the decking of a bier? No, surely as on that Titanic tower The Guardian Angel stands in æther clear, With the moon’s silver tempering his gold wing, So Venice lives, as lives no other thing:
That strange cathedral! exquisitely strange; That front, on whose bright varied tints the eye Rests as on gems; those arches, whose high range Gives its rich-broidered border to the sky; Those ever-prancing steeds! My friend, whom change Of restless will has led to lands that lie Deep in the East, does not thy fancy set Above these domes an airy minaret?
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
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 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 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 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; 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 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 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. 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 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 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, ‘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 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.
A VENETIAN DAY
On her still lake the city sits While barque and boat beside her flits, Nor hears, her soft siesta taking, The Adriatic billows breaking. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
Sunset.... It is the hour when Venice puts forth her stealing charm.... At the evening hour, now, as in old times, a spirit takes Venice and folds it in loving arms, whispering words that are not even guessed by day. FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
Night in Venice: the brilliant stars twinkle in the little pools of water which the sea has left on the marshes, the breeze murmurs in the verdant seaweeds. From time to time we perceive the light from a gondola gliding over the water. The voice of the Adriatic breaking on the opposite shores of the Lido reaches us in a monotonous and majestic sound. We give ourselves up to a thousand delicious dreams. GEORGE SAND.
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 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 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 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,’ 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
This perfect evening slowly falls Without a stain, without a cloud; The sun has set--and all the bells Of Venice in the skies are loud,
Clashing and chiming far and near ‘Ave Maria,’ while the moon, Large-globed and red, climbs through the mist To loiter o’er the dark lagoon.
And now the loud o’ermastering sound Ceases, and silence, like a tide, Flows o’er the shores of sea and sky, And the gray earth is sanctified.
Beneath me the long gardens lie; Cool alleys trellised with the vine; And on the rustling mulberry-trees Shadows the solitary pine.
Stone-black, it spreads against the fire That westward reddens and above Pales into gold and rose and pearl, And then to azure, warm as love.
How sweet the air, how calm the eve! How still the light, how still the pine! But O the more I know their rest, The more I feel it is not mine.
Great Nature loves our joy and calm; But to our restless scorn and grief, Wild weariness of love, she gives No tenderness, and no relief.
Unkind, alas, she is to me! What has her heart to do with strife? ‘Seek peace,’ she says, ‘my law of peace.’-- I cannot, let me live my life.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
AT SUNSET
Fusina’s fence of boughs No more allows Me vision of a red wheel in the west, Yet cloud and wave retain Their splendid stain, Ere Venice by the night be repossessed.
I drift, as in a dream, Down the blue stream By oozy beds of weed and shell and slime; And Gigio, when he breaks The water, makes A lazy sound that fits the silent time.
Now, with the sinking fires, Yon train of spires Melts on its mirror in a mist of grey, While an obscurer pall Wraps the white wall Of lonely hills that deep in distance lay.
Swung high in convent-tower Bells mark the hour For grave Armenian monks to bend in prayer; They from their quiet isle Watch the last smile Of sunset fade upon the golden air.
Ah! could the pageant stay! Would yesterday Were impotent to sweep it from my sight; This were my hour to die, And silently To step from world of flame to world of night!
PERCY PINKERTON.
SUNSET
The autumn evening dies, and all the west Is warm soft gold to half the heaven’s height: And in the silent air I float and rest On waters that are lovers of the light.
The clear curved dome of the Redeemer’s Church Is black against the yellow arch of sky; And purple-peaked within the sunset’s porch, The Euganean hills like islands lie--
Children of Padua, but to Venice friends! Who that has seen them in the evening hour, But has forgotten earthly cares and ends, All things but Love that never loses power;
And from St. George among the Seaweed, set A sapphire isle in golden waters, down To the Armenian Convent where the fret Of the sea winds has turned the cypress brown,
The spacious waters in full tide are spread, A lustrous cloth of gold with colours splashed;-- Blue liquid belts and mirrored clouds blood-red, Green blazing sea-marsh, broidered waves that flashed
Now ebony, now scarlet, when the tide, Smoothing the ripple on the shallow’s rim, Flowed strong to southward where, in towered pride, Islanded Venice sang her evening hymn.
How calm, how passionless, how golden-fair! Beauty, I thought, stood tiptoe on his height-- When down the near canal, and tossed in air, Two lofty sails moved slow athwart the light;
And their tall masts and soaring booms aslope, Were sky-companions of the lonely dome, That on Giudecca bids the sinner hope, And seen from Malamocco speaks of home.
The moving sails, the thought of ocean’s life, The sense of human will within the ship, Enriched the peace with which they seemed at strife, And filled the cup of Beauty to the lip.
O thou, who wast beside me when we loved This vision of the evening and the sea; Why art thou silent, why so far removed? Implore of Death, ask God to set thee free.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
A VENETIAN NIGHT
’Tis a goodly night; the cloudy wind which blew From the Levant hath crept into its cave, And the broad moon has brightened. What a stillness!... Around me are the stars and waters-- Worlds mirror’d in the ocean, goodlier sight Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass; And the great element, which is to space What ocean is to earth, spreads its blue depths, Soften’d with the first breathings of the spring; The high moon sails upon her beauteous way, Serenely smoothing o’er the lofty walls Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces, Whose porphyry pillars, and whose costly fronts, Fraught with the orient spoil of many marbles, Like altars ranged along the broad canal, Seem each a trophy of some mighty deed Rear’d up from out the waters, scarce less strangely Than those more massy and mysterious giants Of architecture, those Titanian fabrics, Which point in Egypt’s plains to times that have No other record. All is gentle: nought Stirs rudely; but, congenial with the night, Whatever walks is gliding like a spirit. The tinklings of some vigilant guitars Of sleepless lovers to a wakeful mistress, And cautious opening of the casement, showing That he is not unheard; while her young hand, Fair as the moonlight of which it seems part, So delicately white, it trembles in The act of opening the forbidden lattice, To let in love through music, makes his heart Thrill like his lyre-strings at the sight; the dash Phosphoric of the oar, or rapid twinkle Of the far lights of skimming gondolas, And the responsive voices of the choir Of boatmen answering back with verse for verse; Some dusky shadow checkering the Rialto; Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire, Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade The ocean-born and earth-commanding city-- How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, Night! for thou hast chased away Those horrid bodements which, amidst the throng, I could not dissipate: and with the blessing Of thy benign and quiet influence, Now will I to my couch, although to rest Is almost wronging such a night as this.
LORD BYRON.
VENETIAN NOCTURNE
Down the narrow Calle where the moonlight cannot enter, The houses are so high; Silent and alone we pierced the night’s dim core and centre-- Only you and I.
Clear and sad our footsteps rang along the hollow pavement, Sounding like a bell; Sounding like a voice that cries to souls in Life’s enslavement, ‘There is Death as well!’
Down the narrow dark we went, until a sudden whiteness Made us hold our breath; All the white Salute towers and domes in moonlit brightness,-- Ah! could this be Death?
A. MARY F. ROBINSON (_Madame Duclaux_).
NIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
There have been times, not many, but enough To quiet all repinings of the heart; There have been times, in which my tranquil soul, No longer nebulous, sparse, errant, seemed Upon its axis solidly to move, Centred and fast: no mere elastic blank For random rays to traverse unretained, But rounding luminous its fair ellipse Around its central sun....
O happy hours! O compensation ample for long days Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness! O beautiful, beneath the magic moon, To walk the watery way of palaces! O beautiful, o’ervaulted with gemmed blue, The spacious court, with colour and with gold, With cupolas, and pinnacles, and points, And crosses multiplex, and lips and balls (Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix, Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused); Fantastically perfect this low pile Of Oriental glory; these long ranges Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd, And the calm campanile. Beautiful! O beautiful! and that seemed more profound This morning by the pillar when I sat Under the great arcade, at the review, And took, and held, and ordered on my brain The faces, and the voices, and the whole mass O’ the motley facts of existence flowing by! O perfect, if ’twere all!
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
VENETA MARINA
INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS
The masts rise white to the stars, White on the night of the sky, Out of the water’s night, And the stars lean down to them white. Ah! how the stars seem nigh; How far away are the stars!
And I too under the stars, Alone with the night again, And the water’s monotone; I and the night alone, And the world and the ways of men Farther from me than the stars.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
VENETIAN NIGHT
Her eyes in the darkness shone, in the twilight shed By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head. Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went; A white glove shone as her black fan lifted and leant Where the silk of her dress, the blue of a bittern’s wing, Rustled against my knee, and, murmuring The sweet slow hesitant English of a child, Her voice was articulate laughter, her soul smiled. Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went; From the sleeping houses a shadow of slumber leant Over our heads like a wing, and the dim lagoon, Rustling with silence, slumbered under the moon. Softly the gondola rocked, and a pale light came Over the waters, mild as a silver flame; She lay back, thrilling with smiles, in the twilight shed By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head; I saw her eyes shine subtly, then close awhile: I remember her silence, and, in the night, her smile.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
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 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 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
Night, and the silence of the night, In Venice; far away, a song; As if the lyric water made Itself a serenade; As if the water’s silence were a song Sent up into the night.
Night, a more perfect day, A day of shadows luminous, Water and sky at one, at one with us; As if the very peace of night, The older peace than heaven or light, Came down into the day.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
THE SEASONS IN VENICE
May in Venice is better than April, but June is best of all. Then the days are hot, but not too hot, and the nights are more beautiful than the days. Then Venice is rosier than ever in the morning, and more golden than ever as the day descends. It seems to expand and evaporate, to multiply all its reflections and iridescences. Then the life of its people and the strangeness of its constitution become a perpetual comedy, or, at least, a perpetual drama. Then the gondola is your sole habitation, and you spend days between sea and sky. HENRY JAMES.
HOW SPRING COMES TO VENICE
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 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.
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
‘Blue, unclouded weather,’
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.
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; 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.’
‘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.
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 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 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
To this black, shell-encrusted stake Girt with sea-grasses, moist and green, I now would moor my boat and make A survey of the lonely scene.
Here all is sad and still and grey; Wide water-fields around me lie; Cool mirrors that for miles away Reflect the pale October sky.
Where at the city’s boundary Trees crowd and garden-bushes spread, Wan, slanting sunlight fitfully Brightens their blots of brown and red
Or touches on the ocean-rim Afar, some ochre-tinted sail Of speeding boat where Chioggians swim Out to the Adriatic gale.
From pilèd barge that blocks the stream Some dog at sea-bird wheeling low Bays; and I hear the madmen scream In sinister San Servolo.
No other living noise, no cry; The Sea-Queen wears her saddest dress; And my soul all insensibly Catches her mood of mournfulness.
Fairer she seemed when April light And fragrance played around her throne. Or when through all some languid night Large yellow worlds above her shone.
Forsaken, now, her briny streets; No red-booked strangers pass and pry; No crowded gondola one meets Rocking its careless company.
The window-panes above the quay, Row upon row and square on square, Seem human faces turned to me With vacant, melancholy stare.
What would they watch? Some gleaming train Of galleys go in silver state? One black hull only drifts amain, With one sad passenger as freight.
PERCY PINKERTON.
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 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 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 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 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
High-tide at Venice; warm wind driving in from the sea. Hark! the cry of the gulls as they flit o’er the wide canal, Flit and circle and skim, and dip in their savage glee, Striking the lead-coloured waves that scatter tempestual, Striking with sharp white wing like a flail, gorging their prey: _Frutto di mare_, fruit of the ocean, drift of the way.
Hither and thither wend other wild birds in the storm-- Gondolas black as the swift that floats o’er an autumn sky-- Gondolas silent and shadowy, wondrously slender of form-- Gliding in close-measured rhythm down where the barges lie, Under the glimmering bridges, and near to the palace walls That frown in a gloomy dusk, as the sea-mist gathers and falls.
Now, with a burst of voices, clang the _Salute’s_ bells, From yonder tower-lofts straining, heav’n high as they may go. Again, to our fretful world, surely the _Angelus_ tells Patience for need and pain, and solace and calm for woe. As I listen the peal dies out--alas, and alas! alas! But from over the pallid sunset the heavy storm-clouds pass.
O weird sea-birds, as ye utter your hoarse and discordant cry, Do ye wot of the north, and the hearts that are watching your ominous course? Or is it enough for ye, birds, as gyrating and slanting ye fly, To ride the broad Adriatic, and drink of her glamour and force, Regardless that realms beyond realms, as waves upon waves, in unrest, Look up for the message of love that God’s angel brings to the blest?
LADY LINDSAY.
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 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
O for the autumn, and twilight and dream, Where still waters gleam.
O for sky-distances, fading in blue, With Venice in view.
O for the opal of cloud and lagoon, With night-shadows strewn.
Palaces, blue-green, and hushed as in sleep, Keep watch o’er the deep.
O for the autumn, and Venice aglow, Where silken winds blow.
Like a chrysanthemum droops the fair town As Night cometh down,
Crushing those petals of watery bloom In tenderest gloom.
O at this hour, when Venice is blest, May I, to my breast,
Gather one petal of delicate hue-- To bring, Love--to you!
HÉLÈNE VACARESCO. _Translated by Fred. G. Bowles_
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 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 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.
VENICE OF THE PAST
Dim phantoms of banners for conquest unfurl’d, Of brows bright with diamonds, of bosoms empearl’d, Of Venice, the mistress and Queen of the world; Of argosies laden with damask and gold, Of tributes barbaric from kingdoms grown old; Of spousals fantastic and rings in the tide Of Venice the bridegroom, and Ocean the bride. CHARLES MACKAY.
Venice ... a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow.... It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labour of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with brightness and shade, like the far-away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sandbank are mingled with the sky. JOHN RUSKIN.
In Venice ... one cannot think if not in images. They come to us from all quarters, in countless numbers, in endless variety, and they are more real, more living, than the people that elbow us in the narrow street. They let us bend down to scrutinize the depths of their lingering eyes, and we can divine the words they are going to say by the curves of their eloquent lips. GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 _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
The antique _Babel_, Empresse of the East, Uprear’d her buildinges to the threatened skie: And Second _Babell_ tyrant of the West, Her angry towers upraised much more high. But with the weight of their own surquedry, They both are fallen, that all the earth did feare, And buried now in their own ashes ly, Yet showing by their heapes how great they were. But in their place doth now a third appeare, Fayre _Venice_, flower of the last worlds delight.
EDW. SPENCER (1599).
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 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, 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 _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 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 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
Fayre mayden towne that in rich _Thetis_ armes, Hath still been fostered since thy first foundation. Whose glorious beauty cals unnumbered swarmes Of rarest spirits from each forrin nation, And yet (sole wonder to all Europes eares, Most lovely Nimph, that ever _Neptune_ got) In all this space of thirteene hundred yeares, Thy virgin state ambition ne’er could blot. Now I prognosticate thy ruinous case; When thou shalt from thy Adriatique seas, View in this Ocean Isle thy painted face, In these pure colours coyest eyes to please, Then gazing in thy shadowes peerless eye, Enamour’d like _Narcissus_ thou shalt die.
J. ASHLEY (1599).
SCENE IN VENICE
Black Demons hovering o’er his mitred head, To Cæsar’s Successor the Pontiff spake; ‘Ere I absolve thee, stoop! that on thy neck Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread.’ Then he, who to the altar had been led, He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check, He, who had held the Soldan at his beck, Stooped, of all glory disinherited, And even the common dignity of man!-- Amazement strikes the crowd: while many turn Their eyes away in sorrow, others burn With scorn, invoking a vindictive ban From outraged Nature; but the sense of most In abject sympathy with power is lost.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
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 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, 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 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
Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid When her long life hath reached its final day: Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great, is passed away.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
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 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 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 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).
THE ROMANCE OF VENICE
If Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice. SHAKESPEARE.
AT VENICE
So now she stands by Glory’s great sea-grave And has the first fair vision of that shrine Where it lies sainted with its smile divine, Rubied in sunset, em’ralded in wave; Where the stones whisper of the masques they gave Of argosy and pageant, line on line; Till we are drunk with splendour as with wine In that broad street which molten beryls pave.
I wonder if she thinks of me at whiles, Or only of the dim Byzantine gold And time-stained fronts, and seaweed-covered piles? And if a corner of her heart doth hold Something besides a dream of the crowned isles That ruled the sunrise and its waves of old?
EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.
THE GOLDEN BOOK OF VENICE
The Golden Book[5] Is now unwritten in, and stands unmoved, Save when the curious traveller takes down A random volume, from the dusty shelf, To trace the progress of a bruited name; The Bucentaur Is shattered, and of its resplendent form There is no remnant, but some splintered morsel, Which in his cabin, as a talisman Mournfully hangs the pious gondolier; The Adrian sea Will never have a Doge to marry more,-- The meagre favours of a foreign lord Can hardly lead some score of humble craft With vilest merchandise into the port That whilom held the wealth of half a world. Thy palaces Are bartered to the careful Israelite,-- Or left to perish, stone by stone, worn down In desolation, solemn skeletons, Whose nakedness some tufts of pitying grass, Or green boughs trembling o’er the tumbling wall, Adorn but hide not. And are these things true. Miraculous Venice? Is the charm then past Away from thee? Is all thy work fulfilled Of power and beauty? Art thou gathered To the dead cities? Is thy ministry Made up, and folded in the hand of Thought? Ask him who knows the meaning and the truth Of all existence;--ask the poet’s heart: The Book has no dead tome for him,--for him Within St. Mark’s emblazoned porticoes Thy old nobility are walking still; The lowliest gondola upon thy waters Is worth to him thy decorated galley; He never looks upon the Adrian sea But as thy lawful tho’ too faithless spouse; And when, in the sad lustre of the moon, Thy palaces seem beautifully wan, He blesses God that there is left on earth So marvellous, so full an antidote, For all the racks and toils of mortal life, As thy sweet countenance to gaze upon.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
[5] Il Libro d’Oro, the Venetian Peerage.
TO AN OLD VENETIAN WINEGLASS
ROSE-COLOURED AT THE BRIM
Daughter of Venice, fairer than the moon! From thy dark casement leaning, half divine, And to the lutes of love that low repine Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon, Listening with languor in a dreamful swoon-- On such a night as this thou didst entwine Thy lily fingers round this glass of wine,-- Didst clasp thy climbing lover--none too soon! Thy lover left, but ere he left thy room From this he drank, his warm lips at the brim; Thou kissed it as he vanished in the gloom, That kiss, because of thy true love for him-- Long, long ago when thou wast in thy bloom-- Hath left it ever rosy round the rim!
LLOYD MIFFLIN.
DANTE AT THE ARSENAL AT VENICE
From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things Of which my Comedy cares not to sing, We came along, and held the summit, when We halted to behold another fissure Of Malebolge and other vain laments; And I beheld it marvellously dark.
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch To smear their unsound vessels o’er again, For sail they cannot; and instead thereof One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen; Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, Was boiling down below there a dense pitch Which upon every side the bank belimed.
I saw it, but I did not see within it Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised, And all swell up and resubside compressed. The while below there fixedly I gazed, My Leader, crying out: ‘Beware, beware!’ Drew me unto himself from where I stood.
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient To see what it behoves him to escape, And whom a sudden terror doth unman, Who, while he looks, delays not his departure; And I beheld behind us a black devil, Running along upon the crag, approach.
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect! And how he seemed to me in action ruthless, With open wings and light upon his feet! His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high, A sinner did encumber with both haunches, And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.
_‘INFERNO’ (LONGFELLOW’S TRANSLATION)._
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 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; 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, 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. 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
When along the light ripple the far serenade Has accosted the ear of each passionate maid, She may open the window that looks on the stream,-- She may smile on her pillow and blend it in dream; Half in words, half in music, it pierces the gloom, ‘I am coming--Stalì--but you know not for whom, Stalì--not for whom!’
Now the tones become clearer,--you hear more and more How the waters divided return on the oar,-- Does the prow of the gondola strike on the stair? Do the voices and instruments pause and prepare? Oh! they faint on the ear as the lamp on the view, ‘I am passing--Premì--but I stay not for you! Premì--not for you!’
Then return to your couch, you who stifle a tear,-- Then awake not, fair sleeper--believe he is here; For the young and the loving no sorrow endures, If to-day be another’s, to-morrow is yours;-- May, the next time you listen, your fancy be true, ‘I am coming--Sciàr--and for you and to you! Sciàr--and to you!’
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
FAREWELL TO VENICE
If I had been an unconnected man, I, from this moment, should have formed some plan Never to leave sweet Venice: for to me It was delight to ride by the lone sea: And then the town is silent--one may write, Or read in gondolas by day or night, Having the little brazen lamp alight, Unseen, uninterrupted:--books are there, Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair Which were twin-born with poetry;--and all We seek in towns, with little to recall Regret for the green country.... But I had friends in London too.... --The following morning, urged by my affairs, I left bright Venice.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE SOURCE OF EXTRACT AUTHOR PAGE
Addressed to Venice ‘Sonnets’ _J. Ashley_ 362
A Dream in a Gondola ‘Memorials of a _Richard Monckton Residence on Milnes_ (_Lord the Continent’ Houghton_) 146
A First Impression in Venice ‘The Improvisatore’ _Hans Andersen_ 237
A Gondolier of Chioggia ‘La Denière Aldini’ _George Sand_ 166
À la Zuecca ‘Poems’ _Alfred de Musset_ 209
All Souls’ Day at Venice ‘The Enchanted Woods’ _Vernon Lee_ 340
An Improvisatore ‘The Improvisatore’ _Hans Andersen_ 266
An Island Visit ‘Italy’ _William Beckford_ 214
A Peerless City ‘The Cloister and the Hearth’ _Charles Reade_ 48
A Pilgrim’s Description of Venice ‘A Pilgrimage to _Canon Pietro Casola_ Jerusalem in (_translated by the Year 1494’ Margaret M. Newett, B.A._) 348
April in Venice ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur’ _George Sand_ 326
A Reverie in Venice ‘Childe Harold’ _Lord Byron_ 19
A Rialto Scene ‘Venise’ _Charles Yriarte_ 227
A Sea-View ‘Poems’ _Antonio Negri_ 116
A Toccata of Galuppi’s ‘Poems’ _Robert Browning_ 190
A Tour round Venice with Goldoni ‘Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy’ _Vernon Lee_ 256
At Sunset ‘Adriatica’ _Percy Pinkerton_ 310
At the Dogana ‘Poems’ _Arthur Symons_ 320
At the Lido ‘A Venetian _John Addington Medley’ Symonds_ 202
At Venice ‘Forest Notes’ _Eugene Lee- Hamilton_ 373
Autumn and Venice ‘The Flame of Life’ _Gabriele d’Annunzio_ 333
Autumn in Venice ‘Santa Barbara’ _Ouida_ 338
A Venetian Carnival ‘The Venetians’ _M. E. Braddon_ 262
A Venetian Dream ‘Pictures of Italy’ _Charles Dickens_ 239
A Venetian Market ‘Miss Angel’ _Lady Ritchie_ 226
A Venetian Night ‘Marino Faliero’ _Lord Byron_ 313
A Venetian Pastoral ‘Poems for _Dante Gabriel Pictures’ Rossetti_ 280
A Venetian Restaurant ‘A Venetian _John Medley’ Addington Symonds_ 247
A Vision of Venice ‘Poems’ _David Gray_ 14
Beautiful Venice ‘Songs’ _J. E. Carpenter_ 29
Before ‘A Survey of the City of Venice’ ‘Poems’ _James Howell_ 62
Below the Rialto: Morning ‘Modern Painters’ _John Ruskin_ 225
Boats and Voices ‘Miss Angel’ _Lady Ritchie_ 120
Browning’s Funeral ‘Collected Poems’ _Mackenzie Bell_ 224
Browning’s Venice Quoted in ‘The _Robert Underwood World Beautiful’ Johnson_ 55
Byron on the Grand Canal ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron’ _Thomas Moore_ 224
Dante at the Arsenal at Venice ‘Inferno’ xxi. 1-36 _Dante_ 375
Entering Venice at Twilight ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ _Mrs. Radcliffe_ 103
‘Fabrics of Enchantment piled to Heaven’ ‘Julian and Maddalo’ _Percy B. Shelley_ 69
Farewell to Venice ‘Julian and Maddalo’ _Percy B. Shelley_ 381
Fayre Venice ‘Sonnets’ _Edw. Spencer_ 357
Feeding the ‘At the Gates of Pigeons--Venice Song’ _Lloyd Mifflin_ 237
First Impressions of Venice ‘A Venetian _John Medley’ Addington Symonds_ 74
From a Palace-step at Venice ‘Sordello’ _Robert Browning_ 121
From a Venetian Balcony ‘From a Venetian Balcony’ _Lady Lindsay_ 337
George Eliot’s Impression ‘George Eliot’s _Edited by of Venice Life’ J. W. Cross_ 57
Giorgione’s Home ‘Modern Painters’ _John Ruskin_ 281
Gondoliers ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur’ _George Sand_ 158
Gondoliers and their ‘A Journey Songs through Italy’ _Mrs. Piozzi_ 165
Gondoliers’ Music ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur’ _George Sand_ 159
How Spring comes to Venice ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur’ _George Sand_ 323
In a Gondola ‘Poems’ _Robert Browning_ 136
In Praise of Venice Coryat’s ‘Crudities’ _Thomas Coryat_ 23
In Venice ‘Contarini Fleming’ _Lord Beaconsfield_ 99
In Venice Once ‘At the Wind’s _Louise Chandler_ Will’ _Moulton_ 276
Lagoon Message ‘Adriatica’ _Percy Pinkerton_ 198
La Madonna dell’ Acqua Heath’s ‘Book of Beauty’ _John Ruskin_ 209
Lord Byron on the Lido ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron’ _Thomas Moore_ 211
May in Venice ‘Modern Painters’ _John Ruskin_ 330
Mendelssohn at Venice ‘Letters’ _Translated by Lady_ _Wallace_ 376
Murano ‘The Stones of Venice’ _John Ruskin_ 172
Night in the Piazza ‘Poems’ _Arthur Hugh Clough_ 315
Night in Venice ‘Venetia’ _Lord Beaconsfield_ 131
Night in Venice ‘A Venetian _John Medley’ Addington Symonds 318
On being asked for an _James Russell Autograph in Venice ‘Poems’ Lowell_ 255
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic ‘Poems’ _William Wordsworth_ 366
On the Lagoons ‘Adriatica’ _Percy Pinkerton_ 208
On the Lagoons ‘A Venetian _John Medley’ Addington Symonds_ 198
On the Zattere ‘Poems’ _Arthur Symons_ 126
Pleasant Murano Coryat’s ‘Crudities’ _Thomas Coryat_ 171
Sailing towards Venice ‘The Improvisatore’ _Hans Andersen_ 67
Salve Venetia! ‘Gleanings from _Francis Marion Venetian History’ Crawford_ 3
San Francesco del Deserto ‘Poems’ _Stopford A. Brooke_ 186
San Francesco della Vigna ‘Santa Barbara’ _Ouida_ 188
Scene in Venice ‘Ecclesiastical Sonnets’ _William Wordsworth_ 363
Shelley in Venice ‘Letters’ _P. B. Shelley_ 379
Sing to Me, Gondolier ‘Poems’ _Mrs. Hemans_ 153
Society in Eighteenth- _Lady Mary Wortley Century Venice ‘Letters’ Montagu_ 271
Some Marvels of Venice ‘An Itinerary’ _Fynes Moryson_ 357
Spectral Venice ‘Travel Pictures’ _Hans Andersen_ 17
Spring in Venice ‘Venetian Life’ _W. D. Howells_ 325
St. George of the Greeks ‘The Sentimental Traveller’ _Vernon Lee_ 301
Sunrise in Venice ‘Contarini Fleming’ _Lord Beaconsfield_ 305
Sunset ‘Poems’ _Stopford A. Brooke_ 311
Sunset and Venice ‘Poems’ _Stopford A. Brooke_ 309
That Glorious City in the Sea ‘Italy’ _Samuel Rogers_ 30
The Approach to Venice ‘The Stones of Venice’ _John Ruskin_ 77
The Balcony on the Grand Canal ‘Venetian Life’ _W. D. Howells_ 221
The Beautie and Magnificence of Venice ‘The Commonwealth and Government of Venice’ _Sir Lewes Lewkenor_ 355
The Birth of Venetian Art ‘The Renaissance in Italy’ _Pompeo Molmenti_ 279
The Bride of the Sea ‘The Slopes of Helicon’ _Lloyd Mifflin_ 53
The Charm of the Gondola ‘Anon’ ‘_The Standard_’ 135
The City of Enchantment ‘Venetian Life’ _W. D. Howells_ 96
The Colour of Venice ‘A Garden in Venice’ _F. Eden_ 233
The Doge of Venice goes ‘Letters from in State Italy’ _Goethe_ 364
The Enchanted Voice of ‘Modern Venice Painters’ _John Ruskin_ 288
The Fairy Days of Venice ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur’ _George Sand_ 33
The Glass Furnaces of Murano ‘Familiar Letters’ _James Howell_ 177
The Golden Book of Venice ‘Memorials of a _Richard Monckton Residence on Milnes_ (_Lord the Continent’ Houghton_) 373
The Glory of Colour in Italy ‘The Liberal’ _Leigh Hunt_ 234
The Glory of St. Mark’s ‘The Diary’ _John Evelyn_ 296
The Gondola ‘Beppo’ _Lord Byron_ 145
The Gondola ‘Italy’ _Samuel Rogers_ 151
The Gondolier’s Cry ‘The Stones of Venice’ _John Ruskin_ 154
The Gondoliers of Venice ‘Curiosities of Literature’ _Isaac D’Israeli_ 162
The Grand Canal ‘Italy’ _William Beckford_ 228
The Invitation to the ‘New and Old’ _John Gondola Addington Symonds_ 144
The Jewelled Crown of ‘The Sea-Charm Venice of Venice’ _Stopford A. Brooke_ 90
The Legend of St. Mark ‘Sacred Art’ _Mrs. Jameson_ 299
The Lagoons’ Phantom ‘Venice’ _Beryl de Sélincourt Spell and May Sturge-Henderson_ 109
The Lido ‘Letters from Italy’ _Goethe_ 206
The Lido and its Graves ‘Memorials of a _Richard Monckton Residence on Milnes_ (_Lord the Continent’ Houghton_) 212
The Marriage of Venice ‘Purchas his with the Sea Pilgrimes’ _George Sandys_ 363
The Mirror of the Lagoon ‘The Sea-Charm of Venice’ _Stopford A. Brooke_ 197
The Origin of Venice ‘History of _Niccolo Florence’ Machiavelli_ 345
The Quietude of the Lagoon ‘Cities of Italy’ _Arthur Symons_ 114
The Songs of the Gondoliers ‘Letters from Italy’ _Goethe_ 149
The Soul that Endures ‘Venice’ _Beryl de Sélincourt and May Sturge-Henderson_ 111
The Splendour of St. Mark’s Coryat’s ‘Crudities’ _Thomas Coryat_ 291
‘The Sun of Venice going to Sea’ ‘Modern Painters’ _John Ruskin_ 128
The Throne of Venice ‘The Stones of Venice’ _John Ruskin_ 78
The Unweariedness of Venice ‘Venise’ _Charles Yriarte_ 123
The Venice of Carlo Goldoni ‘Memoirs’ _Carlo Goldoni_ 368
The Venetian Serenade ‘Memorials of a _Richard Monckton Residence on Milnes_ (_Lord the Continent’ Houghton_) 380
This Lovely Venice! ‘A Journey through Italy’ _Mrs. Piozzi_ 37
Three Venetian Feasts Coryat’s ‘Crudities’ _Thomas Coryat_ 263
Titian at Venice ‘Stories of the Italian Artists’ _Vasari_ 285
To an Old Venetian Painting ‘Collected Sonnets’ _Lloyd Mifflin_ 284
To an Old Venetian Wineglass ‘At the Gates of Song’ _Lloyd Mifflin_ 375
To Chioggia with Oar and Sail ‘A Venetian _John Medley’ Addington Symonds_ 193
To Gian Bellini ‘Adriatica’ _Percy Pinkerton_ 284
Torcello ‘The Stones of Venice’ _John Ruskin_ 180
To Venice ‘Poems’ _Mrs. Hemans_ 38
To Venice: A Farewell ‘Poems’ _Cesare Morandi_ 131
Towards Venice ‘Life on the Lagoons’ _Horatio F. Brown_ 76
Upon a Cupboard of Venice-Glasses ‘Poems’ _James Howell_ 185
Veneta Marina ‘Poems’ _Arthur Symons_ 316
Venetian Belles ‘Beppo’ _Lord Byron_ 260
Venetian Caffès ‘A Family Party’ _T. Adolphus Trollope_ 249
Venetian Dames ‘The Diary’ _John Evelyn_ 367
Venetian Enchantment ‘Random Rambles’ _Louise Chandler Moulton_ 10
Venetian Night ‘Poems’ _Arthur Symons_ 317
Venetian Nocturne ‘Collected _A. Mary F. Robinson_ Poems’ (_Madame Duclaux_) 315
Venetian Spell ‘From a Venetian Balcony’ _Lady Lindsay_ 110
Venice ‘Poems’ _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_ 9
Venice ‘Poems’ _Owen Meredith_ 113
Venice ‘Memorials of a Tour on the _Richard Monckton Continent’ Milnes_ 290
Venice ‘Poems’ _Alan Sullivan_ 56
Venice and her Children ‘The Uscoque’ _George Sand_ 270
Venice at Twilight ‘Poems’ _Hélène Vacaresco_ 339
Venice from the Euganean Hills ‘Poems’ _Percy B. Shelley_ 91
Venice in Autumn ‘Adriatica’ _Percy Pinkerton_ 331
Venice in Winter ‘Marietta’ _Francis Marion Crawford_ 341
Venice: Its Pleasurable Melancholy ‘Venise’ _Charles Yriarte_ 116
Venice: Night Illusion-- Morning Reality ‘Venise’ _Charles Yriarte_ 306
Venice seen in the Distance ‘Italy’ _William Beckford_ 72
Venice: Some Sixteenth- Century Characteristics ‘Hakluyt’s Voyages’ _Laurence Aldersey_ 353
Venice: That Rare City ‘Familiar Letters’ _James Howell_ 39
Venice the Enchantress ‘The Makers of Venice’ _Mrs. Oliphant_ 7
Venice: The End of Winter ‘Nova Primavera’ _Enrico Albini_ 341
Venice: The Gem of the World Coryat’s ‘Crudities’ _Thomas Coryat_ 62
Venice the Proud ‘Poems’ _Mrs. Hemans_ 35
Venice the Unfallen ‘Venetia’ _Lord Beaconsfield_ 235
Venice under the Starlight ‘Venise’ _Charles Yriarte_ 129
‘Venice, whose Name did ‘Memorials of a once adorn the World’ Tour on the _Richard Monckton Continent’ Milnes_ 52
Venise ‘Poems’ _Alfred de Musset_ 46
Were Life but as the Gondola ‘Poems’ _Arthur Hugh Clough_ 148
Written at Venice ‘Memorials of a _Richard Monckton Residence on Milnes_ (_Lord the Continent’ Houghton_) 5
Youth in Venice ‘The Two Foscari’ _Lord Byron_ 119
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Transcriber’s Note:
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.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. 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.