Chapter II (2)

I was lately to see the arsenal of Venice, one of the worthiest things of Christendom; they say there are as many galleys, and galeasses of all sorts, belonging to St. Mark, either in cours, as anchor, in dock, or upon the carine, as there be days in the year; here they can build a complete galley in half a day, and put her afloat in perfect equipage, having all the ingredients fitted beforehand, as they did in three hours, when Henry the Third passed this way to France from Poland, who wished, that besides Paris and his parliament towns, he had this arsenal in exchange for three of his chiefest cities. There are three hundred people perpetually here at work, and if one comes young and grows old in St. Mark’s service, he hath a pension from the State during life. Being brought to see one of the Clarissimos that governs this arsenal, this huge sea store-house, amongst other matters reflecting upon England, he was saying: ‘That if Cavalier Don Roberto Mansell were now here, he thought verily the republic would make a proffer to him to be admiral of that fleet of galleys and galleons, which are now going against the Duke of Ossuna and the forces of Naples, you are so well known here.’

I was, since I came hither, in Murano, a little island about the distance of Lambeth from London, where crystal glass is made, and it is a rare sight to see a whole street, where on the one side there are twenty furnaces together at work. They say here that although one should transplant a glass-furnace from Murano to Venice herself, or to any of the little assembly of islands about her, or to any other part of the earth besides, and use the same materials, the same workmen, the same fuel, the self-same ingredients every day, yet they cannot make crystal glass in that perfection, for beauty and lustre, as in Murano. Some impute it to the quality of the circumambient air that hangs over the place, which is purified and attenuated by the concurrence of so many fires that are in those furnaces night and day perpetually, for they are like the vestal fire which never goes out....

The art of glass-making here is very highly valued; for, whosoever be of that profession are gentlemen _ipso facto_, and it is not without reason; it being a rare kind of knowledge and chemistry to transmute dust and sand (for they are the only main ingredients) to such a diaphanous pellucid dainty body as you see a crystal glass is, which hath this property above gold or silver or any other mineral, to admit no poison; as also that it never wastes or loses a whit of its first weight, though you use it never so long. When I saw so many sorts of curious glasses made here I thought upon the compliment which a gentleman put upon a lady in England, who having five or six comely daughters, said he never saw in his life such a dainty cupboard of crystal glasses; the compliment proceeds, it seems, from a saying they have here, ‘That the first handsome woman that ever was made, was made of Venice glass,’ which implies beauty, but brittleness with all (and Venice is not unfurnished with some of that mould, for no place abounds more with lasses and glasses).... When I pried into the materials, and observed the furnaces and the calcinations, the transubstantiations, the liquefactions that are incident to this art, my thoughts were raised to a higher speculation: that if this small furnace-fire hath the virtue to convert such a small lump of dark dust and sand into such a precious clear body as crystal, surely that grand universal fire which shall happen at the day of judgment, may by its violent ardour vitrify and turn to one lump of crystal the whole body of the earth; nor am I the first that fell upon this conceit.

JAMES HOWELL.

TORCELLO

Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen grey; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the colour of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but further back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO and VENICE.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea.

The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower’s scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow land.

The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water’s edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken for the outhouses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of the ‘Palazzo publico,’ both dating as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church, to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight and distress, who sought in the hurried erection of their island church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendour, and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honour to God by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men ‘persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed.’ ...

And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:

‘The sea is His, and He made it;
And His hands prepared the dry land.’

JOHN RUSKIN.

UPON A CUPBOARD OF VENICE-GLASSES

SENT FOR A NEW YEAR’S GIFT TO A CHOICE LADY

MADAME,

If on this New Year’s gift you cast your eye,
You plainly may therein at once descry
A twofold quality; for there will appear
A brittle substance, but the Object clear.

So in the donor, Madame, you may see
These qualities inherent for to be;
His pow’r which brittle little is, Helas,
His mind sincere, and pure as any glass.

The old philosopher did wish there were
A window in his heart of chrystal clear,
Through which his friends might the more clearly see
His inward passions, and integrity.

I wish the like, for there you sure would rest
Of my clear mind, and motions of my breast.

But if it question’d be to what intent
With _Venice_-glasses I do you present,
I answer, that I could no gift perceive
So fit for me to give, you to receive:
For those rare Graces that in you excel,
And _you_ that hold them, one may parallel
Unto a _Venice_-glass, which as ’tis clear,
And can admit no poyson to come near,
So virtue dwells in you, nor can endure
That vice should harbour in a breast so pure.

JAMES HOWELL.

SAN FRANCESCO DEL DESERTO

Two years have gone since on this desert place
We landed, she and I, alone, at one;
But now the wild sea-marshes have no grace,
For she who made their beauty--she is gone.

That day the island in the afternoon
Shone like a gem, and on its point the pine
Kept steadfast watch, while in the clear lagoon
Unwavering lay the shadow and the shrine.

‘How lonely,’ so she said, ‘how still, how fair!
Tell me the story why they call this place
St. Francis of the Desert. Silent air,
And silent light sleep here, and silent space.’

‘Once in his wanderings,’ thus I told the tale,
‘St. Francis, overtaken by the night,
Pushed here his bark to shore and furled his sail,
And wearied, slumbered till the morning light.

‘He woke, and saw his brother, the great Sun
Rise up, full-orbed, refreshed, to praise the Lord,
And so began the Matins: “Is there none
To sing,” he said, “responses?” At the word,

‘The nightingale, the blackbird and the thrush,
And all the little fowl with dancing notes,
Perched joyous on the low acacia bush,
Whereby he knelt, and with full-swelling throats

‘Sang a clear service like the boys in quire;
And Francis, happy as a child, gave thanks
To those sweet children of the heavenly Sire--
Hence grew this shrine upon the wan sea-banks.’

The story pleased her; and the low-roofed church,
The bricked-paved cloister set with balsams round,
The marble well, and silence-guarded porch,
The cypresses that clasped the garden ground,

The soft-leaved poplars rippling in the air,
The white narcissus tufts beneath the trees,
And the lonely waters whispering everywhere;
The blue sky filled to brimming with the breeze

That drove the red-sailed barks along the wave--
All pleased, but most the silent solitude;
The still Franciscan walking slow and grave,
The absent life wherein no cares intrude,

Obedient, chaste and poor--alone with sea
And sky and clouds and winds and God’s still voice;
Unvexèd by the clamorous world, and free
For worship and for work, to die or to rejoice.

‘I would not choose,’ she said, ‘this quiet life;
But if my wheels were broken in the race,
If, having done my best, I failed in the strife,
It would be well to work in this sweet place.

‘But you and I are one--our hopes and need,
Our joy and love are in the world of men;
Let fall the sail and bid the rowers speed,
Life calls aloud--Back to the city then.’

So spake she, bathed in sunshine and delight,
Her hand upon the wooden cross whose shade
Falls on the landing-place. She was so bright
That when I looked on her I was afraid.

Good cause for fear--one little month and then
Dark Ocean quenched her light, and now no more
I see this island in the salt sea-fen,
And think what joy, what love I had of yore.

’Twas summer then and glorious afternoon,
And now ’tis autumn and a dusky eve;
Night rushes swiftly o’er the pale lagoon,
The wet seaweed and lapping waters weave

A mournful song together, and I walk
Beneath the solemn cypress-trees alone;
High overhead the tinkling poplars talk
Of me, and wonder where my love has flown.

I cannot tell them, I have never heard;
My boat has drawn unto a silent shore;
But could she speak to me one little word,
Or could I hope to love her evermore,

Then I might see the sun arise, and sing
Matins of praise, like Francis, o’er the sea;
And every happy bird upon the wing,
And all the angels, would rejoice with me.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

SAN FRANCESCO DELLA VIGNA

Do you know San Francesco della Vigna, in Venice?

Some say that its tall tower is the first point rising above the waves, which the returning Venetian sailor sees as he comes homeward from the south-east, over the foaming bars of Chioggia and Malamocco, one slender shaft lifted against sky, calling him back to his city and his home. All the mariners and fishermen, who come and go over the Adrian waters, have an especial tenderness, an especial reverence, for Saint Francis of the Vineyard. There is no vineyard now; only one small square garden, with a cloister running round it, arched, columned, marble paved, where the dead lie under the worn smooth slabs, and the box-edges hem in thyme, and balsams, and basil, and carnations, and thrift, and saxifrage, and other homely hardy plants which need slight fostering care. The sea winds blow strongly there, and the sea fogs drift thickly, and the steam and smoke of the foundries round about hang in heavy clouds, where once the pavilions and the lawns and the terraces of the patricians of Venice touched the grey-green lagoon; but this garden of San Francesco is still sweet and fresh: shut in between its marble colonnades with the deep brown shadow of the church leaning over it, and the chiming of the bells, and the melody of the organ rolling above it in deep waves of sound, jarred sometimes by the clash of the hammers falling on the iron and the copper of the foundries near at hand, and sometimes sinking to a sweet silence, only softly stirred by the splash of an oar as a boat passes up or down the narrow canal.

For the sake of that cloistered garden, a gondola came one summer every day to the landing-place before San Francesco. In the gondola was an artist, a painter of Paris, Yvon Dorât, who had seen the spot, and liked it, and returned to paint from it every day, finding an inexpressible charm in its contrasts of gloom and light, of high brown walls and low-lying graves, of fresh green herbs and flowers, and melancholy immemorial marble aisles. He meant to make a great picture of it, with the ethereal Venetian sky above all, and, between the straight edges of the bay, a solitary monk passing thoughtfully. Dorât was under the charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm, voluptuous and yet spiritual, which no artist or poet ever can resist, and these summer months were to him as a vision of languor, and beauty and rest, in which the white wings of sea-birds, and the silver of gleaming waters, and the festal figures of Carpaccio and the golden warmth of Palma, Vecchio, and the glories of sunsets aflame behind the Euganean hills, and the mystery of moonless night, with the tide washing against the weed-grown piles of a Madonna of the lagoon, were all blended in that confusion of past and present, of art and nature, of desire and repose, which fills the soul and the senses of those who love Venice, and live in thrall to her.

OUIDA.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI’S

Oh, Galuppi,[2] Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I give you credit, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the
kings,
Where St. Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by ... what
you call
... Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival!
I was never out of England--it’s as if I saw it all!

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,
O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well (and it was graceful of them) they’d break talk off and afford
--She, to bite her mask’s black velvet, he to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on
sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--‘Must we
die?’
Those commiserating sevenths--‘Life might last! we can but try!’

‘Were you happy?’--‘Yes.’--‘And are you still as happy?’--‘Yes--And
you?’
--‘Then more kisses’--‘Did _I_ stop them, when a million seemed so
few?’
Hark--the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to!

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.’

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason,--think to take my stand nor swerve
Till I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,
In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve,

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned--
‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned!
The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.

‘Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction,--you’ll not die, it cannot be!

‘As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the
crop.
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

ROBERT BROWNING.

[2] Galuppi the musician was a native of Burano, a small
island about a mile from Torcello, where his name is
held in great esteem.--A. H. H.

TO CHIOGGIA WITH OAR AND SAIL

The _sandolo_ is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or ferro which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just raised above the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike movement of the gondola. In one of these boats--called by him the _Fisolo_ or _Seamew_--my friend Eustace had started with Antonio, intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured, to hoist a sail and help himself along. After breakfast, when the crew for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed with the Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which occur as a respite from broken weather, when the air is windless and the light falls soft through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the Redentore, the islands in front of us, St. Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco, seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. The Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, and almost blent with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs into their work; and soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a breeze from the Adriatic caught us sideways for a while....

Now we are well lost in the lagoons--Venice no longer visible behind; the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disappeared in light irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the suggestion of coastlines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre, all remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached. We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead--a huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for a twelve hours’ cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came, with variegated sails of orange, red, and saffron, curiously chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints. A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving eastward on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according as each wills.

The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia, which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language and race and customs have held the two populations apart from these distant years when Genoa and the Republic of St. Mark fought their duel to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his pipe more than his _donna_ or his wife. The main canal is lined with substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But from Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter. Wandering about its wide deserted courts and _calli_, we feel the spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility....

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering along the sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing--those at least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad, and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion. But some transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through the dignity with which these men invested them. By the peculiarity of their treatment the _recitativo_ of the stage assumed a solemn movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna’s lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that calm--stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, till San Giorgio’s gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with the whispers at the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep-scented darkness of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was on its burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

THE MIRROR OF THE LAGOON

This strange, soft sea, so tempered into gentlehood, brings through its quietude another element of charm into Venice. It reflects all things with a wonderful perfection. Whatever loveliness is by its side it makes more lovely. Shallow itself, it seems deep; and the towers and palaces of Venice in all their colours descend and shine among other clouds and in another sky below. All outlines of sculpture and architecture, of embossment, in wall and window; all play of sunshine and shade; all the human life in balcony, bridge or quay, on barge or boat, are in the waters as in a silent dream--revealed in every line and colour, but with an exquisite difference in softness and purity. All Nature’s doings in the sky are also repeated with a tender fidelity in the mirror of the lagoon--morning light, noonday silver, purple thunder-cloud in the afternoon, sunset vapours, the moon and stars of night--and not only on the surface, but also, it seems, in an immeasurable depth. To look over the side of the boat into the water is to cry, ‘I see infinite space.’

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

LAGOON MESSAGE

Not now, but later, when the road
We tread together breaks apart,
When thou, my dearest, distant art,
And tedious days have swelled the load
Upon my heart.

Or haply after that, when I
Am sealed within an earthy bed,
Resting and unrememberèd,
This scene will speak and easily
The whole be said.

Some eve, when from his burning chair
The sun below Fusina slips,
And all the sable poplar-tips
Wave in the warm, vermilion air,
The wind, the lips

Of the soft breeze with wayward touch
Shall tell thee all I longed to own;
And thou, on lurid lakes alone,
Wilt say: ‘Poor soul, he loved me much;
And he is gone.’

PERCY PINKERTON.

ON THE LAGOONS

The afternoons invite us to a further flight upon the water. Both sandolo and gondola await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the wind and inclination tempt us.

Yonder lies San Luzzaro, with the neat red buildings of the Armenian convent. The last oleander blossoms shine rosy pink above its walls against the pure blue sky as we glide into the little harbour. Boats piled with coal-black grapes block the landing-place, for the Padri are gathering their vintage from the Lido, and their presses run with new wine. Eustace and I have not come to revive memories of Byron--that curious patron-saint of the Armenian colony--or to inspect the printing-press, which issues books of little value for our studies. It is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an hour beneath the low broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines, through which the domes and towers of Venice rise more beautiful by distance.

Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall--block piled on block--of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on these _murazzi_, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them had to be brought across the Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea might effect an entrance into the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of some places where the _murazzi_ were broken in a gale, or _sciroccale_, not very long ago. Lying awake in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one hears the sea thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God for the _murazzi_. On such a night it happened once to me to dream a dream of Venice overwhelmed by water. I saw the billows roll across the smooth lagoon, like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San Marco’s domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed. And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to their fall, while boats piled high with men and women strove to stem the tide, and save themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the sea’s roar and Tintoretto’s painting. But this afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the moist autumn air we break tall branches of the seeded yellowing samphire from hollows of the rocks, and bear them homeward in a wayward bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn.

Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth of the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and meadows, intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind the Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines Venice--a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids, Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last, we see the first lamps glitter on the Zattere. The quiet of the night has come.

Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the zenith, and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step, stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or, again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson, and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one such evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea between Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

AT THE LIDO

Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent. It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy, above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant’ Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant’ Elisabetta offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour’s contemplation of a limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant’ Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across the island and back again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with them in the shade of the little _osteria’s_ wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to Lido was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are welcome to the artist’s soul. I have always held that in our modern life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopœic sense--that sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail judged by this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.

I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the Ægean or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows plunge in tideless instability.

We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad _pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown back upon his matted _zazzera_ of dark hair tipped with dusky brown. This shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of the lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and sunset gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin bronzed, but showing white and healthful through open front and sleeves of lilac shirt. The dashing sparkle of this animate splendour, who looked to me as though the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some hour of secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasized by a curious dint dividing his square chin--a cleft that harmonized with smile on lip and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon a reader to compare eyes to opals. Yet Stefano’s eyes, as they met mine, had the vitreous intensity of opals, as though the colour of Venetian waters were vitalized in them. This noticeable being had a rough, hoarse voice, which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god, might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages from crests of tossing billows.

I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the lagoons was humanized; the spirit of the salt-water lakes had appeared to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given; I was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.

Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews’ cemetery. It is a quiet place, where the flat gravestones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian, lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet, knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes. Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and defile these habitations of the dead:

‘Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.’

Some of the gravestones have been used to fence the towing-path; and one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian marble.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

THE LIDO

Yesterday I set out early with my tutelary genius for the Lido, the tongue of land which shuts in the lagoons, and divides them from the sea. We landed and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur,--it was the sea! I soon saw it: it crested high against the shore, as it retired,--it was about noon, and time of ebb. I have then seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it. I wished the children had been there to gather the shells; childlike, I myself picked up plenty of them.... On the Lido, not far from the sea, is the burial-place of Englishmen, and a little further on, of the Jews: both alike are refused the privilege of resting in consecrated ground. I found here the tomb of Smith, the noble English consul, and that of his first wife. It is to him that I owe my first copy of Palladio; I thanked him for it here in his unconsecrated grave....

The Lido is at best but a sand-bank. But the sea--it is a grand sight! I will try and get a sail upon it some day in a fishing-boat: the gondolas never venture out so far....

A delicious day from morning to night! I have been towards Chioggia, as far as Pelestrina, where are the great structures, called _murazzi_, which the Republic has caused to be raised against the sea. They are hewn of stone, and properly are intended to protect from the fury of the wild element the Lido, which separates the lagoons from the sea.

The lagoons are the work of old nature. First of all, the land and tide, the ebb and flow, working against each other, and then the gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, together, the causes why, at the upper end of the Adriatic, we find a pretty extensive range of marshes, which, covered by the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the ebb. Art took possession of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice, formed out of a group of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and labour, deep canals have been dug through the marshes, in order that at the time of high water, ships of war might pass to the chief points. What human industry and wit contrived and executed of old, skill and industry must now keep up....

Yesterday evening I ascended the tower of St. Mark’s: as I had lately seen from its top the lagoons in their glory at flood-time, I wished to see them at low water; for in order to have a correct idea of the place, it is necessary to take in both views. It looks rather strange to see land all around one, where a little before the eye fell upon a mirror of waters. The islands are no longer islands--merely higher and house-crowned spots in one large morass of a grey-greenish colour, and intersected by beautiful canals.

GOETHE.

ON THE LAGOONS

My gondola goes sailing
Over the ruffled brine,
While in the west are paling
The purple and carmine.

The light yet burns and blazes
With richest, rosiest hue
Where red San Giorgio raises
Its belfry in the blue.

As soft scirocco tosses
Foam to my face and spray
Athwart my _ferro_ crosses,
Along the water-way,

In cage-like _barca_ seated,
A soldier, pale and bent,
One to whom has been meted
Long, lonely punishment.

I catch the look imploring
That he to me has cast,
As, indolently oaring,
His sullen guards go past.

Not any word is spoken,
Only a smile from me
Gives the poor prisoner token
Of my heart’s sympathy.

Brief, brief has been our meeting,
And, as the sea grows grey,
Amid the rose light fleeting
We pass upon our way.

PERCY PINKERTON.

À LA ZUECCA

À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise
À Saint-Blaise.
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Nous étions bien là.

Mais de vous en souvenir
Prendrez vous la peine?
Mais de vous en souvenir
Et d’y revenir,

À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Dans les prés fleuris cueillir la verveine;
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Vivre et mourir là.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

LA MADONNA DELL’ACQUA

_In the centre of the lagoon between Venice and the mouths of the Brenta, supported on a few mouldering piles, stands a small shrine dedicated to the Madonna dell’Acqua, which the gondolier never passes without a prayer._

Around her shrine no earthly blossoms blow,
No footsteps fret the pathway to and fro;
No sign nor record of departed prayer,
Print of the stone, nor echo of the air;
Worn by the lip, nor wearied by the knee,--
Only a deeper silence of the sea:
For there, in passing, pause the breezes bleak,
And the foam fades, and all the waves are weak.
The pulse-like oars in softer fall succeed,
The black prow falters through the wild seaweed--
Where, twilight-borne, the minute thunders reach,
Of deep-mouthed surf, that bays by Lido’s beach.
With intermittent motion traversed far,
And shattered glancing of the western star,
Till the faint storm-bird on the heaving flow
Drops in white circles, silently like snow.
Not here the ponderous gem nor pealing note,
Dim to adorn--insentient to adore--
But purple-dyed, the mists of evening float,
In ceaseless incense from the burning floor
Of ocean, and the gathered gold of heaven
Laces its sapphire vault, and, early given
The white rays of the rushing firmament
Pierce the blue-quivering night through wreath or rent
Of cloud inscrutable and motionless,--
Hectic and wan, and moon-companioned cloud!
Oh! lone Madonna, angel of the deep,
When the night falls, and deadly winds are loud,
Will not thy love be with us while we keep
Our watch upon the waters, and the gaze
Of thy soft eyes, that slumber not, nor sleep?
Deem not then, stranger, that such trust is vain;
Faith walks not on these weary waves alone,
Though weakness dread or apathy disdain
The spot which God has hallowed for His own.
They sin who pass it lightly, ill-divining
The glory of this place of bitter prayer;
And hoping against hope, and self-resigning,
And reach of faith, and wrestling with despair,
And resurrection of the last distress,
Into the sense of Heaven, when earth is bare,
And of God’s voice, when man’s is comfortless.

JOHN RUSKIN.

LORD BYRON ON THE LIDO

Lord Byron (writes the poet’s friend) proposed to me to accompany him in his rides on the Lido.... Every day that the weather would permit, Lord Byron called for me in his gondola, and we found the horses waiting for us outside the fort. We rode as far as we could along the sea-shore, and then on a kind of dyke, or embankment, which has been raised where the island was very narrow, as far as another small fort, about half-way between the principal one and the town or village of Malamocco, near the other extremity of the island,--the distance being about three miles.

On the land side of the embankment, near the smaller fort, was a boundary stone, which probably marked some division of property,--all the side of the island, nearest the lagoon, being divided into gardens for the cultivation of vegetables. At the foot of this stone, Lord Byron repeatedly told me that I should cause him to be interred, if he should die in Venice, or its neighbourhood. During my residence here ... nothing could be more delightful than these rides on the Lido. We were from half to three-quarters of an hour crossing the water, during which his conversation was most amusing and interesting. Sometimes he would bring with him any new book he had received, and read to me the passages which struck him most. Often he would repeat to me whole stanzas of the poems he was writing, as he had composed them on the preceding evening.

THOMAS MOORE.

THE LIDO AND ITS GRAVES

I went to greet the full May-moon
On that long narrow shoal
Which lies between the still lagoon
And the open ocean’s roll.

How pleasant was that grassy shore,
When one for months had been
Shut up in streets,--to feel once more
One’s footfall on the green!