Chapter II (1)

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