Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE CHARM OF VENICE

THE
CHARM OF VENICE

AN ANTHOLOGY

COMPILED BY
ALFRED H. HYATT

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1908

_All rights reserved_

EDITOR’S NOTE

It is always delightful to read about Venice. This city, so exceptionally situated, and to which belongs so fascinating a history, has inspired almost countless authors to extol its many beauties, to retell its historic episodes, and to recount the treasures of its art and architecture.

The praise of London is sung by the Londoner, that of Paris by the Parisian, and so on, city by city. But of the beauty of Venice members of every nation have written, and perhaps in a greater measure than the Venetians themselves. It is from these eulogies that I have endeavoured to place before the reader those prose passages and poems that paint in a few words some of the varied charms belonging to Venice.

A. H. H.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the following publishers and authors for having so kindly allowed the inclusion of copyright poems and extracts in this volume:

To Lady Ritchie and Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. for an extract from ‘Miss Angel’; to Lady Lindsay for two poems contained in ‘From a Venetian Balcony’ (Messrs. Kegan Paul); to Messrs. George Bell and Sons for extracts from Charles Yriarte’s ‘Venise’ (translated by Mr. F. J. Sitwell); to Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons for an extract from ‘The Life of George Eliot’; to Mr. Arthur Symons for poems from his ‘Collected Poems’ (Mr. W. Heinemann) and an extract from ‘The Cities of Italy’ (Messrs. Dent); to Mr. W. Heinemann for an extract from Gabriele D’Annunzio’s ‘The Flame of Life’; to Mr. Horatio F. Brown and Messrs. Smith, Elder for extracts from J. Addington Symonds’s ‘A Venetian Medley,’ and a poem from this same author’s volume, ‘Old and New’; to Messrs. Gay and Bird and Mr. Percy Pinkerton for poems from ‘Adriatica’; to Messrs. Maclehose and Sons for ‘A Vision of Venice’ from David Gray’s ‘Poems’; to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., for extracts from Mrs. Oliphant’s ‘Makers of Venice’ and Mr. F. Marion Crawford’s ‘Gleanings from Venetian History’; to the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke for poems from his volume published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd.; to Messrs. Duckworth and Co. for extracts from the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke’s ‘The Sea Charm of Venice’; to Miss Braddon for an extract from ‘The Venetians’ (Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall); to Messrs. George Newnes, Ltd., for an extract from Mr. F. Eden’s ‘A Garden in Venice’; to Mr. W. D. Howells for extracts from ‘Venetian Life’; to Messrs. Rivingtons for an extract from Mr. Horatio F. Brown’s ‘Life on the Lagoons’; to Mrs. Lee-Hamilton for a poem by Eugene Lee-Hamilton; to Miss Margaret Newett for an extract from her translation of ‘Casola’s Pilgrimage’ (the Clarendon Press); to Madame Duclaux (Mary A. F. Robinson) for ‘A Venetian Nocturne’ from her ‘Collected Poems’ (Mr. T. Fisher Unwin); to Vernon Lee for extracts from ‘The Enchanted Woods’ and ‘The Sentimental Traveller’ (Mr. John Lane), and ‘Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy’; to Mr. S. Rosen, of Venice, for an extract from Pompeo Molmenti’s ‘The Renaissance in Venice,’ published by the Liberia Rosen, Venice; to Mr. Lloyd Mifflin for various poems; to Mrs. Moulton for an extract from ‘Random Rambles’; to the Baroness Swift for a poem; to Mr. Fred G. Bowles for the use of his translation of Hélène Vacaresco’s poem; to Messrs. Chatto and Windus for extracts from Ouida’s ‘Santa Barbara,’ Beryl de Sélincourt and May Sturge Henderson’s ‘Venice,’ and Edith Seeley’s translation of Vasari’s ‘Stories of the Italian Artists’; and to Mr. Mackenzie Bell for a sonnet from ‘Collected Poems’ (the Kingsgate Press).

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE CHARM OF VENICE 1

VENICE FROM THE SEA 65

THE SEA SPELL 107

GONDOLA AND GONDOLIER 133

ISLAND AND LAGOON 169

CANAL AND BRIDGE 219

SOME VENETIAN PHASES 231

ARCHITECTURE AND ART 277

A VENETIAN DAY 303

THE SEASONS IN VENICE 321

VENICE OF THE PAST 343

THE ROMANCE OF VENICE 371

INDEX OF AUTHORS 382

TABLE OF CONTENTS 383

_There goes a swallow to Venice--the stout seafarer!
Seeing those birds fly, makes one wish for wings._

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE CHARM OF VENICE

The charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm ... which no
artist or poet ever can resist.
OUIDA.

I do not know how this should be, but Venice seems made to
prove that ‘_La Vita è un sogno._’ What the Venice dream is
all the world knows. Motion that is almost imperceptible,
colour too deep and gorgeous to strike the eye, gilding
so massive and ancient as to wear a mist of amber brown
upon its brightness, white cupolas that time has turned
to pearls, marble that no longer looks like stone, but
like blocks cut from summer clouds, a smooth sea that is
brighter and more infinite than the sky it reflects--these
are some of the ingredients of the dream which are too
familiar for description. Nothing can describe the
elemental warmth of the days, the sea-kisses of the wind at
evening, the atmosphere of breathless tepid moonlight in
the night.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

Venice is among cities what Shakespeare is among men.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice:

Vinegia, Vinegia,
Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.
SHAKESPEARE.

In this enchanted Venice, it seems to you, no one is ever
sad, or cross, or weary. You think that here, at least, you
could be reconciled to an earthly immortality.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

This enchanting city of Venice has always the same charm
and the same glamour.... Sun, moon, and stars shed all
they have of glory and of glamour over the romantic
city, painting the smooth lagoons with a rare splendour
of colouring which changes city and sea into something
supernal, unimaginable, dreamlike.
M. E. BRADDON.

SALVE VENETIA!

Venice is the most personal of all cities in the world, the most feminine, the most comparable to a woman, the least dependent, for her individuality, upon her inhabitants, ancient or modern. What would Rome be without the memory of the Cæsars? What would Paris be without the Parisians? What was Constantinople like before it was Turkish? The imagination can hardly picture a Venice different from her present self at any time in her history. Where all is colour, the more brilliant costumes of earlier times could add but little; a general exodus of her inhabitants to-day would leave almost as much of it behind. In the still canals the gorgeous palaces continually gaze down upon their own reflected images with placid satisfaction, and look with calm indifference upon the changing generations of men and women that glide upon the waters. The mists gather upon the mysterious lagoons and sink away again before the devouring light, day after day, year after year, century after century; and Venice is always there herself, sleeping or waking, laughing, weeping, dreaming, singing or sighing, living her own life through ages, with an intensely vital personality which time has hardly modified, and is altogether powerless to destroy. Somehow, it would not surprise those who know her, to come suddenly upon her and find that all human life was extinct within her, while her own went on, strong as ever; nor yet, in the other extreme, would it seem astonishing if all that has been should begin again, as though it had never ceased to be, if the Bucentaur swept down the Grand Canal to the beat of its two hundred oars, bearing the Doge out to wed the sea with gorgeous train; if the Great Council began to sit again in all its splendour; if the Piazza were thronged once more with men and women from the pictures of Paris Bordone, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Titian; if Eastern shipping crowded the entrance to the Giudecca, and Eastern merchants filled the shady ways of the Merceria. What miracle could seem miraculous in Venice, the city of wonders?...

Venice was Venice from the first, and is Venice still, a person in our imagination, almost more than a place.... ‘Venice’ calls up a dream of colour, of rich palaces and of still water, and at the name there are more men who will think of Shylock and Othello than of Enrico Dandolo, or Titian, or Carlo Zeno, or Vittor Pisani....

Who seeks true poetry, said Rossi, writing on Venice, will find it most abundantly in the early memories of a Christian nation; and indeed the old chronicles are full of it, of idyls, of legends, and of heroic tales. Only dream a while over the yellow pages of Muratori, and presently you will scent the spring flowers of a thousand years ago, and hear the ripple of the blue waves that lent young Venice their purity, their brilliancy, and their fresh young music. You may even enjoy a pagan vision of maiden Aphrodite rising suddenly out of the sea into the sunshine, but the dream dissolves only too soon; grace turns into strength, the lovely smile of the girl-goddess fades from the commanding features of the reigning queen, and heavenly Venus is already earthly Cleopatra.

It is better to open our arms gladly to the beautiful when she comes to us, than to prepare our dissecting instruments as soon as we are aware of her presence.... And so with Venice; she is a form of beauty, and must be looked upon as that and nothing else; not critically, for criticism means comparison, and Venice is too personal and individual, and too unlike other cities to be fairly compared with them; not coldly, for she appeals to the senses and to the human heart, and craves a little warmth of sympathy; above all, not in a spirit of righteous severity, for he who would follow her story must learn to forgive her almost at every step.

She has paid for her mistakes with all save her inextinguishable life; she has expiated her sins of ill-faith, of injustice and ingratitude, by the loss of everything but her imperishable charm.

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.

WRITTEN AT VENICE

Not only through the golden haze
Of indistinct surprise.
With which the Ocean-bride displays
Her pomp to stranger eyes;--
Not with the fancy’s flashing play,
The traveller’s vulgar theme,
Where following objects chase away
The moment’s dazzling dream;

Not thus art thou content to see
The City of my love,--
Whose beauty is a thought to me
All mortal thoughts above;--
And pass in dull unseemly haste,
Nor sight nor spirit clear,
As if the first bewildering taste
Were all the banquet here!

When the proud sea, for Venice’ sake,
Itself consents to wear
The semblance of a land-locked lake,
Inviolably fair;
And, in the dalliance of her isles,
Has levelled his strong waves,
Adoring her with tenderer wiles
Than his own pearly caves....
Surely may _we_ delight to pause
On our care-goaded road,
Refuged from Time’s most bitter laws
In this august abode.

Come out upon the broad lagoon,
Come for the hundredth time,
Our thoughts shall make a pleasant tune,
Our words a worthy rhyme;
And thickly round us we will set
Such visions as were seen,
By Titian and by Tintoret,
And dear old Gian Bellin,--

And all their peers in art, whose eyes,
Taught by this sun and sea,
Flashed on their works whose burning dyes,
That fervent poetry;
And wove the shades so thinly-clear
They would be parts of light
In northern climes, whose frowns severe
Mar half the charms of sight.

Did ever shape Paolo drew
Put on such brilliant tire,
As Nature, in this evening view,
This world of tinted fire?
The glory into whose embrace,
The lady seeks to rise,
Is but reflected from the face
Of these Venetian skies.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

VENICE THE ENCHANTRESS

Venice has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the character of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement; the absence of all those harsh, artificial sounds which vex the air in other towns, but which in her are replaced by harmonies of human voices, and by the liquid tinkle of the waves--all these unusual characteristics combine to make her a wonder and a prodigy. While there are scarcely any who are unmoved by her special charm, there are some who are entirely subdued by it, to whom the sight of her is a continual enchantment, and who never get beyond the sense of something miraculous, the rapture of the first vision. Not only does she ‘shine where she stands,’ which even the poorest cluster of human habitations will do in the light of love: but all those walls, with the mist of ages like a bloom of eternal youth upon them--all those delicate pinnacles and carven-stones, the arches and the pillars and the balconies, the fretted outlines that strike against the sky--shine too as with a light within that radiates into the clear sea-air; and every ripple on the great water-way, and every wave on the lagoon, and each little rivulet of a canal, like a line of light between the piles of masonry, which are themselves built of pearl and tints of ocean shells, shines too with an ever-varied, fantastic, enchanting glimmer of responsive brightness. In the light of summer mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice stands out upon the blue background, the sea that brims upwards to her very doors, the sky that sweeps in widening circles all around, radiant with an answering tone of light. She is all wonder, enchantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. Her own children cannot enough paint her, praise her, celebrate her splendours; and to outdo if possible that patriotic enthusiasm has been the effort of many a stranger from afar....

Where is the poet, where the prophet, the princes, the scholars, the men whom, could we see, we should recognize wherever we met them, with whom the whole world is acquainted? They are not here. In the sunshine of the Piazza, in the glorious gloom of San Marco, in the great council-chambers and offices of State, once so full of busy statesmen, and great interests, there is scarcely a figure recognizable of all, to be met with in spirit--no one whom we look for as we walk, whose individual footsteps are traceable wherever we turn. Instead of the men who made her what she is, who ruled her with so high a hand, who filled her archives with the most detailed narratives, and gleaned throughout the world every particular of universal history which could enlighten and guide her, we find everywhere the great image--an idealisation more wonderful than any in poetry--of Venice herself, the crowned and reigning city, the centre of all their aspirations, the mistress of their affections, for whom those haughty patricians of an older day, with a proud self-abnegation which has no humility or sacrifice in it, effaced themselves, thinking of nothing but her glory....

Though there is no record of that time when Dante stood within the red walls of the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch fuming up to heaven--as all the world may still see them through his eyes--yet a milder scholarly image, a round smooth face, with cowl and garland, looks down upon us from the gallery, all blazing with crimson and gold, between the horses of San Marco, a friendly visitor, the best we could have, since Dante left no sign behind him, and probably was never heard of by the magnificent Signoria. Petrarch stands there, to be seen by the side of the historian-doge, as long as Venice lasts: but not much of him, only a glimpse, as in the Venetian way, lest in contemplation of the poet we should for a moment forget the Republic, his hostess and protector--Venice, the all-glorious mistress of the seas, the first object, the unrivalled sovereign of her children’s thoughts and hearts.

MRS. OLIPHANT.

VENICE

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
So wonderfully built among the reeds
Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
Lifting thy golden pistils with their seeds.
Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
In air their unsubstantial masonry.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

VENETIAN ENCHANTMENT

Can you fancy a city without a horse in it, or a carriage, where not even a van or a truck disturbs the stillness, where your household possessions are moved on the witching first of May in boats, and you drift along in a gondola to your merry-makings or your funerals? Such a city is Venice, where, as Browning wrote, ‘the sea the street is.’ I went out of the railroad-station into a gondola, and the enchantment began. I felt the spell, at once, of this unique city,--this one only Venice in all the world. Everywhere were gondolas,--gondolas moored at the quay, waiting for passengers; gondolas drawn up in front of palaces, waiting for their freight of dark-eyed Venetian girls; gondolas threading the mazes of the little canals, or sweeping down the Grand Canal, and drawing near each other now and then for a chat between the occupants.

All these gondolas are painted black. This is in accordance with an ancient law of the Republic, passed once upon a time when the decorations of the fascinating water-carriages were becoming too sumptuous for Republican morals. But even now many of the gondolas are very elegant. They are long and slender in shape, with a high beak pointed with steel; they are often superb in carving. Inside the little house in which you sit are soft cushions, and gilt-framed mirrors in which the piquant, dark-eyed faces of the Italian girls behold themselves in fascinating reflection....

Venice is a city of palaces. Three-quarters of them are unoccupied now, save by the stranger within her gates, who hires them for a season. But they are wonderfully beautiful, with their superb architecture and their great variety of colouring. Nothing could be more delightful than a sail down the Grand Canal at sunset, unless it be one by moonlight.

At sunset, after the warmest day, the air is cool. The sky is crimson above you, and the water which laps around your black keel is crimson also. Everybody has come out to enjoy the delicious coolness and shadow. You meet your friends, and exchange greetings with them as you would in the Casino at Florence or the Central Park in New York. The old palaces catch the sunset glory, and glow in it with a splendour as radiant as their memories. Busy waiters are arranging the out-of-door tables in front of the cafés in the grand piazza of San Marco for their evening custom. You drift on and on, till the sunset glory fades, and a new glory, purer and paler, has arisen,--the glory of the moon.

Everybody raves about moonlight in Venice, and well they may, for there is nothing on earth so enchanting. You forget the far-off world,--that old, hard world, where waggons rattle, and horses stumble and fall, and people are tired, and duns harass you, and time and tide wait for no man. In this enchanted Venice, it seems to you, no one is ever sad, or cross, or weary. You think that here, at least, you could be reconciled to an earthly immortality. The feeling is universal. A rich Englishman, while I was there, leased one of the old palaces for twenty-five years to come, and was busily adorning it with gems of art. He put into it old Venetian glasses, strange mirrors with nymphs and roses painted on them, such as were the glory of Venice long ago. His silver was wrought by the men of Benvenuto Cellini’s time. In his hall were marble statues sculptured by long-forgotten hands. His chairs and tables were carved by cunning workmen who had turned to dust. Everything was of the past, except the flowers, which everywhere ran riot. Marble vases, rifled from tombs, were full of glowing crimson roses. Bright-hued blossoms filled the windows, vines trailed over the walls, fragrance as of a thousand gardens flooded the rooms.

‘Twenty-five years!’ cried a friend, who was looking on at the lavish adornment of the old palace. ‘Are you sure you will be contented here so long?’

‘If not, it is hopeless,’ was the answer, ‘for I’ve tried the rest of the world, and found it wanting. Year after year Venice has drawn me back again with her charm, always new, though so old. If _she_ fails to content me, there is nothing left but to go to heaven.’

And there are those who think, having reached Venice, that they have gone very nigh to heaven. At least, let us fancy it is that Island of the Blest which the old voyageurs used to seek....

There are few places more prolific of temptations to the purse than this city by the sea. You could spend a small fortune in photographs; and no photographs are so beautiful as those of Venice, with her water-ways, her sumptuous architecture, and her picturesque gondolas. You go a few steps from the photographer’s, and pause before the window of a shop for the sale of antiquities. If you have any imagination at all, you are fascinated at once. You find here quaint rings, as old as the days of the Doges; lace which generations of by-gone marquises have worn, and which time has turned to the hue of amber; fans behind which the dear, dead women, with their red-gold hair that Titian painted, blushed and bloomed and sighed and flirted. Here are shoe-buckles glittering with diamonds; here, in short, are a thousand relics of a beauty-loving and luxurious past; and you cannot turn away from them until you have bought something by way of talisman, wherewith to conjure back the shades of dead days and faded glories.

You see long lines of shops, full of the Venetian mosaic, and of the Venetian gold-work, which is the daintiest that you can imagine. Here is Salviati’s priceless glass. It is Salviati who has rediscovered the secrets of the old glass-makers. He will tell you that there can be no such thing as a lost art, while the human brain retains its former power; and in this matter of glass-making, at least, he has proved his own theories. Such wonderful colours, such wonderful shapes, such exquisite designs, can be found nowhere else. It almost converts one to Spiritualism, this exceptional success of Salviati’s, and makes you think that the ghosts of some of the old glass-makers have been whispering their long-forgotten secrets into his ears. You have fingered all the morning round this captivating piazza of San Marco, with its shops full of temptations, and now the bronze Vulcans of the clock-tower march out and strike the hour of two, and retire again; and just as they beat their retreat you see one of the prettiest sights in Venice. Long ago--at the beginning of the thirteenth century, so the story runs,--Admiral Dandolo, while besieging Candia, received intelligence by means of carrier-pigeons which greatly aided him. He then sent the birds to Venice with the news of his success; and since that period their descendants have been carefully cherished and greatly prized by the Venetians. Every day, at two o’clock the doves are fed at the expense of the city.... Venice! You can pass your dreamy days there in the luxury of an absolute repose. No other place is like it for beauty, and certainly no other is like it for restfulness.... Gay belles, who have tired themselves out by a busy winter in Rome or Florence, betake themselves to this City of the Sea, and win back their roses in its quiet. Its spell is on you from the first moment you arrive. It seems to me no one could ever leave it willingly; and if only the post could be abolished, and no letters would come to call you back to the world outside, you might stay there for ever without knowing it,--like the monk who laid his ear so close to heaven that he heard in his dream the songs of Paradise, and awoke to find that he had been listening to them for a thousand years.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

A VISION OF VENICE

Behold! a waking vision crowns my soul
With beatific radiance, and the light
Of shining hope;--a golden memoried dream
That clings unto my youth, as clung the strange
Leonine phantom to that mystic man,
Lean Paracelsus. It has grown with me
Like destiny, or that which seems to be
My destiny, ambition: and its glow
Inflames my fancy, as if some clear star
Had burst in silvery light within my brain.
From the smooth hyaline of that far sea
The pictured Adriatic rises, fair
As dream, a kingly-built and tower’d town;
Column and arch and architrave instinct
With delicatest beauty; overwrought
With tracery of interlacèd leaves
For ever blooming on white marble, hush’d
In everlasting summer, windless, cold:
The city of the Doges!

From the calm
Transparent waters float some thrilling sounds
Of Amphionic music, and the words
Are Tasso’s, where he passions for his love,
That lady Florentine so lily-smooth,
Clothed on with haughtiness!

At the black stair
Of palace rising shadowy from the wave,
Two singing gondolieri wait a freight
Of loveliness. A tremulous woman, robed
In dazzling satin, and whose dimpled arms
Shine through their veil diaphanous, floats down
From the wide portal; and the ivory prow
Of the soft-cushion’d gondola (as she
Steps lightly from the marble to her place)
Dips, rises, dips again; and through the blue
Swift glides into the sunset.

Oh, the glow
Of that rich sunset dims whate’er I see
In this my own dear valley! O’er the hills--
Those craggy Euganean hills, whose peaks
Wedge the clear crystalline--a blazonry
Of clouds pavilion’d, folded, interwound
Inextricably, load the breezeless west
With awe and glory. The effulgence gleams
Upon a vision’d Belmont, home of her
Who loved as Shakespeare’s women do; and gleams
Upon those walls wherein Othello’s spear
Stabb’d clinging innocence; where the poor wife,
The lone Cassandra Belvidera, gave
Her soul in martyrdom to love and woe.

And shall I never that far town behold,
Crested with sparkling columns, fiery towers,
Praxitelean masonry?--behold
VENICE, the mart of nations, ere I die?
By Heaven! her common merchants princes were
Unto two continents; her traffickers
The honourable of the earth! she stood
A crownèd city, and the fawning sea
Licked her white feet; and the eternal sun
Kissed with departing beam her brow of snow!

* * * * *

Woe to this Venice, with her crown of pride!
The Lady of the kingdoms, the perfection
Of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth!
Through her pavilions shall the crannying winds
Whistle, and all her borders in the sea
Crumble their Parian wonder. Woe to her,
Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower!
Her sober-suited nightingales, with notes
Of smooth liquidity and softened stops,
Solace the brakes; and ’mid her ancient streets
Tawny, the gleaming and harmonious sea
Makes silvery melody of by-gone days.
Oh, white Enchantment! Ocean-spouse of old!
When thy high battlements and bulging domes,
By sunset purpled, trembled in the wave!
Now o’er thy towers the Lord hath spread His hand,
And as a cottage shalt thou be removed;
Like Nineveh, or cloudy Babylon!
DAVID GRAY.

SPECTRAL VENICE

‘I know another sight,’ said the Moon, ‘the spectre of a city. Whenever the jetty fountains splash into the marble basins, they seem to me to be telling the story of the floating city. Yes, the spouting water may tell of her, the waves of the sea may sing of her fame! On the surface of the ocean a mist often rests, and this is her widow’s veil. The Bridegroom of the Sea is dead; his palace and his city are his mausoleum. Dost thou know this city? She has never heard the rolling of wheels or the hoof-tread of horses in her streets, through which the fish swim, while the black gondola glides spectrally over the green water. I will show you the place,’ continued the Moon, ‘the largest square in it, and you will fancy yourself transported into the city of a fairy-tale. The grass grows rank among the broad flag-stones, and in the morning twilight thousands of tame pigeons flutter around the solitary lofty tower. On three sides you find yourself surrounded by cloistered walks. In these the silent Turk sits smoking his long pipe; the handsome Greek leans against the pillar, and gazes at the upraised trophies and lofty masts, memorials of power that is gone. The flags hang down like mourning scarves. A girl rests there; she has put down her heavy pails filled with water, the yoke with which she has carried them rests on one of her shoulders, and she leans against the mast of victory. This is not a fairy-palace you see before you yonder, but a church; the gilded domes and shining orbs flash back my beams; the glorious bronze horses up yonder have made journeys, like the bronze horse in the fairy-tale; they have come hither, and gone hence, and have returned again. Do you notice the variegated splendour of the walls and windows? It looks as if Genius had followed the caprices of a child, in the adornment of these singular temples. Do you see the winged lion on the pillar? The gold glitters still, but his wings are tied; the lion is dead, for the King of the Sea is dead; the great halls stand desolate, and where gorgeous painting hung of yore, the naked wall now peers through. The _lazzaroni_ sleeps under the arcade, whose pavement in old times was to be trodden only by the feet of the high nobility. From the deep wells, and perhaps from the prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the mandolino was heard in gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the Queen of the Seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of thy bridegroom--the marble, spectral Venice!’

HANS ANDERSEN.

A REVERIE IN VENICE

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O’er the far times when many a subject land
Looked to the wingèd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was; her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone--but beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city’s vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away--
The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er.
For us repeopled were the solitary shore....

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And annual marriage now no more renewed,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
Over the proud place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt:
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria’s menace come to pass?
Are they not _bridled_?--Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose!
Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in Destruction’s depth, her foreign foes,
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

In youth she was all glory,--a new Tyre,--
Her very byword sprung from victory,
The ‘Planter of the Lion,’ which through fire
And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea;
Though making many slaves, herself still free,
And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite:
Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight!
For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file
Of her dead doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
Have flung a desolate cloud o’er Venice’ lovely walls.

When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,
And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,
Her voice their only ransom from afar:
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o’ermastered victor stops, the reins
Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar
Starts from his belt--he rends his captive’s chains,
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,--most of all,
Albion! to thee: the Ocean Queen should not
Abandon Ocean’s children: in the fall
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

I loved her from my boyhood: she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea,
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s art,
Had stamped her image in me, and e’en so,
Although I found her thus, we did not part,
Perchance e’en dearer in her day of woe,
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

I can repeople with the past--and of
The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chastened down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:
There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,
Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.
LORD BYRON.

IN PRAISE OF VENICE

Though the incomparable and most decantated majestie of this citie doth deserve a farre more elegant and curious pensill to paint her out in her colours then mine. For I ingenuously confess mine owne insufficiency and unworthiness, as being the unworthiest of ten thousand to describe so beautiful, so renowned, so glorious a Virgin (for by that title doth the world most deservedly stile her), because my rude and unpolished pen may rather staine and eclipse the resplendent rays of her unparalleled beauty, then adde any lustre unto it; yet since I have hitherto contrived this slender and naked narration of my observations of five moneths travels in forraine countries, this noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my journey, partly because shee gave me most loving and kinde entertainment for the space of sixe weeks, which was the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) for so much that ever I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered unto me more variety of remarkable and delicious objects then mine eyes ever survayed in any citie before, or ever shall, if I should with famous Sir John Mandevil our English Ulysses spend thirty whole yeares together in travelling over most places of the Christian and Ethnicke world. Therefore omitting tedious introductions, I will descend to the description of this thrise worthie citie: the fairest Lady, yea the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome. (I call her not thus in respect of any soveraignty that she hath over other nations, in which sense Rome was in former times called Queene of the world, but in regard of her incomparable situation, surpassing wealth, and most magnificent buildings.) Such is the rareness of the situation of Venice, that it doth even amaze and drive into admiration all strangers that upon their first arrivall behold the same. For it is built altogether upon the water in the innermost gulfe of the Adriatique Sea which is commonly called Gulfo di Venetia, and is distant from the maine sea about the space of three miles.... The city is divided in the middest by a goodly faire channel, which they call Canal il Grande. The same is crooked, and made in the form of a Roman S. It is in length a thousand and three hundred paces, and in breadth at least forty, in some places more. The sixe parts of the City whereof Venice consisteth, are situate on both sides of this Canal il Grande. The names of them are these, St. Marco, Castello, Canareio, that lie on one side of it, and those on the other side are called St. Polo, St. Croce, Dorso Duro. Also both sides of this channel are adorned with many sumptuous and magnificent Palaces that stand very neare to the water, and make a very glorious and beautifull shew. For many of them are of a great height, three or foure stories high, most being built with bricke, and some few with faire free stone. Besides, they are adorned with a great multitude of stately pillars made partly of white stone, and partly of Istrian marble.... There is only one bridge to go over the great channell, which is the same that leadeth from St. Marks to the Rialto, and joyneth together both the banks of the channell. This bridge is commonly called Ponte de Rialto, and is the fairest bridge by many degrees for one arch that ever I saw, read, or heard of. For it is reported that it cost about fourescore thousand crownes, which doe make foure and twenty thousand pounds sterling. Truely, the exact view hereof ministered unto me no small matter of admiration to see a bridge of that length (for it is two hundred foote long, the channell being at the least forty paces broade as I have before written) so curiously compacted together with only one arch; and it made me presently call to minde that most famous bridge of the Emperour Trajan, so celebrated by the auncient historians, especially that worthy Greeke Authour Dion Cassius, which he built over the river Danubius, to enter the country of Dacia.... But this incomparable one-arched bridge of the Rialto doth farre excell the fairest arch of Trajans both in length and breadth. For this is both forty foote longer than the arch of his bridge was, and a hundred foote brooder, as I will anon declare in the more particular description thereof. But in height I believe it is a little inferiour to the other. I will proceede with the description of this peereless bridge of Venice. It was first built but with timber (as I heard divers Venetian gentlemen report), but because that was not correspondent to the magnificence of the other parts of the City, they defaced that, and built this most sumptuous bridge with squared white stone, having two faire rowes of pretty little houses for artificers, which are only shops, not dwelling houses. Of these shops there are two rowes in each side of the bridge till you come to the toppe. On that side of this bridge which is towards St. Marks, there are ten severall ascents of staires to the toppe, on the other side towards the Rialto twelve ascents. Likewise, behind these shops there are very faire staires to the toppe, which doe reach in length from the back of them to the farthest edge of the bridge.... At the toppe of the bridge directly above these rowes of buildings that I have spoken of, wherein the artificers shops are, there are advanced two faire arches to a prety convenient height which doe greatly adorne the bridge. In these arches I saw the portraiture of the heads of two Hunnicall Gyants that came into Italy with King Attila, very exactly made in the inside of the toppe. There are in Venice thirteen ferries or passages, which they commonly call Traghetti, where passengers may be transported in a Gondola to what place of the City they will.... Certaine little boates which they call Gondolas [are] the fayrest that ever I saw in any place. For none of them are open above, but fairly covered, first with some fifteene or sixteen little round peeces of timber that reach from one end to the other, and make a pretty kinde of Arch or vault in the Gondola; then with faire blacke cloth which is turned up at both ends of the boate, to the end that if the passenger meaneth to be private, he may draw downe the same, and after row so secretly that no man can see him: in the inside the benches are finely covered with blacke leather, and the bottomes of many of them together with the sides under the benches are very neatly garnished with fine linnen cloth, the edge whereof is laced with bonelace: the ends are beautified with two pretty and ingenious devices. For each end hath a crooked thing made in the forme of a Dolphins tayle, with the fins very artifically represented, and it seemeth to be tinned over. The water-men that row these never sit as ours do in London, but alwaies stand, and that at the further end of the Gondola, sometimes one, but most commonly two; and in my opinion they are altogether as swift as our rowers about London.... The fairest place of all the citie (which is indeed of that admirable and incomparable beauty, that I thinke no place whatsoever eyther in Christendome or Paganisme may compare with it) is the Piazza, that is, the Market place of St. Marke, or (as our English merchants commorant in Venice, doe call it) the place of S. Marke, in Latin Forum, or Platea Di Marci. Truely such is the stupendious (to use a strange Epitheton for so strange and rare a place as this) glory of it, that at my first entrance thereof it did even amaze or rather ravish my senses. For here is the greatest magnificence of architecture to be seene, that any place under the sunne doth yeelde. Here you may both see all manner of fashions of attire, and heare all the languages of Christendome, besides those that are spoken by the barbarous Ethnickes; the frequencie of people being so great twise a day, betwixt sixe of the clocke in the morning and eleven, and againe betwixt five in the afternoon and eight, that (as an elegant writer saith of it) a man may very properly call it rather Orbis then Urbis forum, that is, a market place of the world, not of the citie.... But I will descend to the particular description of this peerelesse place, wherein if I seeme too tedious, I crave pardon of thee (gentle Reader) seeing the variety of curious objects which it exhibiteth to the spectator is such, that a man shall much wrong it to speake a little of it. The like tediousenesse thou art like to finde also in my description of the Duke’s Palace, and St. Markes Church, which are such glorious workes, that I endeavoured to observe as much of them as I might, because I knew it was uncertaine whether I should ever see them againe, though I hoped for it. This street of St. Marke seemeth to be but one, but if the beholder doth exactly view it, he will finde that it containeth foure distinct and severall streetes in it, which I will thus divide: The first is that which reacheth from the front of St. Markes Church to the opposite front of St. Geminians Church. The second from that notable clocke at the cumming into St. Markes from the Merceria to the two lofty marble pillars neare to the shore of the Adriatique Gulfe. These two streetes doe seeme to contend for the superiority, but the first (in my opinion) is the fairest of them. The third reacheth from the bridge neare to the prison, along by the South side of the Dukes Palace, and so by the Sea shore, to the end of that stately building a little beyond the foresaid pillars. The fourth and the last from one side of St. Markes Church to the Canons houses. The first of these is beyond all comparison the fairest of all Europe. For it hath two such magnificent fronts or rowes of buildings on the North and South sides opposite each other, especially that on the North side, that they drove me into great admiration, and so I thinke they doe all other strangers that behold the same.... The fairest streete of all Venice saving Sainte Markes, which I have already described, is that adjoyning to St. Markes place which is called the Merceria, which name it hath because many Mercers dwell there, as also many Stationers, and sundry other artificers. This streete reacheth from almost the hither side of the Rialto bridge to Saint Markes, being of goodly length, but not altogether of the broadest, yet of breadth convenient enough in some places for five or sixe persons to walke together side by side; it is paved with bricke, and adorned with many faire buildings of a competent height on both sides; there is a very faire gate at one end of this street even as you enter into St. Markes place when you come from the Rialto bridge, which is decked with a great deale of faire marble, in which gate are two pretty conceits to be observed, the one at the very top, which is a clocke with the images of two wilde men by it made in brasse, a witty device and very exactly done.... The other conceit that is to be observed in this gate is the picture of the Virgin Mary made in a certaine dore above a faire Dial, neare to whom on both sides of her are painted two Angels on two little dores more. These dores upon any principall holiday doe open themselves, and immediately there come forth two Kings to present themselves to our Lady, unto whom, after they have done their obeysance by uncovering of their heads, they returne, againe into their places: in the front of this sumptuous gate are presented the twelve celestial signes, with the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, most excellently handled.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

BEAUTIFUL VENICE

Beautiful Venice,
Fair City of Song!
What memories of old
To thy regions belong:
What sweet recollections
Cling to my heart
As thy fast-fading shores
From my vision depart!
Oh, sweet poesie’s home
Is thy light colonnades,
Where winds gently sigh
As the sweet twilight fades.
I have known many homes,
But the dwelling for me
Is beautiful Venice,
The bride of the sea!

Beautiful Venice,
Queen of the earth!
Where dark eyes shine bright
Amid music and mirth;
Where gay serenaders
By light of the star
Oft mingle their songs
With the dulcet guitar.
All that’s lovely in life,
All that’s deathless in song,
Venetia’s fair isles,
To thy regions belong.
J. E. CARPENTER.

THAT GLORIOUS CITY IN THE SEA

There is a glorious City in the Sea.
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates. The path lies o’er the sea,
Invisible; and from the land we went
As to a floating city--steering in,
And gliding up her streets as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently--by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile in more than Eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant-kings;
The fronts of some, though time had shattered them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
As though the wealth within them had run o’er....
Gliding on,
At length we leave the river for the sea.
At length a voice aloft proclaims ‘Venezia!’
And, as called forth, She comes.

A few in fear,
Flying away from him whose boast it was[1]
That the grass grew not where his horse had trod,
Gave birth to Venice. Like the water-fowl,
They built their nests among the ocean-waves;
And where the sands were shifting, as the wind
Blew from the north or south--where they that came
Had to make sure the ground they stood upon,
Rose, like an exhalation from the deep,
A vast Metropolis, with glistering spires,
With theatres, basilicas adorned;
A scene of light and glory, a dominion,
That has endured the longest among men.

And whence the talisman, whereby she rose,
Towering? ’Twas found there in the barren sea.
What led to Enterprise; and, far or near,
Who met not the Venetian?--now among
The Ægean Isles, steering from port to port,
Landing and bartering; now, no stranger there,
In Cairo, or without the eastern gate
Ere yet the cafila came, listening to hear
Its bells approaching from the Red Sea coast;
Then on the Euxine, and that smaller Sea
Of Azoph, in close converse with the Russ
And Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving
Pearls from the Persian Gulf, gems from Golconde;
Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love,
From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round,
When in the rich bazaar he saw, displayed,
Treasures from climes unknown, he asked and learnt,
And, travelling slowly upward, drew ere long
From the well-head, supplying all below;
Making the Imperial City of the East,
Herself, his tributary.--If we turn
To those black forests, where, through many an age,
Night without day, no axe the silence broke,
Or seldom, save where Rhine or Danube rolled;
Where o’er the narrow glen a castle hangs,
And, like the wolf that hungered at his door,
The baron lived by rapine--there we meet,
In warlike guise, the caravan from Venice;
When on its march, now lost and now beheld,
A glittering file (the trumpet heard, the scout
Sent and recalled), but at a city-gate
All gaiety, and looked for ere it comes;
Winning regard with all that can attract,
Caegs, whence every wild cry of the desert,
Jugglers, stage-dancers. Well might Charlemain
And his brave peers, each with his visor up,
On their long lances lean and gaze awhile,
When the Venetian to their eyes disclosed
The wonders of the East! Well might they then
Sigh for new conquests!
Thus did VENICE rise.
Thus flourish.
SAMUEL ROGERS.

[1] Attila.

THE FAIRY DAYS OF VENICE