citie, as either I could see with mine eyes, or heare from the report
of credible and worthy persons, or derive from the monuments of learned
and authenticke writers that I have found in the citie.... And so at
length I finish the treatise of this incomparable city, this most
beautifull Queene, this untainted virgine, the Paradise, the Tempe,
this rich Diademe and most flourishing garland of Christendome:
of which the inhabitants may as proudly vaunt, as I have reade the
Persians have done of their Ormus, who say that if the world were a
ring, then should Ormus be the gemme thereof: the same (I say) may
the Venetians speake of their citie, and much more truely. The sight
whereof hath yeelded unto me such infinite and unspeakable contentment
(I must needes confesse) that even as Albertus Marquesse of Guasto
said, were he put to his choice to be Lord of foure of the fairest
cities of Italy, or the Arsenall of Venice, he would prefer the
Arsenall: In like manner I say, that had there bin an offer made unto
me before I took my journey to Venice, eyther that foure of the richest
mannors of Somerset-shire (wherein I was borne) should be gratis
bestowed upon me if I never saw Venice, or neither of them if I should
see it; although certainly those mannors would do me much more good in
respect of a state of livelyhood to live in the world, then the sight
of Venice: yet notwithstanding, I will ever say while I live, that the
sight of Venice and her resplendent beauty, antiquities, and monuments,
hath by many degrees more contented my mind, and satisfied my desires,
then those foure Lordshippes could possibly have done.
* * * * *
Thus much of the glorious citie of Venice.
THOMAS CORYAT (1611).
VENICE FROM THE SEA
Venus is the fair goddess,
Venice is the fair city;
Sweet star, town enchantress,
Pearls of love and of beauty.
Slumber you the still night through,
Cradled in the briny waters;
For you are sisters, both of you,
Of the ocean-foam were daughters.
IN GEORGE SAND’S ‘THE USCOQUE.’
Fayre Venice, flower of the last world’s delight.
EDW. SPENCER.
Faire Venice, like a spouse in Neptune’s armes.
JOHN HARRINGTON.
To taste in all their fulness his first impressions of
Venice, the traveller should arrive there by sea, at
mid-day, when the sun is high.... He who comes for the
first time to Venice by this route realizes a dream--his
only dream perhaps ever destined to be surpassed by the
reality; and if he knows how to enjoy the things of Nature,
if he can take delight in silver-grey and rose-coloured
reflections in water, if he loves light and colour, the
picturesque life of Italian squares and streets, the good
humour of the people and their gentle speech, which seems
like the twittering of birds, let him only allow himself to
live for a little time under the sky of Venice, and he has
before him a season of happiness without alloy.
CHARLES YRIARTE.
SAILING TOWARDS VENICE
To the sea, the wonderful sea!... To Venice, the strangely floating
city, the queen of the Adriatic!... I knew perfectly that the north of
Italy would present to me a new style of scenery. Venice itself was
really so different to any other Italian city; a richly adorned bride
for the mighty sea. The winged Venetian lion waved on the flag above
me. The sails swelled in the wind, and concealed the coast from me. I
sat upon the right side of the ship, and looked out across the blue,
billowy sea; a young lad sat not far from me, and sang a Venetian song
about the bliss of love and the shortness of life: ‘Kiss the red lips,
on the morrow thou art with the dead; love whilst thy heart is young,
and thy blood is fire and flame! Grey hairs are the flowers of death:
then is the blood ice; then is the flame extinguished! Come into the
light gondola! We sit concealed under its roof, we cover the windows,
we close the door, nobody sees thee, love! We are rocked upon the
waves; the waves embrace, and so do we. Love whilst youth is in thy
blood. Age kills with frost and with snow!’
As he sang, he smiled and nodded to the others around him; and they
sang in chorus, about kissing and loving while the heart was young. It
was a merry song, very merry; and yet it sounded like a magical song
of death in my heart.... My heart desired love: God had ordained it,
who had implanted this feeling within me. I was still young, however:
Venice was a gay city full of beautiful women. And what does the world
give me for my virtue, thought I, for my childlike temper? Ridicule,
and time brings bitterness and grey hairs. Thus thought I, and sang in
chorus with the rest, of kissing and loving, while the heart was yet
young....
The vessel flew onward to the north--to the rich Venice. In the morning
hour, I discerned the white buildings and town of Venice, which seemed
like a crowd of ships with outspread sails. To the left stretched
itself the kingdom of Lombardy, with its flat coast: the Alps seemed
like pale blue mist in the horizon. Here was the heaven wide. Here the
half of the hemisphere could mirror itself in the heart.
In this sweet morning air ... I thought about the history of Venice,
of the city’s wealth and pomp, its independence and supremacy; of the
magnificent doges, and their marriage with the sea. We advanced nearer
and nearer to the sea: I could already distinguish the individual
houses across the lagoons.... The sun shone upon Venice: all the bells
were ringing. I stepped down into the black gondola, and sailed up into
the dead street, where everything was water, not a foot-breadth upon
which to walk. Large buildings stood with open doors, and with steps
down to the water; the water ran into the great doorways, like a canal;
and the palace-court itself seemed only a four-cornered well, into
which people could sail, but scarcely turn the gondola. The water had
left its greenish slime upon the walls: the great marble palaces seemed
as if sinking together: in the broad windows, rough boards were nailed
up to the gilded, half-decayed beams. The proud giant-body seemed to
be falling away piecemeal; the whole had an air of depression about
it. The ringing of the bells ceased, not a sound, excepting the splash
of the oars in the water, was to be heard, and I still saw not a human
being. The magnificent Venice lay like a dead swan upon the waves.
We crossed about into the other streets; small narrow bridges of
masonry hung over the canals; and I now saw people who skipped over me,
in among the houses, and in among the walls even; for I saw no other
streets than those in which the gondolas glided.
‘But where do the people walk?’ inquired I of my gondolier; and he
pointed to small passages by the bridges, between the lofty houses.
Neighbour could reach his hand to neighbour, from the sixth story
across the street; three people could hardly pass each other below,
where not a sunbeam found its way. Our gondola had passed on, and all
was still as death.
HANS ANDERSEN.
‘FABRICS OF ENCHANTMENT PILED TO HEAVEN’
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited seaside,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as I then rode;--for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aërial merriment.
So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain,--such glee was ours,
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery
As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
The thoughts it would extinguish:--’twas forlorn,
Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,
The devils held within the dales of hell,
Concerning God, freewill, and destiny.
Of all that earth has been, or yet may be;
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve,
We descanted; and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argued against despondency; but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight
Over the horizon of the mountains--Oh!
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou paradise of exiles, Italy!
Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
Of cities they encircle!--It was ours
To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,
Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men
Were waiting for us with the gondola.
As those who pause on some delightful way,
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood,
Looking upon the evening and the flood,
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar
And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared,
Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
Between the east and west; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many folded hills--they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido, through the harbour piles,
The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles--
And then, as if the earth and sea had been
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,’
Said my companion, ‘I will show you soon
A better station.’ So, o’er the lagoon
We glided; and from that funereal bark
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
VENICE SEEN IN THE DISTANCE
We ... were entering the fertile territory of the Bassanese. It was
now I beheld groves of olives, and vines clustering the summits of
the tallest elms; pomegranates in every garden, and vases of citron
and orange before almost every door. The softness and transparency of
the air soon told me I was arrived in happier climates, and I felt
sensations of joy and novelty run through my veins, upon beholding this
smiling land of groves and verdure stretched out before me. A few hazy
vapours, I can hardly call them clouds, rested upon the extremities
of the landscape; and, through their medium, the sun cast an oblique
and dewy ray. Peasants were returning home, singing as they went, and
calling to each other over the hills; whilst the women were milking
goats before the wickets of the cottage, and preparing their country
fare....
Our route to Venice lay winding along the variegated plains I had
surveyed from Mosolente; and after dining at Treviso we came in two
hours and a half to Mestre, between grand villas and gardens peopled
with statues. Embarking our baggage at the last-mentioned place, we
stepped into a gondola, whose even motion was very agreeable after the
jolts of a chaise. We were soon out of the canal of Mestre, terminating
by an isle which contains a cell dedicated to the Holy Virgin, peeping
out of a thicket, whence spire up two tall cypresses. Its bells tinkled
as we passed along and dropped some paolis into a net tied at the end
of a pole stretched out to us for that purpose. As soon as we had
doubled the cape of this diminutive island, an expanse of sea opened
to our view, the domes and towers of Venice rising from its bosom. Now
we began to distinguish Murano, St. Michele, St. Giorgio in Alga, and
several other islands, detached from the grand cluster, which I hailed
as old acquaintances; innumerable prints and drawings having long since
made their shapes familiar. Still gliding forward, we every moment
distinguished some new church or palace in the city, suffused with the
rays of the setting sun, and reflected with all their glow of colouring
from the surface of the waters.
The air was calm; the sky cloudless; a faint wind just breathing upon
the deep, lightly bore its surface against the steps of a chapel in
the island of San Secondo, and waved the veil before its portal, as we
rowed by and coasted the walls of its garden overhung with fig-trees
and surmounted by spreading pines. The convent discovers itself through
their branches, built in a style somewhat morisco, and level with the
sea, except where the garden intervenes.
We were now drawing very near the city, and a confused hum began to
interrupt the evening stillness; gondolas were continually passing and
repassing, and the entrance of the Canal Reggio, with all its stir and
bustle, lay before us. Our gondoliers turned with much address through
a crowd of boats and barges that blocked up the way, and rowed smoothly
by the side of a broad pavement, covered with people in all dresses and
of all nations.
WILLIAM BECKFORD.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF VENICE
It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. The
influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable. But
to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the
first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the
spirit of the place has been harmonized through familiarity with our
habitual mood, is difficult.
Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From our
earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather than
weeks, we carry away with us the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold
and crimson upon cloud and water; of violet domes and bell-towers
etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering
breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering
in sun-litten haze; of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine
darkness made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted palace
fronts; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd; of pictures by earth’s
proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of council chambers where
Venice sat enthroned a queen, where nobles swept the floors with
robes of Tyrian brocade. These reminiscences will be attended by an
ever-present sense of loneliness and silence in the world around; the
sadness of a limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of
heaven, the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the pathos of
a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine.
These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are inevitable.
They abide, and form a glowing background for all subsequent pictures,
toned more austerely, and painted in more lasting hues of truth upon
the brain. Those have never felt Venice at all who have not known
this primal rapture, or who perhaps expected more of colour, more of
melodrama, from a scene which nature and the art of man have made the
richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered by this first
experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains an element of
unrest and unreality which vanishes upon familiarity. From the blare of
that triumphal bourdon of brass instruments emerge the delicate voices
of violin and clarinet. To the contrasted passions of our earliest love
succeed a multitude of sweet and fanciful emotions. It is my present
purpose to recapture some of the impressions made by Venice in more
tranquil moods. Memory might be compared to a kaleidoscope. Far away
from Venice I raise the wonder-working tube, allow the glittering
fragments to settle as they please, and with words attempt to render
something of the patterns I behold.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
TOWARDS VENICE
The gates were opened and we passed into the sea. There was a ‘breath
of Venice in the breeze;’ the odour of the lagoons, clear and pungent;
a scent that seems to penetrate the being, to reach the very heart,
and charms it to surrender. The evening wind sprang up behind, and we
set our sail and prow for Venice, twenty-five miles away across the
pearly grey lagoon. On and on we sailed while the day faded about us,
deepening slowly into night. A fiery sunset flamed itself to death
behind the Euganean Hills. The expanse of water quickened from grey
to crimson, to gold, to orange, to pale burnished copper, dimpled and
shadowed by the tiny waves, to purple as the night came down; then
all this glory of colour withdrew once more into the pervasive pearly
grey, as the last light died in the western heavens, and darkness stole
silently over the waters....
It is the people and the place, the union and interpenetration of
the two, the sea life of these dwellers in the city that is always
‘just putting out to sea,’ which constitutes for many the peculiar
and enduring charm of Venice. The people and the place so intimately
intermingled through all their long history, have grown into a single
life charged with the richness of sea-nature and the warmth of human
emotion. From both together escapes this essence or soul of Venice
which we would clasp with all the ardour of a lover. Venice, her
lagoons, her seafaring folk, become the object of a passionate idolatry
which admits no other allegiance in the hearts that have known its
power. To leave her is a sure regret; to return a certain joy.
HORATIO F. BROWN.
THE APPROACH TO VENICE
We come to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long
steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an
instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives
us,--it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of
them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any
definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were
yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft
vacancy. It is something clearer than any water we have seen lately,
and of a pale green; the banks only two or three feet above it, of mud
and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree; gliding swiftly
past the small casement of the gondola, as if they were dragged by upon
a painted scene.
Stroke by stroke, we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up
the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We
lose patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea
air blows keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating
cell. In front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to
the west, the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there
have risen purple shades, of the colour of dead rose-leaves, all round
the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of
Bassano. Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and then
breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now torn to
pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions
of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and another perspective of
canal; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it
widens: the rank grass of the banks sinks lower and lower, and at last
dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the
right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching
to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco to
the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous
dockyard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it;--this is
the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of
those dismal arches there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling
line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many
towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English
manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and, apparently at a
greater distance, rise over the centre of the line; but the object
which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black smoke brooding
over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a
church.
It is Venice.
JOHN RUSKIN.
THE THRONE OF VENICE