ISLAND AND LAGOON

My windows look upon a garden, the west side of which is bounded by the walls of a convent, while towards the east it juts out into the lagoon, in the form of a little peninsula. The garden is charmingly situated, but little frequented. It is my custom every morning ... to spend a few moments at the window ... to see the sun rise over the Adriatic.... I recommend exactly this station, the most eligible one, perhaps, in all Venice, to enjoy so splendid a prospect in perfection. A purple twilight hangs over the deep, and a golden mist on the lagoon announces the sun’s approach. The heavens and the sea are wrapped in expectant silence. In two seconds the orb of day appears, casting a flood of fiery light upon the waves. It is a sight of enchantment!SCHILLER.Chioggia, like Venice, is built upon a foundation of wooden piles.... One meets sailors and fishermen at every step. Whoever appears in a perruque, or a cloak, is regarded as an aristocrat—a rich man; the cap and overcoat are here the insignia of the poor. The situation is certainly extremely lovely, but it does not bear comparison with Venice.SCHILLER.

SCHILLER.

Chioggia, like Venice, is built upon a foundation of wooden piles.... One meets sailors and fishermen at every step. Whoever appears in a perruque, or a cloak, is regarded as an aristocrat—a rich man; the cap and overcoat are here the insignia of the poor. The situation is certainly extremely lovely, but it does not bear comparison with Venice.

SCHILLER.

I passedin a gondola to pleasant Murano, distant about a little mile from the citie, where they make their delicate Venice glasses, so famous over al Christendome for the incomparable finenes thereof, and in one of their working houses made a glasse my selfe. Most of their principall matter whereof they make their glasses is a kinde of earth which is brought thither by sea from Drepanum, a goodly haven towne of Sicilie, where Æneas buried his aged father Anchises. This Murano is a very delectable and populous place, having many faire buildings both publique and private, and divers very pleasant gardens. The first that inhabited it were those of the towne Altinum, bordering upon the sea coast, who in the time of the Hunnes invasion of Italy, repaired hither with their wives and children, for the securitie of their lives, as other borderers also did at the same time to those Islands, where Venice now standeth. Here did I eate the best oysters that ever I did in all my life. They were indeede but little, something lesse than our Wainflete oysters about London.... By the way, betwixt Venice and Murano I observed a most notable thing, whereof I had often heard long before, a faire monastery of Augustinian monkes built by a second Flora or Lais. I meane a rich Cortezan of Venice, whose name was Margarita Æmiliana. I have not heard of so religious a worke done by so irreligious a founder in any place of Christendome: belike shehoped to make expiation unto God by this holy deede for the lascivious dalliances of her youth, buttali spe freti sperando pereant.

THOMAS CORYAT (1611).

Thedecay of the city of Venice is, in many respects, like that of an outwearied and aged human frame; the cause of its decrepitude is indeed at the heart, but the outward appearances of it are first at the extremities. In the centre of the city there are still places where some evidence of vitality remains, and where, with kind closing of the eyes to signs, too manifest even there, of distress and declining fortune, the stranger may succeed in imagining, for a little while, what must have been the aspect of Venice in her prime. But this lingering pulsation has not force enough any more to penetrate into the suburbs and outskirts of the city; the frost of death has there seized upon it irrevocably, and the grasp of mortal disease is marked daily by the increasing breadth of its belt of ruin. Nowhere is this seen more grievously than along the great north-eastern boundary, once occupied by the smaller palaces of the Venetians, built for pleasure or repose; the nobler piles along the Grand Canal being reserved for the pomp and business of daily life. To such smaller palaces some garden ground was commonly attached, opening to the water-side; and, in front of these villas and gardens, the lagoon was wont to be covered in the evening by gondolas: the space of it between this part of the city and the island group of Murano being to Venice, in her time of power, what its parks are toLondon; only gondolas were used instead of carriages, and the crowd of the population did not come out till towards sunset, and prolonged their pleasures far into the night, company answering to company with alternate singing.

If, knowing this custom of the Venetians, and with a vision in his mind of summer palaces lining the shore, and myrtle gardens sloping to the sea, the traveller now seeks this suburb of Venice, he will be strangely and sadly surprised to find a new but perfectly desolate quay, about a mile in length, extending from the arsenal to the Sacca della Misericordia, in front of a line of miserable houses built in the course of the last sixty or eighty years, yet already tottering to their ruin; and not less to find that the principal object in the view which these houses (built partly in front and partly on the ruins of the ancient palaces) now command is a dead brick wall, about a quarter of a mile across the water, interrupted only by a kind of white lodge, the cheerfulness of which prospect is not enhanced by his finding that this wall encloses the principal public cemetery of Venice. He may, perhaps, marvel for a few moments at the singular taste of the old Venetians in taking their pleasure under a churchyard wall; but on further inquiry, he will find that the building on the island, like those on the shore, is recent, that it stands on the ruins of the Church ofSt.Cristoforo della Pace; and that, with a singular, because unintended, moral, the modern Venetians have replaced the Peace of the Christ-bearer by the Peace of Death, and where they once went, as the sun set daily, to their pleasure, now go, as the sun sets to each of them, for ever, to their graves.

Yet the power of Nature cannot be shortened bythe folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of man. The broad tides still ebb and flow brightly about the island of the dead, and the linked conclave of the Alps know no decline from their old pre-eminence, nor stoop from their golden thrones in the circle of the horizon. So lovely is the scene still, in spite of all its injuries, that we shall find ourselves drawn there again and again at evening out of the narrow canals and streets of the city, to watch the wreaths of the sea-mist weaving themselves like mourning veils around the mountains far away, and listen to the green waves as they fret and sigh along the cemetery shore.

But it is morning now: we have a hard day’s work to do at Murano, and our boat shoots swiftly from beneath the last bridge of Venice, and brings us out into the open sea and sky.

The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another, rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet them, and are lost in them, barred across by the grey terraces of those cloud foundations and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the mainland fringed with low trees; and then the wide-waving surface of the burnished lagoon trembling slowly, and shaking out into forked bands of lengthening fight the images of the towers of cloud above. To the north, there is first the great cemetery wall, then the long stray buildings of Murano, and the island villagesbeyond, glittering in intense crystalline vermilion, like so much jewellery scattered on a mirror, their towers poised apparently in the air a little above the horizon, and their reflections, as sharp and vivid and substantial as themselves, thrown on the vacancy between them and the sea. And thus the villages seem standing on the air; and, to the east, there is a cluster of ships that seem sailing on the land; for the sandy line of the Lido stretches itself between us and them, and we can see the tall white sails moving beyond it, but not the sea, only there is a sense of the great sea being indeed there, and a solemn strength of gleaming light in the sky above.

The most discordant feature in the whole scene is the cloud which hovers above the glass furnaces of Murano; but this we may not regret, as it is one of the last signs left of human exertion among the ruinous villages which surround us. The silent gliding of the gondola brings it nearer to us every moment; we pass the cemetery, and a deep sea-channel which separates it from Murano, and finally enter a narrow water-street, with a paved footpath on each side, raised three or four feet above the canal, and forming a kind of quay between the water and the doors of the houses. These latter are, for the most part, low, but built with massy doors and windows of marble or Istrian stone, square set, and barred with iron; buildings evidently once of no mean order, though now inhabited only by the poor. Here and there an ogee window of the fourteenth century, or a doorway deeply enriched with cable mouldings, shows itself in the midst of more ordinary features; and several houses, consisting of one story only carried on square pillars, forming a short arcade along the quay, havewindows sustained on shafts, of red Verona marble, of singular grace and delicacy. All now in vain: little care is there for their delicacy or grace among the rough fishermen sauntering on the quay with their jackets hanging loose from their shoulders, jacket and cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some life in the scene more than is usual in Venice; the women are sitting at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses sifting glass-dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water, from vendors of figs and grapes, and gourds, and shellfish; cries partly descriptive of the eatables in question, but interspersed with others of a character unintelligible in proportion to their violence, and fortunately so, if we may judge by a sentence which is stencilled in black, within a garland, on the whitewashed walls of nearly every other house in the street, but which, how often soever written, no one seems to regard: ‘Bestemme non più. Lodate Gesù.’

We push our way on between large barges laden with fresh water from Fusina, in round white tubs seven feet across, and complicated boats full of all manner of nets, that look as if they could never be disentangled, hanging from their masts and over their sides; and presently pass under a bridge with the lion ofSt.Mark on its archivolt, and another on a pillar at the end of the parapet, a small red lion with much of the puppy in his face, looking vacantly up into the air (in passing we may note that, instead of feathers, his wings are covered with hair, and in several other points the manner of his sculpture is not uninteresting). Presently the canal turns a little tothe left, and thereupon becomes more quiet, the main bustle of the water-street being usually confined to the first straight reach of it, some quarter of a mile long, the Cheapside of Murano. We pass a considerable church on the left,St.Pietro, and a little square opposite to it with a few acacia-trees, and then find our boat suddenly seized by a strong green eddy, and whirled into the tide-way of one of the main channels of the lagoon, which divides the town of Murano into two parts by a deep stream some fifty yards over, crossed only by one wooden bridge. We let ourselves drift some way down the current, looking at the low line of cottages on the other side of it, hardly knowing if there be more cheerfulness or melancholy in the way the sunshine glows on their ruinous but whitewashed walls, and sparkles on the rushing of the green water by the grass-grown quay. It needs a strong stroke of the oar to bring us into the mouth of another quiet canal on the farther side of the tide-way, and we are still somewhat giddy when we run the head of the gondola into the sand on the left-hand side of this more sluggish stream, and land under the seat end of the Church of San Donato, the ‘Matrice’ or ‘Mother’ Church of Murano.

JOHN RUSKIN.

I waslately 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 toSt.Mark, either in cours, as anchor, in dock, or upon the carine, as there be days in the year; here they can build a complete galley in half a day, andput her afloat in perfect equipage, having all the ingredients fitted beforehand, as they did in three hours, when Henry the Third passed this way to France from Poland, who wished, that besides Paris and his parliament towns, he had this arsenal in exchange for three of his chiefest cities. There are three hundred people perpetually here at work, and if one comes young and grows old inSt.Mark’s service, he hath a pension from the State during life. Being brought to see one of the Clarissimos that governs this arsenal, this huge sea store-house, amongst other matters reflecting upon England, he was saying: ‘That if Cavalier Don Roberto Mansell were now here, he thought verily the republic would make a proffer to him to be admiral of that fleet of galleys and galleons, which are now going against the Duke of Ossuna and the forces of Naples, you are so well known here.’

I was, since I came hither, in Murano, a little island about the distance of Lambeth from London, where crystal glass is made, and it is a rare sight to see a whole street, where on the one side there are twenty furnaces together at work. They say here that although one should transplant a glass-furnace from Murano to Venice herself, or to any of the little assembly of islands about her, or to any other part of the earth besides, and use the same materials, the same workmen, the same fuel, the self-same ingredients every day, yet they cannot make crystal glass in that perfection, for beauty and lustre, as in Murano. Some impute it to the quality of the circumambient air that hangs over the place, which is purified and attenuated by the concurrence of so many fires that are in those furnaces night and day perpetually, for they are like the vestal fire which never goes out....

The art of glass-making here is very highly valued; for, whosoever be of that profession are gentlemenipso facto, and it is not without reason; it being a rare kind of knowledge and chemistry to transmute dust and sand (for they are the only main ingredients) to such a diaphanous pellucid dainty body as you see a crystal glass is, which hath this property above gold or silver or any other mineral, to admit no poison; as also that it never wastes or loses a whit of its first weight, though you use it never so long. When I saw so many sorts of curious glasses made here I thought upon the compliment which a gentleman put upon a lady in England, who having five or six comely daughters, said he never saw in his life such a dainty cupboard of crystal glasses; the compliment proceeds, it seems, from a saying they have here, ‘That the first handsome woman that ever was made, was made of Venice glass,’ which implies beauty, but brittleness with all (and Venice is not unfurnished with some of that mould, for no place abounds more with lasses and glasses).... When I pried into the materials, and observed the furnaces and the calcinations, the transubstantiations, the liquefactions that are incident to this art, my thoughts were raised to a higher speculation: that if this small furnace-fire hath the virtue to convert such a small lump of dark dust and sand into such a precious clear body as crystal, surely that grand universal fire which shall happen at the day of judgment, may by its violent ardour vitrify and turn to one lump of crystal the whole body of the earth; nor am I the first that fell upon this conceit.

JAMES HOWELL.

Sevenmiles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen grey; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the colour of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but further back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals asthe surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,—TorcelloandVenice.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitudeof its people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea.

The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower’s scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow land.

The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water’s edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken for the outhouses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of the ‘Palazzo publico,’ both dating as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which surrounds itare of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church, to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight and distress, who sought in the hurried erection of their island church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendour, and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honour to God by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western extremities,—onerepresenting the Last Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,—and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men ‘persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed.’ ...

And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,—first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,—rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:

‘The sea is His, and He made it;And His hands prepared the dry land.’

‘The sea is His, and He made it;

And His hands prepared the dry land.’

JOHN RUSKIN.

SENT FOR A NEW YEAR’S GIFT TO A CHOICE LADY

Madame,

If on this New Year’s gift you cast your eye,You plainly may therein at once descryA twofold quality; for there will appearA brittle substance, but the Object clear.So in the donor, Madame, you may seeThese qualities inherent for to be;His pow’r which brittle little is, Helas,His mind sincere, and pure as any glass.The old philosopher did wish there wereA window in his heart of chrystal clear,Through which his friends might the more clearly seeHis inward passions, and integrity.I wish the like, for there you sure would restOf my clear mind, and motions of my breast.But if it question’d be to what intentWithVenice-glasses I do you present,I answer, that I could no gift perceiveSo fit for me to give, you to receive:For those rare Graces that in you excel,Andyouthat hold them, one may parallelUnto aVenice-glass, which as ’tis clear,And can admit no poyson to come near,So virtue dwells in you, nor can endureThat vice should harbour in a breast so pure.

If on this New Year’s gift you cast your eye,

You plainly may therein at once descry

A twofold quality; for there will appear

A brittle substance, but the Object clear.

So in the donor, Madame, you may seeThese qualities inherent for to be;His pow’r which brittle little is, Helas,His mind sincere, and pure as any glass.

So in the donor, Madame, you may see

These qualities inherent for to be;

His pow’r which brittle little is, Helas,

His mind sincere, and pure as any glass.

The old philosopher did wish there wereA window in his heart of chrystal clear,Through which his friends might the more clearly seeHis inward passions, and integrity.

The old philosopher did wish there were

A window in his heart of chrystal clear,

Through which his friends might the more clearly see

His inward passions, and integrity.

I wish the like, for there you sure would restOf my clear mind, and motions of my breast.

I wish the like, for there you sure would rest

Of my clear mind, and motions of my breast.

But if it question’d be to what intentWithVenice-glasses I do you present,I answer, that I could no gift perceiveSo fit for me to give, you to receive:For those rare Graces that in you excel,Andyouthat hold them, one may parallelUnto aVenice-glass, which as ’tis clear,And can admit no poyson to come near,So virtue dwells in you, nor can endureThat vice should harbour in a breast so pure.

But if it question’d be to what intent

WithVenice-glasses I do you present,

I answer, that I could no gift perceive

So fit for me to give, you to receive:

For those rare Graces that in you excel,

Andyouthat hold them, one may parallel

Unto aVenice-glass, which as ’tis clear,

And can admit no poyson to come near,

So virtue dwells in you, nor can endure

That vice should harbour in a breast so pure.

JAMES HOWELL.

Twoyears have gone since on this desert placeWe landed, she and I, alone, at one;But now the wild sea-marshes have no grace,For she who made their beauty—she is gone.That day the island in the afternoonShone like a gem, and on its point the pineKept steadfast watch, while in the clear lagoonUnwavering lay the shadow and the shrine.‘How lonely,’ so she said, ‘how still, how fair!Tell me the story why they call this placeSt.Francis of the Desert. Silent air,And silent light sleep here, and silent space.’‘Once in his wanderings,’ thus I told the tale,‘St.Francis, overtaken by the night,Pushed here his bark to shore and furled his sail,And wearied, slumbered till the morning light.‘He woke, and saw his brother, the great SunRise up, full-orbed, refreshed, to praise the Lord,And so began the Matins: “Is there noneTo sing,” he said, “responses?” At the word,‘The nightingale, the blackbird and the thrush,And all the little fowl with dancing notes,Perched joyous on the low acacia bush,Whereby he knelt, and with full-swelling throats‘Sang a clear service like the boys in quire;And Francis, happy as a child, gave thanksTo those sweet children of the heavenlySire—Hence grew this shrine upon the wan sea-banks.’The story pleased her; and the low-roofed church,The bricked-paved cloister set with balsams round,The marble well, and silence-guarded porch,The cypresses that clasped the garden ground,The soft-leaved poplars rippling in the air,The white narcissus tufts beneath the trees,And the lonely waters whispering everywhere;The blue sky filled to brimming with the breezeThat drove the red-sailed barks along thewave—All pleased, but most the silent solitude;The still Franciscan walking slow and grave,The absent life wherein no cares intrude,Obedient, chaste and poor—alone with seaAnd sky and clouds and winds and God’s still voice;Unvexèd by the clamorous world, and freeFor worship and for work, to die or to rejoice.‘I would not choose,’ she said, ‘this quiet life;But if my wheels were broken in the race,If, having done my best, I failed in the strife,It would be well to work in this sweet place.‘But you and I are one—our hopes and need,Our joy and love are in the world of men;Let fall the sail and bid the rowers speed,Life calls aloud—Back to the city then.’So spake she, bathed in sunshine and delight,Her hand upon the wooden cross whose shadeFalls on the landing-place. She was so brightThat when I looked on her I was afraid.Good cause for fear—one little month and thenDark Ocean quenched her light, and now no moreI see this island in the salt sea-fen,And think what joy, what love I had of yore.’Twas summer then and glorious afternoon,And now ’tis autumn and a dusky eve;Night rushes swiftly o’er the pale lagoon,The wet seaweed and lapping waters weaveA mournful song together, and I walkBeneath the solemn cypress-trees alone;High overhead the tinkling poplars talkOf me, and wonder where my love has flown.I cannot tell them, I have never heard;My boat has drawn unto a silent shore;But could she speak to me one little word,Or could I hope to love her evermore,Then I might see the sun arise, and singMatins of praise, like Francis, o’er the sea;And every happy bird upon the wing,And all the angels, would rejoice with me.STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Twoyears have gone since on this desert place

We landed, she and I, alone, at one;

But now the wild sea-marshes have no grace,

For she who made their beauty—she is gone.

That day the island in the afternoonShone like a gem, and on its point the pineKept steadfast watch, while in the clear lagoonUnwavering lay the shadow and the shrine.

That day the island in the afternoon

Shone like a gem, and on its point the pine

Kept steadfast watch, while in the clear lagoon

Unwavering lay the shadow and the shrine.

‘How lonely,’ so she said, ‘how still, how fair!Tell me the story why they call this placeSt.Francis of the Desert. Silent air,And silent light sleep here, and silent space.’

‘How lonely,’ so she said, ‘how still, how fair!

Tell me the story why they call this place

St.Francis of the Desert. Silent air,

And silent light sleep here, and silent space.’

‘Once in his wanderings,’ thus I told the tale,‘St.Francis, overtaken by the night,Pushed here his bark to shore and furled his sail,And wearied, slumbered till the morning light.

‘Once in his wanderings,’ thus I told the tale,

‘St.Francis, overtaken by the night,

Pushed here his bark to shore and furled his sail,

And wearied, slumbered till the morning light.

‘He woke, and saw his brother, the great SunRise up, full-orbed, refreshed, to praise the Lord,And so began the Matins: “Is there noneTo sing,” he said, “responses?” At the word,

‘He woke, and saw his brother, the great Sun

Rise up, full-orbed, refreshed, to praise the Lord,

And so began the Matins: “Is there none

To sing,” he said, “responses?” At the word,

‘The nightingale, the blackbird and the thrush,And all the little fowl with dancing notes,Perched joyous on the low acacia bush,Whereby he knelt, and with full-swelling throats

‘The nightingale, the blackbird and the thrush,

And all the little fowl with dancing notes,

Perched joyous on the low acacia bush,

Whereby he knelt, and with full-swelling throats

‘Sang a clear service like the boys in quire;And Francis, happy as a child, gave thanksTo those sweet children of the heavenlySire—Hence grew this shrine upon the wan sea-banks.’

‘Sang a clear service like the boys in quire;

And Francis, happy as a child, gave thanks

To those sweet children of the heavenlySire—

Hence grew this shrine upon the wan sea-banks.’

The story pleased her; and the low-roofed church,The bricked-paved cloister set with balsams round,The marble well, and silence-guarded porch,The cypresses that clasped the garden ground,

The story pleased her; and the low-roofed church,

The bricked-paved cloister set with balsams round,

The marble well, and silence-guarded porch,

The cypresses that clasped the garden ground,

The soft-leaved poplars rippling in the air,The white narcissus tufts beneath the trees,And the lonely waters whispering everywhere;The blue sky filled to brimming with the breeze

The soft-leaved poplars rippling in the air,

The white narcissus tufts beneath the trees,

And the lonely waters whispering everywhere;

The blue sky filled to brimming with the breeze

That drove the red-sailed barks along thewave—All pleased, but most the silent solitude;The still Franciscan walking slow and grave,The absent life wherein no cares intrude,

That drove the red-sailed barks along thewave—

All pleased, but most the silent solitude;

The still Franciscan walking slow and grave,

The absent life wherein no cares intrude,

Obedient, chaste and poor—alone with seaAnd sky and clouds and winds and God’s still voice;Unvexèd by the clamorous world, and freeFor worship and for work, to die or to rejoice.

Obedient, chaste and poor—alone with sea

And sky and clouds and winds and God’s still voice;

Unvexèd by the clamorous world, and free

For worship and for work, to die or to rejoice.

‘I would not choose,’ she said, ‘this quiet life;But if my wheels were broken in the race,If, having done my best, I failed in the strife,It would be well to work in this sweet place.

‘I would not choose,’ she said, ‘this quiet life;

But if my wheels were broken in the race,

If, having done my best, I failed in the strife,

It would be well to work in this sweet place.

‘But you and I are one—our hopes and need,Our joy and love are in the world of men;Let fall the sail and bid the rowers speed,Life calls aloud—Back to the city then.’

‘But you and I are one—our hopes and need,

Our joy and love are in the world of men;

Let fall the sail and bid the rowers speed,

Life calls aloud—Back to the city then.’

So spake she, bathed in sunshine and delight,Her hand upon the wooden cross whose shadeFalls on the landing-place. She was so brightThat when I looked on her I was afraid.

So spake she, bathed in sunshine and delight,

Her hand upon the wooden cross whose shade

Falls on the landing-place. She was so bright

That when I looked on her I was afraid.

Good cause for fear—one little month and thenDark Ocean quenched her light, and now no moreI see this island in the salt sea-fen,And think what joy, what love I had of yore.

Good cause for fear—one little month and then

Dark Ocean quenched her light, and now no more

I see this island in the salt sea-fen,

And think what joy, what love I had of yore.

’Twas summer then and glorious afternoon,And now ’tis autumn and a dusky eve;Night rushes swiftly o’er the pale lagoon,The wet seaweed and lapping waters weave

’Twas summer then and glorious afternoon,

And now ’tis autumn and a dusky eve;

Night rushes swiftly o’er the pale lagoon,

The wet seaweed and lapping waters weave

A mournful song together, and I walkBeneath the solemn cypress-trees alone;High overhead the tinkling poplars talkOf me, and wonder where my love has flown.

A mournful song together, and I walk

Beneath the solemn cypress-trees alone;

High overhead the tinkling poplars talk

Of me, and wonder where my love has flown.

I cannot tell them, I have never heard;My boat has drawn unto a silent shore;But could she speak to me one little word,Or could I hope to love her evermore,

I cannot tell them, I have never heard;

My boat has drawn unto a silent shore;

But could she speak to me one little word,

Or could I hope to love her evermore,

Then I might see the sun arise, and singMatins of praise, like Francis, o’er the sea;And every happy bird upon the wing,And all the angels, would rejoice with me.STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Then I might see the sun arise, and sing

Matins of praise, like Francis, o’er the sea;

And every happy bird upon the wing,

And all the angels, would rejoice with me.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Doyou know San Francesco della Vigna, in Venice?

Some say that its tall tower is the first point rising above the waves, which the returning Venetian sailor sees as he comes homeward from the south-east, over the foaming bars of Chioggia and Malamocco, one slender shaft lifted against sky, calling him back to his city and his home. All the mariners and fishermen,who come and go over the Adrian waters, have an especial tenderness, an especial reverence, for Saint Francis of the Vineyard. There is no vineyard now; only one small square garden, with a cloister running round it, arched, columned, marble paved, where the dead lie under the worn smooth slabs, and the box-edges hem in thyme, and balsams, and basil, and carnations, and thrift, and saxifrage, and other homely hardy plants which need slight fostering care. The sea winds blow strongly there, and the sea fogs drift thickly, and the steam and smoke of the foundries round about hang in heavy clouds, where once the pavilions and the lawns and the terraces of the patricians of Venice touched the grey-green lagoon; but this garden of San Francesco is still sweet and fresh: shut in between its marble colonnades with the deep brown shadow of the church leaning over it, and the chiming of the bells, and the melody of the organ rolling above it in deep waves of sound, jarred sometimes by the clash of the hammers falling on the iron and the copper of the foundries near at hand, and sometimes sinking to a sweet silence, only softly stirred by the splash of an oar as a boat passes up or down the narrow canal.

For the sake of that cloistered garden, a gondola came one summer every day to the landing-place before San Francesco. In the gondola was an artist, a painter of Paris, Yvon Dorât, who had seen the spot, and liked it, and returned to paint from it every day, finding an inexpressible charm in its contrasts of gloom and light, of high brown walls and low-lying graves, of fresh green herbs and flowers, and melancholy immemorial marble aisles. He meant to make a great picture of it, with the ethereal Venetian skyabove all, and, between the straight edges of the bay, a solitary monk passing thoughtfully. Dorât was under the charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm, voluptuous and yet spiritual, which no artist or poet ever can resist, and these summer months were to him as a vision of languor, and beauty and rest, in which the white wings of sea-birds, and the silver of gleaming waters, and the festal figures of Carpaccio and the golden warmth of Palma, Vecchio, and the glories of sunsets aflame behind the Euganean hills, and the mystery of moonless night, with the tide washing against the weed-grown piles of a Madonna of the lagoon, were all blended in that confusion of past and present, of art and nature, of desire and repose, which fills the soul and the senses of those who love Venice, and live in thrall to her.

OUIDA.

Oh, Galuppi,[2]Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;But although I give you credit, ’tis with such a heavy mind!Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings,WhereSt.Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by ... what you call... Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival!I was never out of England—it’s as if I saw it all!Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips sored,—On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?Well (and it was graceful of them) they’d break talk off and afford—She, to bite her mask’s black velvet, he to finger on his sword,While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—‘Must we die?’Those commiserating sevenths—‘Life might last! we can but try!’‘Were you happy?’—‘Yes.’—‘And are you still as happy?’—‘Yes—And you?’—‘Then more kisses’—‘DidIstop them, when a million seemed so few?’Hark—the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to!So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.’Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.But when I sit down to reason,—think to take my stand nor swerveTill I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve,Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house wasburned—‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned!The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.‘Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology,Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;Butterflies may dread extinction,—you’ll not die, it cannot be!‘As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop.What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the goldUsed to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.ROBERT BROWNING.

Oh, Galuppi,[2]Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;

But although I give you credit, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings,WhereSt.Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings,

WhereSt.Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by ... what you call... Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival!I was never out of England—it’s as if I saw it all!

Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by ... what you call

... Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival!

I was never out of England—it’s as if I saw it all!

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,

When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips sored,—On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips sored,—

On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,

O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well (and it was graceful of them) they’d break talk off and afford—She, to bite her mask’s black velvet, he to finger on his sword,While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

Well (and it was graceful of them) they’d break talk off and afford

—She, to bite her mask’s black velvet, he to finger on his sword,

While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—‘Must we die?’Those commiserating sevenths—‘Life might last! we can but try!’

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—‘Must we die?’

Those commiserating sevenths—‘Life might last! we can but try!’

‘Were you happy?’—‘Yes.’—‘And are you still as happy?’—‘Yes—And you?’—‘Then more kisses’—‘DidIstop them, when a million seemed so few?’Hark—the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to!

‘Were you happy?’—‘Yes.’—‘And are you still as happy?’—‘Yes—And you?’

—‘Then more kisses’—‘DidIstop them, when a million seemed so few?’

Hark—the dominant’s persistence, till it must be answered to!

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.’

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

‘Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.’

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason,—think to take my stand nor swerveTill I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve,

But when I sit down to reason,—think to take my stand nor swerve

Till I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,

In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro’ every nerve,

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house wasburned—‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned!The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house wasburned—

‘Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned!

The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

‘Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology,Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;Butterflies may dread extinction,—you’ll not die, it cannot be!

‘Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology,

Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;

Butterflies may dread extinction,—you’ll not die, it cannot be!

‘As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop.What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

‘As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,

Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop.

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the goldUsed to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.ROBERT BROWNING.

‘Dust and ashes!’ So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

ROBERT BROWNING.

[2]Galuppi the musician was a native of Burano, a small island about a mile from Torcello, where his name is held in great esteem.—A. H. H.

Thesandolois 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 is only just raised above the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike movement of the gondola. In one of these boats—called by him theFisoloorSeamew—my friend Eustace had started with Antonio, intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured, to hoist a sail and helphimself along. After breakfast, when the crew for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed with the Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which occur as a respite from broken weather, when the air is windless and the light falls soft through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the Redentore, the islands in front of us,St.Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco, seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. The Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, and almost blent with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs into their work; and soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a breeze from the Adriatic caught us sideways for a while....

Now we are well lost in the lagoons—Venice no longer visible behind; the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disappeared in light irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the suggestion of coastlines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre, all remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached. We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead—a huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for a twelve hours’ cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came, with variegated sails of orange, red,and saffron, curiously chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints. A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving eastward on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according as each wills.

The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia, which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language and race and customs have held the two populations apart from these distant years when Genoa and the Republic ofSt.Mark fought their duel to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his pipe more than hisdonnaor his wife. The main canal is lined with substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But from Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter. Wandering about its wide deserted courts andcalli, we feel the spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility....

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or slackened, landing now and then on islands, saunteringalong the sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing—those at least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad, and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion. But some transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through the dignity with which these men invested them. By the peculiarity of their treatment therecitativoof the stage assumed a solemn movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna’s lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that calm—stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, till San Giorgio’s gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with the whispers at the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and thedeep-scented darkness of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was on its burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

Thisstrange, soft sea, so tempered into gentlehood, brings through its quietude another element of charm into Venice. It reflects all things with a wonderful perfection. Whatever loveliness is by its side it makes more lovely. Shallow itself, it seems deep; and the towers and palaces of Venice in all their colours descend and shine among other clouds and in another sky below. All outlines of sculpture and architecture, of embossment, in wall and window; all play of sunshine and shade; all the human life in balcony, bridge or quay, on barge or boat, are in the waters as in a silent dream—revealed in every line and colour, but with an exquisite difference in softness and purity. All Nature’s doings in the sky are also repeated with a tender fidelity in the mirror of the lagoon—morning light, noonday silver, purple thunder-cloud in the afternoon, sunset vapours, the moon and stars of night—and not only on the surface, but also, it seems, in an immeasurable depth. To look over the side of the boat into the water is to cry, ‘I see infinite space.’

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

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