The charm of Venice

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...

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 S...

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 ingenuo...

St. Mark’s Place, after all I had read and all I had heard of it, exceeded expectation; such a cluster of excellence, such a constellation of artificial beauties, my mind had ne...

Dear Margaret, I stood and saw the brazen chest that holds the body of St. Mark the Evangelist. I saw with these eyes and handled his ring, and his gospel written with his own h...

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...

And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preced...

For my own part, as the gondola slipped away from the blaze and bustle of the station down the gloom and silence of the broad canal, I forgot that I had been freezing two days a...

It is this power of living communion with the daily pageant in which sun and moon are doge and emperor, and the stars and the clouds their retinue--this it is which, finding exp...

The Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exceptions carry canvass painted with bright colours, the favourite design for the centre being either a cross or a large sun with man...

Yet not less favoured when awake,--for now, Across my torpid brow Swept a cool current of the young night’s air, With a sharp kiss, and there Was I all clear awake,--drawn soft...

In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. But this talent seems at present on the decline:--at le...

I was lately to see the arsenal of Venice, one of the worthiest things of Christendom; they say there are as many galleys, and galeasses of all sorts, belonging to St. Mark, eit...

The _sandolo_ is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or ferro which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale...

_In the centre of the lagoon between Venice and the mouths of the Brenta, supported on a few mouldering piles, stands a small shrine dedicated to the Madonna dell’Acqua, which t...

The traveller who delights to linger on St. Mark’s Place, in the Basilica, at the Ducal Palace, in the museums and churches, should also halt long and often at the Rialto. This...

But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions’ mouths--now toothless--where, in the distempered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to t...

Goldoni was best pleased with the humblest, forming in this a strange contrast with the French comic writers; the shopkeepers, ridiculous gullible M. Jourdains and Sganarelles i...

I like this place extremely, and am of opinion you would do so too: as to cheapness, I think ’tis impossible to find any part of Europe where both the laws and customs are so co...

It is true that his way of working in his last pictures is very different from that of his youth. For his first works were finished with great diligence, and might be looked at...

This Church of St. George of the Greeks is one of Venice’s most wonderful places. One has the impression of a sanctuary which is at the same time a treasure-house; gold everywhe...

Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi’s _Forza del Destino_ at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed th...

The correspondence between the external and the interior spectacle once discovered, my enjoyment found itself unspeakably multiplied. The crowd of imperishable forms that people...

Within eight dayes after fell Corpus Christi day, which was a day amongst them of procession, in which was shewed the plate and treasurie of Venice, which is esteemed to be wort...

It was now Ascension Weeke, and the greate Marte or Faire of the whole yeare was now kept, every body at liberty and jollie. The noblemen stalking with their ladys on _choppines...

‘The book is divided under an ingenious series of headings, illustrating London in a variety of picturesque and suggestive aspects, and few lovers of our capital will fail to en...

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent diacriticals and hyp...