Chapter XCIX: Letter 254: To Mr. Murray

"Venice, November 25. 1816.

"It is some months since I have heard from or of you--I think, not
since I left Diodati. From Milan I wrote once or twice; but have
been here some little time, and intend to pass the winter without
removing. I was much pleased with the Lago di Garda, and with
Verona, particularly the amphitheatre, and a sarcophagus in a
convent garden, which they show as Juliet's: they insist on the
_truth_ of her history. Since my arrival at Venice, the lady of the
Austrian governor told me that between Verona and Vicenza there are
still ruins of the castle of the _Montecchi_, and a chapel once
appertaining to the Capulets. Romeo seems to have been of Vicenza
by the tradition; but I was a good deal surprised to find so firm a
faith in Bandello's novel, which seems really to have been founded
on a fact.

"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; however, there is much left
still; the Carnival, too, is coming.

"St. Mark's, and indeed Venice, is most alive at night. The
theatres are not open till _nine_, and the society is
proportionably late. All this is to my taste, but most of your
countrymen miss and regret the rattle of hackney coaches, without
which they can't sleep.

"I have got remarkably good apartments in a private house; I see
something of the inhabitants (having had a good many letters to
some of them); I have got my gondola; I read a little, and luckily
could speak Italian (more fluently than correctly) long ago, I am
studying, out of curiosity, the _Venetian_ dialect, which is very
naïve, and soft, and peculiar, though not at all classical; I go
out frequently, and am in very good contentment.

"The Helen of Canova (a bust which is in the house of Madame the
Countess d'Albrizzi, whom I know) is, without exception, to my
mind, the most perfectly beautiful of human conceptions, and far
beyond my ideas of human execution.

"In this beloved marble view,
Above the works and thoughts of man,
What Nature _could_, but _would not_, do,
And Beauty and Canova _can_!
Beyond imagination's power,
Beyond the bard's defeated art,
With immortality her dower,
Behold the _Helen_ of the _heart_!

"Talking of the 'heart' reminds me that I have fallen in
love--fathomless love; but lest you should make some splendid
mistake, and envy me the possession of some of those princesses or
countesses with whose affections your English voyagers are apt to
invest themselves, I beg leave to tell you that my goddess is only
the wife of a 'Merchant of Venice;' but then she is pretty as an
antelope, is but two-and-twenty years old, has the large, black,
oriental eyes, with the Italian countenance, and dark glossy hair,
of the curl and colour of Lady J * *'s. Then she has the voice of a
lute, and the song of a seraph (though not quite so sacred),
besides a long postscript of graces, virtues, and accomplishments,
enough to furnish out a new chapter for Solomon's Song. But her
great merit is finding out mine--there is nothing so amiable as
discernment.

"The general race of women appear to be handsome; but in Italy, as
on almost all the Continent, the highest orders are by no means a
well-looking generation, and indeed reckoned by their countrymen
very much otherwise. Some are exceptions, but most of them as ugly
as Virtue herself.

"If you write, address to me here, _poste restante_, as I shall
probably stay the winter over. I never see a newspaper, and know
nothing of England, except in a letter now and then from my sister.
Of the MS. sent you, I know nothing, except that you have received
it, and are to publish it, &c. &c.: but when, where, and how, you
leave me to guess; but it don't much matter.

"I suppose you have a world of works passing through your process
for next year? When does Moore's poem appear? I sent a letter for
him, addressed to your care, the other day."

* * * * *