Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

ENTERING VENICE AT TWILIGHT

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

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

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

MRS. RADCLIFFE.

THE SEA SPELL

‘Venice herself is poetry, and creates a poet out of the
dullest clay.’ It was a poet who spoke, and his clay
was instinct with the breath of genius. But it is true
that Venice lends wings to duller clay; it has been her
fate to make poets of many who were not so before--a
responsibility that entails loss on her as well as gain.
She has lived--she has loved and suffered and created; and
the echoes of her creation are with us still; the pulse of
the life which once she knew continues to throb behind the
loud and insistent present.
BERYL DE SÉLINCOURT AND MAY STURGE HENDERSON.

... O! for the echo on Lido’s shore
Of the grey Adriatic’s sullen roar,
And the tender blue which sunset throws
On our Euganean hills,
While the Grand Canal is a path of rose,
And the watery mist with radiance fills,
And the mighty palaces loom pale
Like battlements in a fairy tale.
LADY LINDSAY.

The great Venetian heaven, overarching the lagoon, has
especially this power to fascinate, to take one suddenly by
surprise with an unlooked-for revelation of its beauty, its
greatness, and its immortal activity; charging the spirit
with some transport of the skies, and compelling it to its
knees in adoration.
HORATIO F. BROWN.

Ah! you never yet
Were far away from Venice, never saw
Her beautiful towers in the receding distance,
While every furrow of the vessel’s track
Seem’d ploughing deep into your heart; you never
Saw day go down upon your native spires
So calmly with its gold and crimson glory,
And after dreaming a disturbed vision
Of them and theirs, awoke and found them not.
LORD BYRON.

THE LAGOONS’ PHANTOM SPELL

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

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

BERYL DE SÉLINCOURT AND MAY STURGE HENDERSON.

VENETIAN SPELL

O spell of dawn!
From opal skies a roseate mist floats out,
And slowly wraps the towers and domes about.
All Venice sleeps--nay, yonder a black barge
Slides to the open from the dusky marge.

O spell of silence!
Peace of mind and soul--the plash of oars,
Perchance a distant bell from island shores;
Upon the glassy stillness of the mere
No other sound to vex a fretful ear.

O spell of age!
Historic scenes and names and memories
Are bulwarks of the city in the seas;
Each palace is a book, a scroll each wall--
The sculptured poems hold our hearts in thrall.

O spell of night!
First wanness, then the blue, then sudden dark;
Quiv’ring reflection from each tiny spark;
The water makes a mirror for the moon,
The heavens become a star-beflecked lagoon.

O spell of beauty!
Like the goddess of grey legend-lore,
Cypris or Hulda, sung in runes of yore,
She--Venice--binds men with a magic chain--
Her slaves, that gave an hour, through life remain.

LADY LINDSAY.

THE SOUL THAT ENDURES

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

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

BERYL DE SÉLINCOURT AND MAY STURGE HENDERSON.

VENICE

The sylphs and ondines,
And the sea-kings and queens,
Long ago; long ago, on the waves built a city,
As lovely as seems
To some bard, in his dreams,
The soul of his latest love-ditty.
Long ago, long ago,--ah! that was long ago
Thick as gems on the chalices
Kings keep for treasure,
Were the temples and palaces
In this city of pleasure;
And the night broke out shining
With lamps and with festival,
O’er the squares, o’er the streets;
And the soft sea went, pining
With love, through the musical,
Musical bridges, and marble retreats
Of this city of wonder, where dwelt the ondines,
Long ago, and the sylphs, and the sea-kings and queens.

--Ah! that was long ago!
But the sylphs and ondines,
And the sea-kings and queens
Are fled under the waves:
And I glide, and I glide
Up the glimmering tide
Through a city of graves.
Here will I bury my heart,
Wrapt in the dream it dreamed;
One grave more to the many!
One grave as silent as any;
Sculptured about with art,--
For a palace this tomb once seemed.
Light lips have laughed there,
Bright eyes have beamed.
Revel and dance;
Lady and lover!
Pleasure hath quaffed there:
Beauty hath gleamed,
Love wooed Romance.
Now all is over!
And I glide, and I glide
Up the glimmering tide,
’Mid forms silently passing, as silent as any,
Here, ’mid the waves,
In the city of graves,
To bury my heart--one grave more to the many!

OWEN MEREDITH.

THE QUIETUDE OF THE LAGOON

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

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

ARTHUR SYMONS.

A SEA-VIEW

_Translated by_ BARONESS SWIFT.

Before me spreads the sea, clear and serene;
Upon its shore a wave flows to and fro,
A sky reflecting, bright as beryl’s sheen,
A sky resplendent with the sunlight’s glow.

A snowy sail, afar, in ether blue,
Seems from the world detach’d, half lost to view,
And, o’er the sea, a gull, pausing in flight,
Laughs at his image in that mirror bright.

ANTONIO NEGRI.

VENICE: ITS PLEASURABLE MELANCHOLY

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

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

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

CHARLES YRIARTE.

YOUTH IN VENICE

_Guard._ ... How feel you?
_Jacopo Foscari._ Like a boy--Oh Venice!
_Guard._ And your limbs?
_Jac. Fos._ Limbs! how often have they borne me
Bounding o’er yon blue tide, as I have skimm’d
The gondola along in childish race,
And, masked as a young gondolier, amidst
My gay competitors, noble as I,
Raced for our pleasure, in the pride of strength;
While the fair populace of crowding beauties,
Plebeian as patrician, cheer’d us on
With dazzling smiles, and wishes audible,
And waving kerchiefs, and applauding hands,
Even to the goal!--How many times have I
Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring,
The waves all roughen’d; with a swimmer’s stroke
Flinging the billows back from my drench’d hair.
And laughing from my lips the audacious brine,
Which kiss’d it like a wine-cup, rising o’er
The waves as they arose, and prouder still
The loftier they uplifted me; and oft,
In wantonness of spirit, plunging down
Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making
My way to shells and sea-weed, all unseen
By those above, till they wax’d fearful; then
Returning with my grasp full of such tokens
As show’d that I had search’d the deep: exulting
With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep
The long-suspended breath, again I spurn’d
The foam which broke around me, and pursued
My track like a sea-bird.--I was a boy then.

LORD BYRON.

BOATS AND VOICES

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

LADY RITCHIE.

FROM A PALACE-STEP AT VENICE

I muse ... on a ruined palace-step
At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit
Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit
England gave birth to? Who’s adorable
Enough reclaim a----no Sordello’s Will
Alack!--be queen to me? That Bassanese
Busied among her smoking fruit-boats? These
Perhaps from our delicious Asolo
Who twinkle, pigeons o’er the portico
Not prettier, bind June lilies into sheaves
To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves
Soiled by their own loose gold-meal? Ah, beneath
The cool arch stoops she, brownest cheek! Her wreath
Endures a month--a half-month--if I make
A queen of her, continue for her sake
Sordello’s story? Nay, that Paduan girl
Splashes with barer legs where a live whirl
In the dead black Giudecca proves sea-weed
Drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed
Save one pale-red striped, pale-blue turbaned post
For gondolas.
You sad dishevelled ghost
That pluck at me and point, are you advised
I breathe? Let stay those girls (e’en her disguised
--Jewels i’ the locks that love no crownet like
Their native field-buds and the green wheat-spike
So fair! who left this end of June’s turmoil,
Shook off, as might a lily its gold soil,
Pomp, save a foolish gem or two, and free
In dream, came join the peasants o’er the sea.)
Look they too happy, too tricked out? Confess
There is such niggard stock of happiness
To share, that, do one’s uttermost, dear wretch,
One labours ineffectually to stretch
If o’er you so that mother and children, both
May equitably flaunt the sumpter-cloth!
Divide the robe yet farther: be content
With seeing just a score pre-eminent
Through shreds of it, acknowledged happy wights,
Engrossing what should furnish all, by rights!
For, these in evidence, you clearlier claim
A garb for all the rest,--grace all, the same
All these my peasants. I ask youth and strength
And health for each of you, not more--at length
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
Might add the spirit’s to the body’s grace,
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
But in this magic weather one discards
Much old requirements: Venice seems a type
Of Life--’twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As Life, the somewhat, hangs ’twixt nought and nought:
’Tis Venice, and ’tis Life--as good you sought
To spare me the Piazza’s slippery stone
Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
As hinder Life the evil with the good
Which make up Living, rightly understood.

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE UNWEARIEDNESS OF VENICE

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

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

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

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

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

CHARLES YRIARTE.

ON THE ZATTERE

INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS

Only to live, only to be
In Venice, is enough for me.
To be a beggar, and to lie
At home beneath the equal sky,
To feel the sun, to drink the night,
Had been enough for my delight;
Happy because the sun allowed
The luxury of being proud
Not to some only, but to all
The right to lie along the wall.
Here my ambition dies; I ask
No more than some half-idle task,
To be done idly, and to fill
Some gaps of leisure when I will.
I care not if the world forget
That it was ever in my debt;
I care not where its prizes fall;
I long for nothing, having all.
The sun each morning, on his way,
Calls for me at the Zattere;
I wake and greet him, I go out,
Meet him, and follow him about;
We spend the day together, he
Goes to bed early; as for me,
I make the moon my mistress, prove
Constant to my inconstant love.
For she is coy with me, will hie
To my arms amorously, and fly
Ere I have kissed her; ah! but she,
She it is, to eternity,
I adore only; but her smile
Bewilders the enchanted isle
To more celestial magic glows
At once the crystal and the rose.
The crazy lover of the moon,
I hold her, on the still lagoon,
Sometimes I hold her in my arms;
’Tis her cold silver kiss that warms
My blood to singing, and puts fire
Into the heart of my desire.
And all desire in Venice dies
To such diviner lunacies;
Life dreams itself: the world goes on,
Oblivious, in oblivion;
Life dreams itself, content to keep
Happy immortally, in sleep.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

‘THE SUN OF VENICE GOING TO SEA’

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

JOHN RUSKIN.

VENICE UNDER THE STARLIGHT

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

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

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

CHARLES YRIARTE.

TO VENICE: A FAREWELL

Venice, farewell, your evening tints are shed,--
Soft crimson shadows at this hour you lay
Upon each palace now that gleameth red
Ere lovelier eve gives place to lovely day.
The tender dawn, the golden noon, soft night,
Will ever stay a vision of delight.

No more on quiet lagoon, by dreamy isle,
Shall my gondola there in silence glide;
No more shall I behold you sadly smile
Where loveliest tints are gathered on your tide.
The colour, light, the dreamy dip of oar
Are tenderest memories for evermore.

CESARE MORANDI.

NIGHT IN VENICE

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

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

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

GONDOLA AND GONDOLIER

The gondola is one of the great charms of Venice: it
alone, without art, without the genius of artists which
arrests one at every step, would be enough to fascinate
the stranger. In that gentle swinging like the swinging of
a hammock, that light plash of the oar which caresses the
ear, that incredible sensibility of the boat itself, which
seems to move like a living being, in these and in the
surrounding silence there is from the first moment a charm
which no one can escape.
CHARLES YRIARTE.

Let me this gondola boat compare to the slumberous cradle,
And to a spacious bier liken the cover demure;
Thus on the open canal through life we are swaying and swimming
Onward with never a care, coffin and cradle between.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (FROM GOETHE).

The gondolier in Venice is as fine to look at as his
gondola; he has colour, too, in the ruddy dye of his face,
the infinite variety of his amber shirts and blue trousers
and scarlet sashes; and if you really know him, he is one
of the most charming of people.
ARTHUR SYMONS.

‘Row, Zarzi!’

The gondolier rowed with increased vigour; the rowlock
now and then creaked under his effort. The Fondaco dei
Truchi melted away like worn and marvellously discoloured
ivory, like the surviving portico of a ruined mosque. The
palace of the Cornaro and the palace of the Pesaro passed
them, like two opaque giants blackened by time as by the
smoke of a conflagration. The Ca’ d’Oro passed them like a
divine play of stone and air; then the Rialto showed its
ample back already noisy with popular life, laden with its
encumbered shops, filled, ... like an enormous cornucopia
pouring on the shore all around it an abundance of the
fruits of the earth.
GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO.

THE CHARM OF THE GONDOLA

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

ANON.

IN A GONDOLA

_He sings._

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
In this my singing!
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice’ streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

_She speaks._