Part 5

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 hand, and all my travels seemed light; for who am I that I should see such things? Dear Margaret, his sacred body was first brought from Alexandria by merchants in 810, and then not prized as now; for between 829, when this church was builded, and 1094, the very place where it lay was forgotten. Then holy priests fasted and prayed many days seeking for light, and lo! the Evangelist’s body brake at midnight through the marble and stood before them. They fell to the earth; but in the morning found the crevice the sacred body had burst through, and peering through it saw him lie. Then they took and laid him in his chest beneath the altar, and carefully put back the stone with its miraculous crevice, which crevice I saw, and shall gape for a monument while the world lasts. After that they showed me the Virgin’s chair, it is of stone; also her picture, painted by St. Luke, very dark, and the features now scarce visible. This picture, in time of drought, they carry in procession, and brings the rain. I wish I had not seen it. Item, two pieces of marble spotted with John the Baptist’s blood; item, a piece of the true cross, and of the pillar to which Christ was tied; item, the rock struck by Moses, and wet to this hour; also a stone Christ sat on, preaching at Tyre; but some say it is the one the patriarch Jacob laid his head on, and I hold with them, by reason our Lord never preached at Tyre. Going hence, they showed me the state nursery for the children of those aphrodisian dames, their favourites. Here in the outer wall was a broad niche, and if they bring them so little as they can squeeze them through it alive, the bairn falls into a net inside, and the state takes charge of it, but if too big, their mothers must even take them home again, with whom abiding ’tis like to be mali corvi mali ovum. Coming out of the church we met them carrying in a corpse, with the feet and face bare. This I then first learned is Venetian custom, and sure no other town will ever rob them of it.... But what I most admired was to see over against the Duke’s palace a fair gallows in alabaster, reared express to bring him, and no other, for the least treason to the state; and there it stands in his eye whispering him memento mori. I pondered, and owned these signors my masters, who will let no man, not even their sovereign, be above the common weal.

CHARLES READE.

‘VENICE, WHOSE NAME DID ONCE ADORN THE WORLD’

Venice, whose name did once adorn the world, Thou mightst have been all that thou ever wert, In form and feature and material strength, Up from the sea, which is thy pedestal, Unto thy Campanile’s golden top, And yet have never won the precious crown, To be the loved of human hearts, to be The wise man’s treasure now and evermore. The ingenious boldness, the creative will, Which from some weak uncertain plots of sand, Cast up among the waters, could erect Foundations firm as on the central ground; The art which changed thy huts to palaces, And bade the God of Ocean’s temples rise Conspicuous far above the crystal plain, The ever-active nerve of industry, That bound the Orient to the Occident In fruitful commerce, till thy lap was filled With wealth, the while thy head was girt with power, Each have their separate palm from wondering men ... Prime model of a Christian commonwealth! Thou wise simplicity, which present men Calumniate, not conceiving; joy is mine, That I have read and learnt thee as I ought, Not in the crude compiler’s painted shell, But in thine own memorials of live stone, And in the pictures of thy kneeling princes, And in the lofty words on lofty tombs, And in the breath of ancient chroniclers, And in the music of the outer sea.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

THE BRIDE OF THE SEA

There are cities high over Orion That jasper and sardonyx be; Whose streets it were joy but to lie on, Whose walls it were bliss but to see; Many sumptuous cities fair Dian Beholds over mountain and lea, But the Bride, ’neath the wings of her Lion,-- Where is one such as she?

She is crowned with her triumphs and towers, And blue run the veins in her arms; Like the lotus, afloat with her flowers, Her whiteness hath wonderous charms; Delicious her lips are, with powers Circean, yet void of alarms; And the mortal that dreams of her bowers Leaves his soul in her arms.

Yet should time, ever eager, though olden, Her fairness despoil and depose; Should her domes, which at evening are golden, Dissolve as her Apennine snows; Should the sceptre, which long she hath holden, Depart, and the crown from her brows, And the robes of her splendour be rolled in The gray dust of her woes;

Should the glory grow dim of her Titians, Her gondolas drift ’neath the moon; Should her marbles, mosaics, Venetians, Evanish and pass as a swoon; Should her forehead, the fairest of visions, Sink under the silent lagoon, And the sea, tombing all her traditions, Leave a waste for the loon;

Should she melt as a mist evanescent, Or fade as a myth from a scroll,-- Yet her wraith would arise juvenescent, Aglow with a great aureole; Still her glamour eternally crescent, Supreme o’er the spirit would roll; And her Name, as a star iridescent, Light the sky of the soul.

Though in regions celestial there are lands-- Bright lands it were bliss but to see, Whose towers, built high over star lands, Of beryl and sardonyx be: Though cities in fabulous far lands Loom fair over mountain and lea,-- Yet on earth, in her gloom, or her garlands, Who so comely as she!

LLOYD MIFFLIN.

BROWNING’S VENICE

This is the loggia Browning loved, High on the flank of the friendly town; These are the hills that his keen eye roved, The green like a cataract leaping down To the plain that his pen gave new renown.

There to the West what a range of blue!-- The very background Titian drew To his peerless Loves! O tranquil scene! Who than thy poet fondlier knew The peaks and the shore and the lore between!

See! yonder’s his Venice--the valiant Spire, Highest one of the perfect three, Guarding the others: the Palace choir The Temple flashing with opal fire-- Bubble and foam of the sunlit sea.

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.

VENICE

If you would see Venice as she is, Wander by night in silence and alone Among her towers and sculptured palaces And read the story she has writ in stone; Then, as you read, she will upon you cast The fascination of her wondrous past.

Muse on, and let the silent gondolier Wind at his will ’mid tortuous, twisting ways And broad lagoons, with waters wide and clear, On whose unruffled breast the moonbeam plays; And move not, speak not, for the mystery Of Venice is with you on the sea.

Pass, if you will, beneath the five great domes Of old Saint Mark’s; watch how the glittering height Soars in quick curves; see how each sunbeam roams And fills the nave with soft pure amber light; This is the heart of Venice, and the tomb Which folds her story in its sacred gloom.

So leave her sunlight, enter now her cells, By frowning black-browed ports and massy bars, Where pestilence in foul dank vapour dwells, Far, far from sun and day, from moon and stars The only sound when whispering waters glide In on the bosom of a sluggish tide.

Then turn again into her solitudes,-- Things of to-day will faint and fade like smoke;-- Drift through the darkened nooks where silence broods, Let memory fall upon you like a cloak: Venice will rise around you as of old. Decked out in marble, amethyst, and gold.

But that was years ago; to-day the notes Of wild free song have left her silver streets; Her blazoned banner now no longer floats In aureate folds, no more the sunrise greets; She lives but in a past so strong and brave It serves alike for monument and grave.

ALAN SULLIVAN.

GEORGE ELIOT’S IMPRESSION OF VENICE

From Padua to Venice! It was about ten o’clock on a moonlight night--the 4th of June--that we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea: we were on the bridge across the lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What stillness! What beauty! Looking out from the high window of our hotel on the Grand Canal, I felt that it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was more beautiful than romances had feigned.

And that was the impression that remained, and even deepened, during our stay of eight days. That quiet which seems the deeper because one hears the delicious dip of the oar (when not disturbed by clamorous church bells), leaves the eye in full liberty and strength to take in the exhaustless loveliness of colour and form.

We were in our gondola by nine o’clock the next morning, and of course the first point we sought was the Piazza di San Marco. I am glad to find Ruskin calling the Palace of the Doges one of the two most perfect buildings in the world.... This spot is a focus of architectural wonders: but the palace is the crown of them all. The double tier of columns and arches, with the rich sombreness of their finely outlined shadows, contrast satisfactorily with the warmth and light and more continuous surface of the upper part. Even landing on the Piazzetta, one has a sense, not only of being in an entirely novel scene, but one where the ideas of a foreign race have poured themselves in without yet mingling indistinguishably with the pre-existent Italian life. But this is felt yet more strongly when one has passed along the Piazzetta and arrived in front of San Marco, with its low arches and domes and minarets. But perhaps the most striking point to take one’s stand on is just in front of the white marble guard-house flanking the great tower--the guard-house with Sansovino’s iron gates before it. On the left is San Marco, with the two square pillars from St. Jean d’Acre, standing as isolated trophies; on the right the Piazzetta extends between the Doge’s palace and the Palazzo Reale to the tall columns from Constantinople; and in front is the elaborate gateway leading to the white marble Scala dei Giganti, in the courtyard of the Doge’s palace. Passing through this gateway and up the staircase, we entered the gallery which surrounds the court on three sides, and looked down at the fine sculptured vase-like wells below. Then into the great Sala, surrounded with the portraits of the Doges: the largest oil-painting here--or perhaps anywhere else--is the ‘Gloria del Paradiso’ by Tintoretto, now dark and unlovely. But on the ceiling is a great Paul Veronese--the ‘Apotheosis of Venice’--which looks as fresh as if it were painted yesterday, and is a miracle of colour and composition--a picture full of glory and joy of an earthly, fleshly kind, but without any touch of coarseness or vulgarity. Below the radiant Venice on her clouds is a balcony filled with upward-looking spectators; and below this gallery is a group of human figures with horses. Next to this Apotheosis, I admire another Coronation of Venice on the ceiling of another Sala, where Venice is sitting enthroned above the globe with her lovely face in half-shadow--a creature born with an imperial attitude. There are other Tintorettos, Veroneses, and Palmas in the great halls of this palace; but they left me quite indifferent, and have become vague in my memory. From the splendours of the palace we crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons, and saw the horrible dark damp cells that would make the saddest life in the free light and air seem bright and desirable.

The interior of St. Mark’s is full of interest, but not of beauty: it is dark and heavy, and ill-suited to the Catholic worship, for the massive piers that obstruct the view everywhere shut out the sight of ceremony and procession, as we witnessed at our leisure on the day of the great procession of Corpus Christi. But everywhere there are relics of gone-by art to be studied, from mosaics of the Greeks to mosaics of later artists than the Zuccati; old marble statues, embrowned like a meerschaum pipe; amazing sculptures in wood; Sansovino doors, ambitious to rival Ghiberti’s; transparent alabaster columns; an ancient Madonna, hung with jewels, transported from St. Sophia, in Constantinople; and everywhere the venerable pavement, once beautiful with its starry patterns in rich marble, now deadened and sunk to unevenness like the mud floor of a cabin.

Then outside, on the archway of the principal door, there are sculptures of a variety that makes one renounce the study of them in despair at the shortness of one’s time--blended fruits and foliage, and human groups and animal forms of all kinds. On our first morning we ascended the great tower, and looked around on the island-city and the distant mountains and the distant Adriatic. And on the same day we went to see the Pisani Palace--one of the grand old palaces that are going to decay.... After this we saw the Church of San Sebastiano, where Paul Veronese is buried, with his own paintings around, mingling their colour with the light that falls on his tombstone. There is one remarkably fine painting of his here: it represents, I think, some Saints going to martyrdom, but apart from that explanation, is a composition full of vigorous, spirited figures....

Santa Maria della Salute, built as an _ex voto_ by the Republic on the cessation of the plague, is one of the most conspicuous churches in Venice, lifting its white cupolas close on the Grand Canal, where it widens out towards the Giudecca. Here there are various Tintorettos, but the only one which is not blackened so as to be unintelligible is the _Cena_, which is represented as a bustling supper-party, with attendants and sideboard accessories, in thoroughly Dutch fashion!... But of all Tintoretto’s paintings, the best preserved, and perhaps the most complete in execution, is the Miracle of St. Mark at the Accademia. We saw it the oftener because we were attracted to the Accademia again and again by Titian’s Assumption, which we placed next to Peter the Martyr among the pictures at Venice. For a thoroughly rapt expression I never saw anything equal to the Virgin in this picture; and the expression is the more remarkable because it is not assisted by the usual devices to express spiritual ecstasy, such as delicacy of feature and temperament or pale meagreness. Then what cherubs and angelic heads bathed in light! The lower part of the picture has no interest; the attitudes are theatrical; and the Almighty above is as unbeseeming as painted Almighties usually are: but the middle group falls short only of the Sistine Madonna.

Among the Venetian painters Giovanni Bellini shines with a mild, serious light that gives one an affectionate respect towards him. In the Church of the Scalzi there is an exquisite Madonna by him--probably his _chef-d’œuvre_--comparable to Raphael’s for sweetness.

And Palma Vecchio, too, must be held in grateful reverence for his Santa Barbara, standing in calm, grand beauty above an altar in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is an almost unique presentation of a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction.

We made the journey to Chioggia.... Of all dreamy delights, that of floating in a gondola along the canals and out on the lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night on the lagoon when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours: it is the sort of scene in which I could most readily forget my own existence, and feel melted into the general life.

Another charm of evening time was to walk up and down the Piazza of San Marco as the stars were brightening and look at the grand dim buildings, and the flock of pigeons flitting about them; or to walk on to the Bridge of La Paglia and look along the dark canal that runs under the Bridge of Sighs--its blackness lit up by a gaslight here and there, and the plash of the oar of blackest gondola slowly advancing....

Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across the green plains of Lombardy, which can hardly look tempting to an eye still filled with the dreamy beauty it has left behind.

_GEORGE ELIOT’S LIFE AS RELATED IN HER LETTERS AND JOURNALS._

BEFORE ‘A SURVEY OF THE CITY OF VENICE’

THAT EXQUISITE LARGE PEECE

Could any state on earth immortal be, _Venice_ by her rare Government is she.... Though, Syren-like, on shore and sea, her face Enchants all those whom once she doth embrace. Nor is there any can her beauty prize But he who hath beheld her with his eyes.... _Venus_ and _Venice_ are, Great Queens in their degree; _Venus_ is Queen of love, _Venice_ of policy.

JAMES HOWELL.

VENICE: THE GEM OF THE WORLD

AN EPITOME

Having now so amply declared unto you most of the principall things of this thrise-renowned and illustrious citie, I will briefly by way of epitome mention most of the other particulars thereof, and so finally shut up this narration: There are reported to be in Venice and the circumjacent islands two hundred Churches in which are one hundred forty three paire organs, fifty foure Monasteries, twenty sixe Nunneries, fifty sixe Tribunals or places of judgment, seventeene Hospitals, sixe Companies or Fraternities; one hundred sixty five marble statues of worthy personages, partly equestriall, partly pedestriall, which are erected in sundry places of the citie, to the honour of those that eyther at home have prudently administered the Commonweale, or abroad valiantly fought for the same. Likewise of brass there are twenty three, whereof one is that of Bartholomew Coleon. Also there are twentie seven publique clocks, ten brasen gates, a hundred and fourteene Towers for bels to hang in, ten brasen horses, one hundred fifty wels for the common use of the citizens, one hundred eighty five delectable gardens, ten thousand Gondolaes, foure hundred and fifty bridges partly stony, partly timber, one hundred and twenty Palaces, whereof one hundred are very worthy of that name, one hundred seventy foure courts: and the totall number of soules living in the citie and about the same is thought to be about five hundred thousand, something more or lesse. For sometimes there is a catalogue made of all the persons in the citie of what sexe or age soever they be; as we may reade there was heretofore in Rome in the time of Augustus Cæsar: and at the last view there were found in the whole city as many as I have before spoken.

Thus have I related unto thee as many notable matters of this noble 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!’