THE CITY IN THE SEA.
VENICE, Sept 18th.
It was with real regret that we left Lake Como, where we had passed
ten very quiet but very happy days. But all things pleasant must have
an end, and so on Monday morning we departed. Steamers ply up and down
the lake, but as none left at an hour early enough to connect with a
train that reached Venice the same evening, we took a boat and were
rowed to Lecco. It was a three hours' pull for two strong men; but as
we left at half-past seven, the eastern mountains protected us from
the heat of the sun, and we glided swiftly along in their cool
shadows. Not a breath of air ruffled the bosom of the lake. Everything
in this parting view conspired to make us regret a scene of which we
were taking a long, perhaps a last, farewell.
At Lecco we came back to railroads, which we had not seen since the
morning we left Munich for Ober-Ammergau, more than two weeks before,
and were soon flying over a cultivated country, where orchards of
mulberry trees (close-trimmed, so as to yield a second crop of leaves
the same season) gave promise of the rich silks of Lombardy, and vines
covered all the terraced slopes of the hills.
In the carriage with us was a good old priest, who was attached to St.
Mark's in Venice, with whom we fell in conversation, and who gave us
much information about the picturesque country through which we were
passing. Here, where the land is smiling so peacefully, among these
very hills, "rich with corn and wine," was fought the great battle in
which Venice defeated Frederick Barbarossa, and thus saved the cause
of Italian independence.
At Bergamo we struck the line from Milan to Venice, and while waiting
an hour for the express train, sauntered off with the old priest into
the town, which was just then alive with the excitement of its annual
fair. The peasants had come in from all the country round--men and
women, boys and girls--to enjoy a holiday, bringing whatever they had
to sell, and seeking whatever they had to buy. One might imagine that
he was in an old-fashioned "cattle show" at home. Farmers had brought
young colts which they had raised for the market, and some of the
brawny fellows, with broad-brimmed hats, answered to the drovers one
may see in Kansas, who have driven the immense herds of cattle from
Texas. In another part of the grounds were exposed for sale the
delicate fabrics and rich colors which tempt the eye of woman: silks
and scarfs and shawls, with many of the sex, young and old, looking on
with eager eyes. And there were sports for the children. A
merry-go-round picked up its load of little creatures, who, mounted on
wooden horses, were whirled about to their infinite delight at a penny
apiece--a great deal of happiness for a very little money. And there
were all sorts of shows going on--little enclosures, where something
wonderful was to be seen, the presence of which was announced by the
beating of a drum; and a big tent with a circus, which from the
English names of the performers may have been a strolling company from
the British Islands, or possibly from America! It would be strange
indeed, if a troupe of Yankee riders and jumpers had come all the way
to Italy, to make the country folk stare at their surprising feats.
And there was a menagerie, which one did not need to enter: for the
wild beasts painted on the outside of the canvas, were no doubt much
more ferocious and terrible to behold than the subdued and lamb-like
creatures within. Is not a Country Fair the same thing all over the
world?
At length the train came rushing up, and stopping but a moment for
passengers, dashed off like a race-horse over the great plain of
Lombardy. But we must not go so fast as to overlook this historic
ground. Suddenly, like a sheet of silver, unrolls before us the broad
surface of the Lago di Garda, the greatest of the Italian lakes,
stretching far into the plain, but with its head resting against the
background of the Tyrolean Alps. What memories gather about these
places from the old Roman days! In yonder peninsula in the lake,
Catullus wrote his poems; in Mantua, a few miles to the south, Virgil
was born; while in Verona an amphitheatre remains in excellent
preservation, which is second only to the Coliseum. In events of more
recent date this region is full of interest. We are now in the heart
of the famous Quadrilateral, the Four great Fortresses, built to
overawe as well as defend Upper Italy. All this ground was fought over
by the first Napoleon in his Italian campaigns; while near at hand is
the field of Solferino, where under Napoleon III. a French army, with
that of Victor Emmanuel, finally conquered the independence of Italy.
More peaceful memories linger about Padua, whose University, that is
over six hundred years old, was long one of the chief seats of
learning in Europe, within whose walls Galileo studied; and Tasso and
Ariosto and Petrarch; and the reformer and martyr Savonarola.
But all these places sink in interest, as just at evening we reach the
end of the main land, and passing over the long causeway which crosses
the Lagune, find ourselves in VENICE. It seems very prosaic to enter
Venice by a railroad, but the prose ceases and the poetry begins the
instant we emerge from the station, for the marble steps descend to
the water, and instead of stepping into a carriage we step into a
gondola; and as we move off we leave behind the firm ground of
ordinary experience, and our imagination, like our persons, is afloat.
Everything is strange and unreal. We are in a great city, and yet we
cannot put our feet to the ground. There is no sound of carriages
rattling over the stony streets, for there is not a horse in Venice.
We cannot realize where and what we are. The impression is greatly
heightened in arriving at night, for the canals are but dimly lighted,
and darkness adds to the mystery of this city of silence. Now and then
we see a light in a window, and somebody leans from a balcony; and we
hear the plashing of oars as a gondola shoots by; but these occasional
signs of life only deepen the impression of loneliness, till it seems
as if we were in a world of ghosts--nay, to be ghosts ourselves--and
to be gliding through misty shapes and shadows; as if we had touched
the black waters of Death, and the silent Oarsman himself were guiding
our boat to his gloomy realm. Thus sunk in reverie, we floated along
the watery streets, past the Rialto, and under the Bridge of Sighs, to
the Hotel Danieli on the Grand Canal, just behind the Palace of the
Doges.
When the morning broke, and we could see things about us in plain
daylight, we set ourselves, like dutiful travellers, to see the
sights, and now in a busy week have come to know something of Venice;
to feel that it is not familiar _ground_, but familiar _water_,
familiar canals and bridges, and churches and palaces. We have been up
on the Campanile, and looked down upon the city, as it lies spread out
like a map under our eye, with all its islands and its waters; and we
have sailed around it and through it, going down to the Lido, and
looking off upon the Adriatic; and then coursing about the Lagune, and
up and down the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, and through many of the
smaller canals, which intersect the city in every direction. We have
visited the church of St. Mark, rich with its colored marbles and
mosaics, and richer still in its historic memories; and the Palace
where the Doges reigned, and the church where they are buried, the
Westminster Abbey of Venice, where the rulers of many generations lie
together in their royal house of death; we have visited the Picture
Galleries, and seen the paintings of Titian and the statues of Canova,
and then looked on the marble tombs in the church of the Frati, where
sleep these two masters of different centuries. Thus we have tried to
weave together the artistic, the architectural, and the historical
glories of this wonderful city.
There is no city in Europe about which there is so much of romance as
Venice, and of _real_ romance (if that be not a contradiction), that
is, of romance founded on reality, for indeed the reality is stranger
than fiction. Its very aspect dazzles the eye, as the traveller
approaches from the east, and sees the morning sun reflected from its
domes and towers. And how like an apparition it seems, when he
reflects that all that glittering splendor rests on the unsubstantial
sea. It is a jewel set in water, or rather it seems to rise, like a
gigantic sea-flower, out of the waves, and to spread a kind of
tropical bloom over the far-shining expanse around it.
And then its history is as strange and marvellous as any tale of the
Arabian Nights. It is the wildest romance turned into reality. Venice
is the oldest State in Europe. The proudest modern empires are but of
yesterday compared with it. When Britain was a howling wilderness,
when London and Paris were insignificant towns, the Queen of the
Adriatic was in the height of its glory. Macaulay says the Republic of
Venice came next in antiquity to the Church of Rome. Thus he places it
before all the kingdoms of Europe, being antedated only by that hoary
Ecclesiastical Dominion, which (as he writes so eloquently in his
celebrated review of Ranke's History of the Popes) began to live
before all the nations, and may endure till that famous New Zealander
"shall take his stand, in the midst of a vast solitude, on a broken
arch of London Bridge, to sketch the nuns of St. Paul's."
And this history, dating so far back, is connected with monuments
still standing, which recall it vividly to the modern traveller. The
church of St. Mark is a whole volume in itself. It is one of the
oldest churches in the world, boasting of having under its altar the
very bones of St. Mark, and behind it alabaster columns from the
Temple of Solomon, while over its ancient portal the four bronze
horses still stand proudly erect, which date at least from the time of
Nero, and are perhaps the work of a Grecian sculptor who lived before
the birth of Christ. And the Palace of the Doges--is it not a history
of centuries written in stone? What grand spectacles it has witnessed
in the days of Venetian splendor! What pomp and glory have been
gathered within its walls! And what deliberations have been carried on
in its council chambers; what deeds of patriotism have been there
conceived, and also what conspiracies and what crimes! And the Prison
behind it, with the Bridge of Sighs leading to it, does not every
stone in that gloomy pile seem to have a history written in blood and
tears?
But the part of Venice in European history was not only a leading one
for more than a thousand years, but a noble one; it took the foremost
place in European civilization, which it preserved after the
barbarians had overrun the Roman Empire. The Middle Ages would have
been Dark Ages indeed, but for the light thrown into them by the
Italian Republics. It was after the Roman empire had fallen under the
battle-axes of the German barbarians that the ancient Veneti took
refuge on these low-lying islands, finding a defence in the
surrounding waters, and here began to build a city in the sea. Its
position at the head of the Adriatic was favorable for commerce, and
it soon drew to itself the rich trade of the East. It sent out its
ships to all parts of the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Pillars
of Hercules. And so, century after century, it grew in power and
splendor, till it was the greatest maritime city in the world. It was
the lord of the waves, and in sign of its supremacy, it was _married
to the sea_ with great pomp and magnificence. In the Arsenal is shown
the model of the Bucentaur, that gilded barge in which the Doge and
the Senate were every year carried down the harbor, and dropping a
ring of gold and gems (large as one of those huge doorknockers that in
former days gave dignity to the portals of great mansions) into the
waves, signified the marriage of Venice to the sea.[3] It was the
contrast of this display of power and dominion with the later decline
of Venetian commerce, that suggested the melancholy line,
"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord."
But then Venice was as much mistress of the sea as England is to-day.
She sat at the gates of the Orient, and
"The gorgeous East with richest hand
Showered upon her barbaric pearl and gold."
Then arose on all her islands and her waters those structures which
are to this day the wonder of Europe. The Grand Canal, which is nearly
two miles long, is lined with palaces, such as no modern capital can
approach in costliness and splendor.
And Venice used her power for a defence to Christendom and to
civilization, the former against the Turks, and the latter against
Northern barbarians. When Frederick Barbarossa came down with his
hordes upon Italy, he found his most stubborn enemy in the Republic of
Venice, which kept up the contest for more than twenty years, till the
fierce old Emperor acknowledged a power that was invincible, and here
in Venice, in the church of St. Mark, knelt before the Pope Alexander
III. (who represented, not Rome against Protestantism, but Italian
independence against German oppression), and gave his humble
submission, and made peace with the States of Italy which, thanks to
the heroic resistance of Venice, he could not conquer.
Hardly was this long contest ended before the power of Venice was
turned against the Turks in the East. Venetians, aided by French
crusaders, and led by a warrior whose courage neither age nor
blindness could restrain ("Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!"),
captured Constantinople, and Venetian ships sailing up and down the
Bosphorus kept the conquerors of Western Asia from crossing into
Europe. The Turks finally passed the straits and took Constantinople;
but the struggle of the Cross and the Crescent, as in Spain between
the Spaniard and the Moor, was kept up over a hundred years longer,
and was not ended till the battle of Lepanto in 1571. In the Arsenal
they still preserve the flag of the Turkish admiral captured on that
great day, with its motto in Arabic, "There is no God but God, and
Mohammed is his prophet." We can hardly realize, now that the danger
is so long past, how great a victory, both for Christendom and for
civilization, was won on that day when the scattered wrecks of the
Turkish Armada sank in the blood-dyed waters of the Gulf of Corinth.
These are glorious memories for Venice, which fully justify the
praises of historians, and make the splendid eulogy of Byron as true
to history as it is beautiful in poetry. In Venice, as on the Rhine, I
have found Childe Harold the best guide-book, as the poet paints a
picture in a few immortal lines. Never was Venice painted, even by
Canaletto, more to the eye than in these few strokes, which bring the
whole scene before us:
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand,
I saw from out the waves her structures rise,
As by 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 winged lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.
But poets are apt to look at things _only_ in a poetical light, and to
admire and to celebrate, or to mourn, according to their own royal
fancies, rather than according to the sober prose of history. The
picture of the magnificence of Venice is true to the letter, for
indeed no language can surpass the splendid reality. But when the poet
goes farther and laments the loss of its independence, as if it were a
loss to liberty and to the world, the honest student of history will
differ from him. That he should mourn its subjection, or that of any
part of Italy, to a foreign power, whether Austria or France, we can
well understand. And this was perhaps his only real sorrow--a manly
and patriotic grief--but at times he seems to go farther, and to
regret the old gorgeous mediaeval state. Here we cannot follow him.
Poetry is well, and romance is well, but truth is better; and the
truth, as history records it, must be confessed, that Venice, though
in name a republic, was as great a despotism as any in the Middle
Ages. The people had no power whatever. It was all in the hands of the
nobles, some five hundred of whom composed the Senate, and elected the
famous Council of Ten, by which, with the Senate, was chosen the
Council of Three, who were the real masters of Venice. The Doge, who
was generally an old man, was a mere puppet in their hands, a
venerable figure-head of the State, to hide what was done by younger
and more resolute wills. The Council of Three were the real Dictators
of the Republic, and the Tribunal of the Inquisition itself was not
more mysterious or more terrible. By some secret mode of election the
names of those who composed this council were not known even to their
associates in the Senate or in the Council of Ten. They were a secret
and therefore wholly irresponsible tribunal. Their names were
concealed, so that they could act in the dark, and at their will
strike down the loftiest head. Once indeed their vengeance struck the
Doge himself. I have had in my hands the very sword which cut off the
head of Marino Faliero more than five hundred years ago. It is a
tremendous weapon, and took both hands to lift it, and must have
fallen upon that princely neck like an axe upon the block. But
commonly their power fell on meaner victims. The whole system of
government was one of terror, kept up by a secret espionage which
penetrated every man's household, and struck mortal fear into every
heart. The government invited accusations. The "lion's mouth"--an
aperture in the palace of the Doges--was always open, and if a charge
against one was thrown into it, instantly he was arrested and brought
before this secret tribunal, by which he might be tried, condemned,
sentenced, and executed, without his family knowing what had become of
him, with only horrible suspicions to account for his mysterious
disappearance.
In going through the Palace of the Doges one is struck with the
gorgeousness of the old Venetian State. All that is magnificent in
architecture; and all that is splendid in decoration, carving, and
gilding, spread with lavish hand over walls and doors and ceiling;
with every open space or panel illumined by paintings by Titian or
some other of the old Venetian masters--are combined to render this
more than a "royal house," since it is richer than the palaces of
kings.
But before any young enthusiast allows his imagination to run away
with him, let him explore this Palace of the Doges a little farther.
Let him go into the Hall of the Council of Three, and observe how it
connects conveniently by a little stair with the Hall of Torture,
where innocent persons could soon be persuaded to accuse themselves of
deadly crimes; and how it opens into a narrow passage, through which
the condemned passed to swift execution. Then let him go down into the
dungeons, worse than death, where the accused were buried in a living
tomb. Byron himself, in a note to Childe Harold, has given the best
answer to his own lamentation over the fall of the Republic of
Venice.[4]
We shall therefore waste no tears over the fall of the old Republic of
Venice, even though it had existed for thirteen hundred years. In its
day it had acted a great part in European history, and had often
served the cause of progress, when it preserved Christendom from the
Turks, and civilization from the Barbarians. But it had accomplished
its end, and its time had come to die; and though the poet so
musically mourns that
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier,
yet in the changes which have come, we cannot but recognize the
passing away of an old state of things, to be succeeded by a better.
Even the spirit of Byron would be satisfied, could he open his eyes
_now_, and see Venice rid at last of a foreign yoke, and restored to
her rightful place, as a part of free and united Italy.
Though Venice is a city which does not change in its external
appearance, and looks just as it did when I was here seventeen years
ago, I observe _one_ difference; the flag that is flying from all the
public buildings is not the same. Then the black eagles of Austria
hovered over the Square of St. Mark; and as we sat there in the summer
evening, Austrian officers were around us, in front of the cafes, and
the music was by an Austrian band. Now there is music still, and on
summer nights the old Piazza is thronged as ever; but I hear another
language in the groups--the hated foreigner, with his bayonets, is not
here. The change is every way for the better. The people breathe
freely, and political and national life revives in the air of liberty.
Venice is beginning to have also a return of its commercial
prosperity. Of course it can never again be the mistress of the sea,
as other great commercial states have sprung up beyond the
Mediterranean. The glory of Venice culminated about the year 1500.
Eight years before that date, an Italian sailor--though not a
Venetian, but a Genoese--had discovered, lying beyond the western
main, a New World. In less than four centuries, the commerce which had
flourished on the Adriatic was to pass to England, and that other
English Empire still more remote. Venice can never regain her former
supremacy. Civilization has passed, and left her standing in the sea.
But though she can never again take the lead of other nations, she may
still have a happy and a prosperous future. There is the commerce of
the Mediterranean, for which, as before, she holds a commanding
position at the head of the Adriatic. For some days has been lying in
the Grand Canal, in front of our hotel, a large steamer of the
Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, the Delhi, and on Friday
she sailed for Alexandria and Bombay! The transference of these ships
to Venice as a point of departure, will help its commerce with the
East and with India.
One thing we may be allowed to hope, as a friend of Venice and of
Italy--that its policy will be one of peace. In the Arsenal we found
models of ironclads and other ships of war, built or building; but I
confess I felt rather glad to hear the naval officer who showed them
to us confess (though he did it with a tone of regret) that their navy
was not large compared with other European navies, and that the
Government was not doing _much_ to increase it, though it is building
dry docks here in Venice, and occasionally adds a ship to the fleet.
Yet what does Italy want of a great navy? or a great army? They eat
up the substance of the country; and it has no money to waste on
needless armaments. Besides, Italy has no enemy to fear, for both
France and Germany are friendly; to France she owes the deliverance of
Lombardy, and to Germany that of Venice. And even Austria is
reconciled. Last April the Emperor made a visit to Venice, and was
received by Victor Emmanuel, and was rowed up the Grand Canal with a
state which recalled the pomp of her ancient days of glory.
The future therefore of Venice and of Italy is not in war, but in
peace. Venice has had enough of war in former centuries--enough of
conflicts on land and sea. She can now afford to live on this rich
inheritance of glory. Let her cherish the memory of the heroic days of
old, but let her not tempt fortune by venturing again into the smoke
of battle. Let her keep in her Arsenal the captured flags taken from
the Turks at Lepanto; let the three tall masts of cedar, erected in
the Square of St. Mark three hundred and seventy years ago, to
commemorate the conquest of Cyprus, Candia, and Morea, still stand as
historical mementoes of the past; but it is no sacrifice of pride that
they no longer bear the banners of conquered provinces, since from
their lofty and graceful heads now floats a far prouder ensign--the
flag of one undivided Italy.
If I were to choose an emblem of what the future of this country
should be, I would that the arms of Venice might be henceforth, not
the _winged lion_ of St. Mark, but the _doves_ of St. Mark: for these
equally belong to Venice, and form not only one of its prettiest
sights, but one connected with historical associations, that make them
fit emblems both of peace and of victory. The story is that at the
siege of Candia, in the beginning of the Thirteenth century, Admiral
Dandolo had intelligence brought to him by carrier-pigeons which
helped him to take the island, and that he used the same swift-winged
heralds to send the news to Venice. And so from that day to this they
have been protected, and thus they have been the pets of Venice for
six hundred years. They seem perfectly at home, and build their nests
on the roofs and under the eaves of the houses, even on the Doge's
Palace and the Church of St. Mark. Not the swallow, but the dove hath
found a nest for herself on the house of the Lord. I see them nestling
together on the Bridge of Sighs, thinking not of all the broken hearts
that have passed along that gloomy arch. A favorite perch at evening
is the heavy cross-bars of the prison windows; there they sleep
peacefully, where lonely captives have looked up to the dim light, and
sighed in vain for liberty. From all these nooks and corners they
flock into the great square in the day-time, and walk about quite
undisturbed. It has been one of our pleasures to go there with bread
in our pockets, to feed them. At the first sign of the scattered
crumbs, they come fluttering down from the buildings around, running
over each other in their eagerness, coming up to my feet, and eating
out of my hand. Let these beautiful creatures--the emblems of peace
and the messengers of victory--be wrought as an armorial bearing on
the flag of the new Italy--white doves on a blue ground, as if flying
over the sea--their outspread wings the fit emblems of those sails of
commerce, which, we trust, are again to go forth from Venice and from
Genoa, not only to all parts of the Mediterranean, but to the most
distant shores!
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Lest any of my saving countrymen should think this a sacrifice of
precious jewels, it should be added that the cunning old Venetians,
with a prudent economy worthy of a Yankee housekeeper, instead of
wasting their treasures on the sea, dropped the glittering bauble into
a net carefully spread for the purpose, in which it was fished up, to
be used in the ceremonies of successive years.
[4] The note is on the opening lines of the fourth Canto:
"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand,"
--in explanation of which the poet says:
"The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice
is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and
divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The State dungeons,
called 'pozzi,' or wells, were sunk into the thick walls of the
palace; and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across
the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other
compartment or cell upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low
portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now
walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known as the
Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at
the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first
arrival of the French, the Venetians blocked or broke up the deeper of
these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and
crawl down through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two
stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for
the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there;
scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads
to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally
dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages,
and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden
pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The
conductor tells you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about
five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in
height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is
somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found
when the Republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is
said to have been confined sixteen years."