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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42998 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
+  signs=.
+
+
+
+
+     BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+     BEAUTIFUL BOOKS
+     WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
+
+     PRICE =20S.= NET EACH
+
+     JAPAN
+     WORLD'S CHILDREN
+     WORLD PICTURES
+     VENICE
+     BRITTANY
+     THE THAMES
+
+     A. & C. BLACK . 4 SOHO SQUARE . LONDON
+
+
+
+
+VENICE
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: CROSSING THE PIAZZA]
+
+
+
+
+     VENICE
+
+     : BY MORTIMER MENPES :
+     TEXT BY DOROTHY MENPES
+     PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND
+     CHARLES BLACK·LONDON·W
+
+
+
+
+     Published May 1904
+     Reprinted 1906, 1912
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+
+     ARRIVAL AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS                           3
+
+     HISTORY                                                17
+
+     A GLIMPSE INTO BOHEMIA                                 39
+
+     ARCHITECTURE                                           55
+
+     ST. MARK'S                                             77
+
+     PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE                            91
+
+     STREETS, SHOPS, AND COURTYARDS                        125
+
+     THE ISLANDS OF THE LAGOON                             149
+
+     SOCIAL UPS AND DOWNS                                  173
+
+     GONDOLAS AND GONDOLIERS                               193
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+     1. Crossing the Piazza                     _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                   FACING PAGE
+
+     2. Grand Canal, showing Tower of St. Geremia            2
+
+     3. A Pink Palace                                        4
+
+     4. Palazzo Pisani                                       6
+
+     5. The Salute at Sunset                                 8
+
+     6. A Ruined Palazzo                                    12
+
+     7. Palazzi on the Canal                                14
+
+     8. Giudecca                                            16
+
+     9. San Giorgio Maggiore                                20
+
+     10. Off the Giudecca                                   22
+
+     11. St. Maria delle Misericordia                       26
+
+     12. The Custom House and Church of Santa Maria della
+     Salute                                                 28
+
+     13. At Chioggia                                        30
+
+     14. Church of San Geremia                              32
+
+     15. The Bridge of Sighs and Straw Bridge               34
+
+     16. On the Grand Canal                                 36
+
+     17. The Bridge of Sighs                                38
+
+     18. Palace in a By-Canal                               42
+
+     19. The Orange Door                                    44
+
+     20. An Unfrequented Canal                              50
+
+     21. St. Mark's Basin                                   52
+
+     22. Hotel Danieli                                      54
+
+     23. Porta della Carta                                  56
+
+     24. Grand Canal looking towards the Dogana             58
+
+     25. A Famous Palazzo                                   60
+
+     26. Entrance to the Grand Canal                        62
+
+     27. Panorama seen from St. Mark's Basin                64
+
+     28. The Dogana and Salute                              66
+
+     29. Palazzo Contarini degli Scrigni                    68
+
+     30. Santa Maria della Salute                           72
+
+     31. Palazzo Mengaldo                                   74
+
+     32. Ospedale Civile                                    76
+
+     33. St. Mark's                                         78
+
+     34. Palazzo Danieli                                    80
+
+     35. Francesca                                          82
+
+     36. St. Mark's Piazza                                  86
+
+     37. Scuola di San Marco                                88
+
+     38. A Quiet Waterway                                   90
+
+     39. Canal Priuli                                       94
+
+     40. Osmarin Canal                                      98
+
+     41. A Sotto Portico                                   102
+
+     42. A Narrow Canal                                    108
+
+     43. Bridge near the Palazzo Labia                     110
+
+     44. The House with the Blue Door                      112
+
+     45. Canal in Giudecca Island                          114
+
+     46. The Orange Sail                                   118
+
+     47. A Quiet Rio                                       120
+
+     48. Humble Quarter                                    122
+
+     49. Rio di San Marina                                 124
+
+     50. A Squero or Boat-building Yard                    126
+
+     51. The Weekly Wash                                   128
+
+     52. A Back Street                                     130
+
+     53. The Wooden Spoon Seller                           138
+
+     54. Work Girls                                        142
+
+     55. Chioggia Fish Market                              150
+
+     56. Chioggia                                          154
+
+     57. In Murano                                         158
+
+     58. Mrs Eden's Garden in Venice                       160
+
+     59. Timber Boats from the Shores of the Adriatic      162
+
+     60. By a Squero or Boat-building Yard                 164
+
+     61. In a Side Street, Chioggia                        166
+
+     62. Santa Maria della Salute                          168
+
+     63. Rio e Chiesa degli Ognissanti                     174
+
+     64. A Campiello                                       176
+
+     65. Fishing Boats from Chioggia                       178
+
+     66. A Woman of the People                             180
+
+     67. Chioggia                                          184
+
+     68. The Fish Market                                   190
+
+     69. Midday on the Lagoon                              196
+
+     70. A Traghetto                                       200
+
+     71. Marietta                                          204
+
+     72. Bambino                                           208
+
+     73. A Squero or Boat-building Yard in Venice          212
+
+     74. Under the Midday Sun                              214
+
+     75. The Rialto                                        218
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: GRAND CANAL, SHOWING TOWER OF ST. GEREMIA]
+
+
+
+
+ARRIVAL AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS
+
+
+There is no city more written about, more painted, and more
+misrepresented, than Venice. Students, poets, and painters have
+combined in reproducing her many charms. Usually, however, Venice is
+described in a hurried, careless way: the subject is seldom gone
+deeply into, and studied as it should be, before attempting to compile
+a book. It is only one who has been there, and observed the life and
+characteristics of the people for years, who can gain any true
+perception of their character. Those who have not been to Venice must
+needs know by heart her attractions, which have been so persistently
+thrust before the public; but unless half a dozen really excellent
+books have been read concerning her, the city of their imaginations
+must be a theatrical Venice, unreal and altogether false. Normally one
+feels that the last word about Venice has been said--the last chord
+struck upon her keyboard, the last harmony brought out. But this is by
+no means the case. There are chords still to be struck, and harmonies
+still to be brought out: her charm can never be exhausted. The last
+chord struck, no matter how poorly executed it may be, goes on
+vibrating in our ears, and all unconsciously we are listening for
+another. How strange this is! Why should it be so? What other cities
+impress us in the same way? Oxford perhaps, and Rome certainly. These
+are the only two which come to my mind at the moment. They are the
+cities of the soul, round which endless romantic histories cling,
+endless dear and glorious associations. Perhaps the reason why one
+never tires of books on Venice, or of pictures of Venice, is that they
+none of them fulfil one's desires and expectations--they never express
+just what one feels about her--there is always something left unsaid,
+something uninterpreted; and one is always waiting for that. It is
+impossible to express all one feels with regard to Venice. One feels
+one's own incompetence terribly. Try as you may, you can only give one
+day, one hour, one aspect of sea and sky, only the four seasons, not
+all the myriad changes between;--only four times of the
+day--dawn, mid-day, twilight, and night--not the thousand melting
+changes, not the continual variations. It is not a panorama, not a
+magnificent view permanent before one's gaze. The cloud forms will
+never be quite the same as you see them at a certain moment; the water
+will never be again of that particular shade of green; the reflection
+of a pink palace, with the black barge at its base laden with golden
+fruit, will never again be thrown upon the water quite in that same
+way; there will not always be that warm golden light bathing sea and
+sky and palace; that particular pearly-grey mist in the early morning
+will never recur, never quite that deep blue-black of night with the
+orange lights and the steely water.
+
+  [Illustration: A PINK PALACE]
+
+When one lives in Venice one becomes absolutely in sympathy with the
+place. One feels her beautiful colour; but it is quite another story
+when one comes to reproduce it. Words cannot describe nor brush
+portray it. Thousands have attempted to paint Venice; but few have
+succeeded. The Venetians themselves, loving their country, painted her
+continually; but even they could only give one aspect of her. The
+pictures of Venice by Venetian masters are chiefly of her pomp and
+glory, her State functions and her water fêtes. However, one finds
+marvellous glimpses of landscape work in some of the great
+masterpieces--sweeps of sky above the heads of some of the Madonnas,
+skies in which one can feel the shimmer of light so characteristic of
+Venice, the blending of the tones and the flaming glory of the sunset
+sky. Turner, too, caught the radiant, shimmering, bright and
+opalescent qualities of the lagoon scenery; but even his palette could
+not cope with the ever-changing colour.
+
+One must be either hot or cold with regard to Venice. You cannot be
+lukewarm. The magic of her spell begins to work upon you immediately
+you arrive. Most of us imagine what the place will be like before we
+reach it. We people it in our dreams, and visualise it for
+ourselves--canals, palaces, streets, the general appearance of things.
+This imaginary city has no foundations save those which are supplied
+by pictures and stories.
+
+  [Illustration: PALAZZO PISANI]
+
+One's first impressions are always those which one remembers longest,
+and one's first impressions of Venice are surpassingly beautiful. In
+the train, arriving, you catch glimpses of flashes of light in the
+darkness, more strangely fantastic than anything you could
+imagine; you traverse a long causeway stretching over the lagoon; you
+see the water on either side of you, jet black, stretching on
+indefinitely; the train seems to float on air; you cannot see the
+bridge--nothing but sky and water. You arrive at a large terminal
+station, and step into the gondola which is to take you into Venice.
+Into most cities one arrives in a whirl and shriek of engines amid
+smoke and bustle; but Venice is different. One arrives in a gondola.
+The water is of a clear pale green; the banks are scrubby grass and
+mud. One watches the silver prow of the gondola as it shoots forward,
+the sea air blowing keen and salt. You realise that you are in a wide
+canal, and that there are buildings on either side of you, looming up
+white and gaunt, with here and there a lantern glimmering at their
+base. It is strange to see a city rising thus out of the sea. Venice
+seems double: one sees it in the substance and in the reflections on
+the water.
+
+After gliding along for some time you turn up narrow water lanes,
+devious and branching, running by low stonework, very complicated in
+their turnings. There are doors with water creeping up their steps,
+striped posts looking like spectres, and arches everywhere. Strange
+figures, like phantoms in a dream, appear in the gloom; black
+gondolas, like funeral biers, lie silently at the base of the houses;
+and the water laps dully at the steps. The silence of the waterways is
+deathlike after the rush and noise of a long journey; each shape that
+passes looks ghostly in the dim light; it is like a city of eternal
+sleep, a city of death. What a perfect background it would make for
+melodrama or for tragedy! No crime or intrigue could be too terrible
+to happen within those unfathomable shadows! A brigand might pass
+within that heavy half-opened oak door silently and unnoticed. A
+corpse with a stiletto buried in its breast might be gliding by in
+that black gondola. One would be quite surprised and somewhat shocked
+on lifting the felce to discover a fat and florid tradesman returning
+from supper with a friend. Venice is not a fitting background for such
+a sordid everyday scene. She is much better suited to the romances of
+Maturin, Lewis, and Ann Radcliffe; to the Great Bandit, the stories of
+the Three Inquisitors, the Council of Ten, masked spies, and pitfalls.
+
+  [Illustration: THE SALUTE AT SUNSET]
+
+In the daytime one recognises Venice as the Venice of Canaletto, of
+Bonington, and of Wild. There is that same vague, luminous
+atmosphere, full of rays and mists; the coming and going of gondolas
+or galiots; the landing-place of the Piazzetta, with its Gothic
+lanterns ornamented by figures of the saints, fixed on poles and sunk
+into the sea; the vermilion façade of the Ducal Palace, lozenged with
+white and rose marble, its massive pillars supporting a gallery of
+small columns. With all this one has been familiar through the
+pictures of the masters whom I have mentioned; but the real Venice is
+still more beautiful, still more wonderful, still more fantastic.
+
+If you climb up on any height and look down upon the lagoon, you will
+see a sight never to be forgotten. You will imagine that it is a dream
+which has taken shape, a vision of fairy-land. The sea is dotted with
+craft of all kinds. There is a continuous movement of boats--gondolas,
+sailing vessels, and steam-boats pouring forth volumes of black smoke
+and making a disturbance on the peaceful lagoon. The water is limpid,
+the light radiant; a row of stakes on the lagoon marks the channels
+which are navigable for ships. There is the island of San Giorgio,
+with its red steeple, its white basilica, surrounded by a girdle of
+boats, and looking like a sheet of burnished silver. There is the
+Giudecca, a maritime suburb of Venice, turning towards the city a row
+of houses and towards the sea a belt of gardens; it has two churches,
+Santa Maria and the Redentore. There is San Clemate, at the back of
+the Giudecca, a place of penitence and of detention for priests under
+discipline; Poreglia, where the vessels are quarantined; and the
+little island of St. Peter, almost invisible in the distance. The only
+black cupola is that of St. Simeon the Less. Those of the other
+churches are silvery. The clouds and the islands seem to mingle one
+with the other, and are as baffling as the mirage in a desert. On a
+fine day in Venice there is a certain brilliant crystalline clearness
+sharpening every outline; every tower and dome stands out sharp and
+clear against the sky, making the colours burn. There is colour
+everywhere: even the islands in the distance are blue and distinct.
+There is colour in the groups that saunter by, in the sapphire water,
+and in the cloudless heavens. The air is warm and still; the streets
+are full of people, walking and loitering at the doors of the shops;
+sunbeams dance on the rippling water; spring is everywhere. As evening
+comes on the colours grow richer and deeper; scarlet clouds float
+across the amber sky; the canal takes on the hues of the upper air,
+and is a rippling mass of liquid topaz and molten gold, in rapid
+succession changing from gold to orange, and from orange to deepest
+crimson. In the soft hazy light, against the rose tone of the sky, the
+cupolas of the islands and the palaces seem to float, shimmering with
+the hues of mother-of-pearl, mysterious, dream-like, not like solid
+stone. The soft lap of the water breaks the silence; the vaporous
+mists float upwards. Across the light drifts a line of fishing boats,
+their great brown sails set. A streak of flame-colour strikes on the
+windows of Venice, a flush of orange and rose. Then in a second the
+sun is gone, and a brief space of doubt ensues, when day hangs
+trembling in the balance; then night settles on the lagoon. A hundred
+bells ring out over the city, clashing and clamouring together in one
+brazen peal. Soon the peal subsides. The evening breeze springs up
+mild and sweet from the sea, and the soft and mellow cry of "Stali! Ah
+Stali!" is heard everywhere. It is the hour when all that is poor and
+unlovely melts into ethereal beauty. The water is a deep blue-black,
+save for rippling trails of light from the lamps, which shine like
+golden stars from the prows of the gondolas. The moon rises, nearly
+full, and is veiled by hazy clouds; the outlines of the bell towers of
+the palaces are pale and delicate in the soft light. The stillness of
+the water streets is soothing, and the prattle of the city falls
+gently on the ears.
+
+No matter how prosaic or how unimpressionable one may be, one soon
+grows into sympathy with the atmosphere of Venice. It is almost
+impossible to avoid becoming sentimental as one floats in one's
+gondola at night, with the twinkling stars above and the twinkling
+splashes below. One almost unconsciously builds romances round the
+palaces tottering to decay. Venice is always ready to charm and allure
+you. It is hard to believe that somewhere there is a working, active,
+busy life going on. But indeed no one in Venice seems to be in
+earnest. It is as if the present time does not count, as if it were
+but an echo of what passed long years ago. People work without aim or
+energy, and when they suffer it seems as if they were but mumming. A
+sweetness and a docility steal into one's soul, and one feels that one
+can do nothing but drift on for ever in this pleasant idleness. Harsh
+voices become modulated; cross-grained, querulous natures are
+sweetened; even the flat-faced, spectacled tourists, when they
+step from the railway station into a gondola and glide into the mystic
+water city, alive with a myriad glistening lights, develop
+unconsciously, and despite themselves, into delightful people.
+
+  [Illustration: A RUINED PALAZZO]
+
+On the day when I arrived in Venice, as I was wandering down a lane
+beyond the Canareggio Canal, I found myself in the Jewish part of the
+city. It is a fetid and pestilential place. There is about it nothing
+pleasant, or wholesome, or attractive. The stonework is cracked and
+rotten. The houses, streaked with dirt, bend over into the water with
+the weight of years. Most of them are nine stories high, grimy and
+dirty, and speckled with green spots. There is not a straight line
+anywhere, and not a whole pane of glass--paper is the substitute. Now
+and then one sees a patch of plaster on a house; but for the most part
+the plaster has fallen away, revealing the crumbly red bricks beneath.
+It gives one a sickening feeling--this terrible poverty, solitude, and
+neglect. Everything is strange, sullen, mysterious. Men and women with
+curved noses and eyes set like burning coals in their pale faces glide
+noiselessly along with furtive glances. The children are half naked,
+and play about on benches in the streets. I have seen poverty-stricken
+Jewish quarters before, but never anything so sad as this. The
+sordidness and terrible despair of it make one's heart ache. There are
+no green fields and trees to alleviate the misery of the people. Yet,
+I suppose, the condition of the Jew was worse in the old days.
+Certainly the injustices and insults which once were prevalent do not
+occur now. The Christian to-day is on more or less friendly terms with
+the Jew. They meet one another on the exchange; they talk together,
+and partake of each other's hospitality.
+
+  [Illustration: PALAZZI ON THE CANAL]
+
+The Christian may despise the Jew; but he has the grace to keep the
+feeling to himself, for the Jew possesses a great part of the trade of
+the city, and in money matters has ever the upper hand. He is
+educated, intellectual, patriotic, and calls himself a Venetian. If he
+is rich he lives in a fine new house on the Grand Canal and is owner
+of other houses. An instinct of the poorer class of Jews in Venice is
+to set up pawnshops and lend money to tradesmen in times of necessity.
+The Jews are decidedly useful. In the old days they were driven into
+exile; but they were soon called back. They were made to wear a yellow
+badge, distinguishing them from Christians. They were not allowed
+to buy houses or lands, or to exercise any trade or profession
+excepting that of medicine. They were given a dwelling-place in the
+dirtiest, unhealthiest part of the city, and called it a Ghetto,
+meaning a congregation. It was walled in. The gates were kept by
+Christian guards, who were paid by the Jews, and opened the doors at
+dawn, closing them at sunset. The Jews were not allowed to emerge on
+holidays or feast days, and two barges full of armed men watched them
+night and day. A special magistracy had charge of their affairs. Their
+dead were buried in the sand on the seashore. Thither the baser of the
+Venetians made it a habit to go on Mondays in September, to dance and
+make merry on the graves. The Jews were made to pay tribute to Venice
+every third year.
+
+In spite of all hardships and deprivations, they flourished. As the
+Christians became poor, the Jews waxed rich. They were not again
+expelled from the city. They were never disturbed in their Ghetto by
+actual ill-treatment and violence, excepting on one occasion, when a
+charge was brought against them of child murder. So the Jews lived
+peacefully in their own quarter until, with the advent of modern
+civilisation, their prison walls crumbled away, and some of them went
+forth from the Ghetto and fixed their habitations in different parts
+of the city. Many Jewish families, however, cling to the spot made
+sacred for them by so much suffering and humiliation. Even to this
+day, although the Jews are distributed everywhere throughout the
+length and breadth of Venice, never a Christian comes to dwell in the
+Ghetto. Very many Jews still live there. Some of the women are
+handsome, with Oriental grace, delicate, sensitive, highly bred. The
+only time when the Ghetto has at all a picturesque appearance is the
+autumn. Then the air is filled with white floating particles, feathers
+of geese, which seem to be plucked by the whole force of the populace.
+You see on every doorstep groups of Hebrew youths plucking geese, and
+on looking into the interior you will observe strings of the birds
+suspended from the rafters, while an odour of roast goose greets your
+nostrils wherever you may go.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: GIUDECCA]
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY
+
+
+With her pomp and pageantry, her wealth of art, her learned academies,
+her schools of painting, and her sumptuous style, Venice at the prime
+of her life was great, dazzling, splendid. Her navy was supreme. Her
+nobles were the richest in Europe. This opulence and this pride led to
+her downfall. She was unable to resist the temptation of building
+herself an empire on the mainland, thereby causing jealousy among the
+other Italian States. Rome became fearful of her own safety, and, with
+the intention of crushing the Republic, formed the League of Cambray.
+Rome did not achieve her object; but Venice was weakened by the blow,
+and misfortune after misfortune fell upon her. The passage round the
+Cape of Good Hope was discovered; which took commercial trade with the
+East out of her hands, and left her no longer the mart of Europe.
+Then came the great battles with the Turk, in which both blood and
+money of Venice flowed in vain. Europe was either powerless or too
+indifferent to help. Gradually the strength of Venice was broken. She
+declined and sank. Still, the rigidity and the power of endurance of
+the Venetian constitution were marvellous. She kept a semblance of
+life long after the heart had ceased to beat. The constitution of the
+State was the most elaborate imaginable, and not easily brought to
+nothing. Nevertheless, although there were occasional flashes of the
+old brilliancy of Venice, her day was over. The last of her Doges
+yielded the State to Napoleon without a blow. Laying the ducal biretta
+on the table, he called to his servants, "Take it away: I shall not
+use it more."
+
+  [Illustration: SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE]
+
+When the first refugees came from the mainland and started life on the
+islands of the Archipelago, the mud-banks of Torcello and Rivoalto,
+they little thought that they were founding a city which was to be the
+admiration of the whole world, that her navy would ride supreme in all
+known waters, that Venice was to be the pride of the Adriatic. When
+those early people, the Veneti, from whom the Venetians take their
+name, drove in their first stakes and built their wattled walls,
+they could not have foretold that this was to be the greatest of
+mediæval republics, the centre of the commerce of Europe. Nature
+helped Venice handsomely. Had the channels been deeper, men-of-war
+might have entered and conquered the city. Had the waves been
+stronger, the airy structure that we know as Venice would have been
+supplanted by the ordinary commercial seaport. Had there been no tide,
+for sanitary reasons the city would have been uninhabitable. Had the
+tide risen any higher than it rose, there would have been no water
+entrances to the palaces, the by-canals would have been filled up, and
+the character of the place spoiled.
+
+One's imagination is inclined to run riot in Venice. One gilds, and
+romances, and fills the city with pomp and pageantry, ornamenting the
+canals with State barges, the piazza with noble men and fair women,
+and the Ducal Palace with illustrious Doges. But far more interesting
+is it to see Venice as she really is, in her own simple strength.
+Think of the more rugged Venice, that city built by strong and patient
+men against such terrible odds, and in so wild and solitary a spot. In
+order to gain some idea of Venice as she was in those early days, it
+is well to go out in a gondola at low tide, when the canal is a plain
+of seaweed. As your gondola makes its way down a narrow channel, you
+have some conception of the difficulties with which the founders of
+Venice had to contend. To the narrow strips of land, long ridges
+guarding the lagoon from the sea, ill sheltered from the waves, the
+few hundred stragglers came. Their capital, Padua, had been destroyed
+by the northern hordes, and they took shelter in the islands of the
+lagoon. So desolate and wind-swept were these islands that one can
+scarcely imagine men disputing possession of them with the flocks of
+sea-birds. They were impelled by no whim, however: they were exiles
+driven by necessity. Here they looked for a temporary home, lived much
+as the sea-birds lived, and were quite fearless. The soil, composed
+chiefly of dust, ashes, and bitumen, with here and there a layer of
+salt, was rich and fertile. This was in the fifth century of our era,
+of which period there are but few Venetian records.
+
+  [Illustration: OFF THE GIUDECCA]
+
+Still, one thing is certain: the Veneti were not a primitive or
+barbarous people. Fugitives as they were, they were for the most part
+of high birth and associations. They had character and intelligence.
+In their mud huts they possessed a social distinction and a
+political training such as would have graced the most sumptuous of
+palaces. In quite early days they began to put their heads together
+and to form a definite system of polity. Year by year the little
+community was added to. Battle and bloodshed continued on the
+mainland, and men and women flocked to the islands. It is curious to
+notice how rank and social distinction assert themselves. Blood will
+out. Wherever human beings are gathered together, whether on the
+islands of the Adriatic or on those of the South Seas, and however
+sorry their plight or great their general misfortune, different grades
+will become visible. Men and women will place themselves one above the
+other, the master and the man, the mistress and the maid--such is the
+law of humanity all the world over. Calamity did not in the long run
+have much effect upon the higher class of refugees, and the position
+of the lower classes was not bettered. Sympathy had levelled social
+distinctions for a time; but that was not for long. Soon, in the
+natural course of events, when the little colony grew into a city, and
+the origin of the Veneti had faded almost into a tradition, the
+various ranks became distinct. True, they lived as sea-birds live, one
+kind of food common to both, and one kind of house sheltering both;
+but the poor man and the rich did not live in equality.
+
+As the community grew in importance they began to cultivate their
+islands and to build unto themselves ships. By force of necessity,
+they became expert in all matters of navigation, as agile on the water
+as on land, fearless. They acquired a better means of navigation and a
+wider knowledge of the lagoons than any other State possessed. Then
+they began to be attacked. With great courage and determination,
+Venice resisted all her foes--Gothic, Lombard, Byzantine, and Frank.
+Her position was peculiar, vague. She acknowledged a certain
+allegiance to the Court of Byzantium; yet by her acts she recognised
+the supremacy of the kingdoms on the mainland. Neither Byzantium nor
+Ravenna, and not Padua, could claim the lagoons. Venice was
+marvellously diplomatic. She drew from East and West exactly what she
+wanted to make her a nation by herself. While she pretended allegiance
+to several empires, she was in reality struggling for independence. In
+the stillness of the lagoon and the freedom of the sea air, the germs
+of individuality grew and flourished. They had a congenial soil and
+fitting nutriment. It is wonderfully interesting to watch the
+progress of the little State--the diplomatic way she went to work:
+how when she was weak and unable to stand alone she feigned allegiance
+to a stronger Power, yet never bound herself by written word; how she
+played one Power against the other; and how in the end, when
+sufficiently strong, under the shelter of her various foster-mothers,
+she struck out for freedom boldly.
+
+There is a letter from Cassiodorus, Prefect of Theodoric the Great,
+which throws light upon the relations of Venice with the Goths.
+Theodoric endeavoured to veil his power over Venice under the guise of
+alliance or of hospitality. At the time of the famine in 520 he came
+to their rescue with provisions. This gave him a certain hold over the
+Venetian people. It imposed upon them a debt which was not to be
+easily discharged. A letter written by Cassiodorus in 523 is neither
+more nor less than a demand to the Venetians to bring supplies of oil,
+wine, and honey, which the islands possessed, to the Goths. The
+letter, which is of florid style, is one long sneer veiled in delicate
+flattery. Cassiodorus explains that the Venetians own certain ships,
+that they are well built, that the sea is an easy path to them; and he
+begs that the vessels will transport the tributes of Istria to the
+shores of his country. By this letter one realises that the Venetians
+had already a reputation as pilots and mariners, and knew well how to
+thread in and out the channels of the lagoons. Theodoric was a
+generous and powerful neighbour, and the only homage the Venetians
+could give the Goths in return was their water service; but they felt
+their weakness and dependence deeply, and were continually waiting for
+an opportunity to better their position. Consequently, when the war
+broke out, after Theodoric's death, between his successors and the
+Greek Emperor, the Venetians struggled to make themselves of value,
+and took an active share in the operations. They sided with the
+Lombards, and conveyed a large reinforcement of Lombard mercenaries to
+their destination. That was the beginning of their intimate connection
+with Constantinople. Two churches were erected in commemoration of the
+services of the islanders. These were built of costly materials,
+probably obtained from buildings on the mainland which were partially
+destroyed by the invaders. The Venetians were enabled to transport
+these treasures in their ships.
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MARIA DELLA MISERICORDIA]
+
+Much to the anger of the Paduans, Venice was growing very rapidly, and
+was gradually, by sheer competence, absorbing all the coast and
+river trade. Longinus paid a visit to Venice, begging that she would
+procure means of transport for his people. This was granted; but he
+endeavoured to force the Venetians to accept the suzerainty of his
+master, which was immediately refused in a grand and sovereign manner.
+The Venetians declared that, amid much toil and labour, and in the
+face of many hardships from Hun, Vandal, Goth, and Lombard, God had
+helped and protected them in order that they might continue to live in
+the watery marshes. They proudly stated that this group of islands was
+an ideal habitation, and that no power of emperor or prince should
+take it from them. It was impossible to attack them, they maintained,
+unless by the sea; and of that they were assured masters. This
+reception must have impressed Longinus. In place of a weak little
+State requiring the protection of his country, he found the Venetians
+a fierce and self-reliant people. He could obtain only a very vague
+promise from the diplomatic Venetians. They would acknowledge the
+Emperor as overlord, they said, but only on their word of honour: they
+would take no oath of fealty. Still, the rule of the Lombard over
+Venice was of longer duration than that of any other State.
+
+A great trouble beset Venice at about this period. When the first
+settlers began work on the islands, each little group had a separate
+life, its people retaining as far as possible the customs, the
+religion, and the constitution of their ruined homes on the mainland.
+The largest townships which sprang up on the Lido were Heraclea,
+Jesolo, and Malamocco. These gradually grew together into a federation
+of twelve communes, each governed by its own tribune; and the tribunes
+had regularly a general assembly for the settlement of such business
+as affected the common interests of the lagoon. Jealousy and civil
+feuds, however, sprang up among the islanders, as one after another
+endeavoured to acquire supremacy. Heraclea tried to take the lead, and
+to destroy Jesolo; but she in her turn was attacked, and razed to the
+ground, by Malamocco. The civil trouble well-nigh caused the
+destruction of Venice. The tribunes intrigued; family rose against
+family, clan against clan; and there was terrible bloodshed. For
+nearly two years and a half the Republic was in anarchy. The
+constitutional evil sapped the general prosperity, obstructed trade
+and industries, and brought property to havoc. Had it continued much
+longer, the people would have frittered their strength away in
+private quarrels, and the State of Venice might never have emerged;
+but pressure from the mainland was brought to bear on Venice, and it
+became necessary for the various committees to consolidate as one body
+and sweep away the perils that were confronting them. The Lombards
+were becoming bolder and bolder. The Monarchy grew and grew, and at
+last the Republic of Venice feared that it might desire to add the
+islands of the Adriatic to its dominions.
+
+  [Illustration: THE CUSTOM HOUSE AND CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA
+   SALUTE]
+
+This awoke Venice from lethargy. It was the peril of the sea that
+formed and completed her. The pressure was very severe. East and West
+were beginning to ask her very plainly to choose on which side and
+under whose protection she intended to place herself, and they did not
+intend to wait long for an answer. Venice, subtle and diplomatic, put
+off the evil hour as long as she possibly could; but her policy became
+obvious soon. She could no longer feign fealty first to one Empire and
+then to another, and meanwhile struggle for independence. The time had
+come for action. The critical moment was at hand. Either she must put
+herself under protection of the East or of the West, or declare her
+independence. Any course was dangerous, perhaps fatal. Out of the
+three possible issues, Venice chose the most perilous, severing
+herself from both East and West. The result was fortunate. Thrown upon
+her own resources, she saved herself by energy.
+
+King Pippin invited Venice to join in a war. Venice refused, and
+prepared to defend herself, trusting in the courage of her men and the
+intricacy of the lagoon. From north and south King Pippin could
+concentrate his forces upon Venice, and victory seemed easy; but he
+had forgotten the natural defences of the sea-bound city. He did not
+know the shoals and deeps of the sea home. A life's study would
+scarcely have taught him. A certain noble assumed the lead of the
+Venetian people. He commanded them to remove their wives, children,
+and goods to a little island in mid lagoon--Rialto, impregnable from
+land or sea. This done, the fighting men took up positions on the
+outlying islands, and awaited the attack of the Franks. Pippin seized
+on Brondolo, Chioggia, and Palestrina, and tried to press his squadron
+on to the capital; but the shoals stopped him. His ships ran aground;
+his pilots missed the channels; and the Venetians pelted them with
+darts and stones. For six months Pippin struggled; but the Venetians
+kept him at bay by their network of canals and their oozy
+mud-banks. They shook off every assault. In the summer there came a
+rumour that an Eastern fleet was approaching. Pippin tried one more
+appeal to the Venetians, begging them to own themselves his subjects.
+"For are you not within the borders of my kingdom?" he said. "We are
+resolved to be the subjects of the Roman Emperor," they answered, "and
+not of you." The King was forced to retire. This great victory seemed
+to have the effect of consolidating the Venetians effectively. They
+agreed thenceforward to work together for the common cause. War had
+completed the union of Venice. She had emerged from her trial an
+independent State. There was no more internal discord. Venetian men
+and Venetian lagoons had made and saved the State. The spirit of the
+waters, free, vigorous, and pungent, had passed during the strife into
+the being of the people.
+
+  [Illustration: AT CHIOGGIA]
+
+This triumph was really the birth hour of Venice, and the people look
+back upon it with joy. The victory over King Pippin is cherished to
+this day as one of the finest events in history. The Venetians
+realised the peril of the sea from this attack. Also they realised the
+peril of the mainland from the Hunnish invasion. They then effected a
+compromise, and chose as the future home of their State a group of
+islands mid-way between the sea and the land, then known as Rialto,
+but thenceforth to bear the proud name of Venice. Venice in this union
+of her people declared her nature, so infinitely various, rich,
+pliant, and free, that to this day she awakens and in some measure
+satisfies a passion such as we feel for some person deeply beloved.
+Her people then struggled to attain from infancy to manhood. For the
+first time they had learned their own power, and union gave them
+strength. They began to create their Constitution, that singular
+monument of rigidity and durability which endured, with hardly a break
+in its structure, for ten centuries. They built with vigour and
+enthusiasm that incomparably lovely city of the sea. The aristocracy
+of Venice emerged. Her empire extended, following the lines of her
+commerce, in the East. St. Mark was substituted for St. Theodore as
+patron saint. The crusades were used as a means to conquer Dalmatia,
+and to plant the lion in the Greek Archipelago. Venice clashed with
+Genoa, and emerged victorious. Wealth flowed into her State coffers
+and her private banks. The island of Rialto proved the advantage of
+its situation, and established a claim for gratitude as the
+asylum of Venice in her hour of need. The Venetians had seen that the
+mainland was unsafe, and the attack of Pippin showed that there was
+danger on the sea. Thus, experience leading to the choice of the
+middle point, in 810 the seat of the Government was removed to Rialto
+under Angelo Badoer as Doge. Rialto became a sacrament of
+reconciliation between Heraclea and Malamocco. It was the glory of
+Venice that of all parts of Italy she alone remained unscathed by the
+foreign ravages of the fifth century and the conquest of the eighth.
+Venice alone was left out of all Italy's ruin. She alone escaped pure
+and undefiled.
+
+  [Illustration: CHURCH OF SAN GEREMIA]
+
+This marvellous period of her history--the repulses of the Franks and
+the creation of her State--requires no embellishments; yet the
+Venetians loved to gather a mythology of persons and events.
+Cannon-balls of bread, they say, were fired into the Frankish camp in
+mockery of Pippin's hope of strong Rialto surrendering. Then, again,
+there are the stories of the old woman who lured the invader to his
+final effort when half his forces were lost; of the canal Orfano,
+which ran with foreign blood, and won its name from the countless
+Frankish hordes that day made desolate; of the sword of Charles, which
+was flung into the sea when the Emperor acknowledged his repulse and
+cried, "As this my brand sinks out of sight, nor ever shall rise
+again, so let all thoughts of conquering Venice fade from out men's
+hearts, or they will feel, as I have felt, the heavy displeasure of
+God." All these stories were absolutely untrue; but they were born of
+a pardonable pride.
+
+The Venetians held their country in a singularly powerful devotion.
+Possibly this was because they were so closely shut in on these few
+little islands, precious morsels of land snatched from the devouring
+sea. Certain it is that they toiled for the State as no other nation
+has toiled before or since. They were determined that Venice should be
+great, that she should be beautiful; and century after century of
+Venetians devoted their lives to this work, sinking their own
+interests in hers. The Republic was before everything. Wherever one
+goes in Florence, one finds traces of great and famous men of all
+periods and of all crafts--painters, poets, writers, statesmen,--in
+every square, in every street, you are reminded of them; their spirits
+and their works live with you wherever you may go. But in Venice,
+where are they? There is the city--yes: there is that; and there are
+the archives, the annals of the city, histories without number,
+marvellous histories;--but the familiar figures, the great men that we
+honour and look for,--they are not here. Venice herself was the centre
+of all their aspirations, all their affections. She was erected as
+would be a treasure-heap: all the choicest and all the best were
+there. One knows but little, for example, of the great painters--the
+men, with beautiful thoughts, who filled the churches and the palaces
+with untold splendour, glowing sunshine. Their works are left, and
+their names; but no more. It seems as if they must have kept one
+another down, that Venice alone might shine.
+
+  [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS AND STRAW BRIDGE]
+
+If one wishes to study the history of Venice, there is no difficulty.
+Historic documents without number are accessible. Every period, every
+vogue, every year, is carefully studied and commented upon by keen
+observers, men of the greatest talents. These records glow with life
+and energy. In quite early days, when the Republic was in its
+infancy,--when there was no aristocracy, no great and powerful
+State,--even the fishermen and the merchants and the salt
+manufacturers had a longing to chronicle the doings of the community.
+The palaces which were being built, and the churches,--all these they
+wished to have chronicled for ever. Numberless historians there were,
+and all nameless--men of extraordinary skill and genius.
+Embellishments and fables abound; but on the whole these histories,
+written with great realism, bring back a vivid picture of the State.
+No Venetian ever tires, ever did tire, of the history of his country.
+It is the one subject that is of endless interest to him. The trade of
+Venice, her ceremonies, her treaties, her money, the speeches of her
+orators--all are chronicled.
+
+  [Illustration: ON THE GRAND CANAL]
+
+Venice was looked upon by Italy very much as we look upon America. She
+had no long and glorious history--at least, no history of anything
+beyond handicraft--no literature, no ancient manuscripts. The
+Florentines, on the other hand, had a great enthusiasm for ancient
+history. They were proud of their descent, and gloried in looking back
+to a long Etruscan civilisation. When one visits Florence, there is no
+difficulty in gathering knowledge concerning her great men of any
+period. Their shadows walk in her streets; their memories will never
+fade. You meet them everywhere--the painters, the monks, the gallants,
+the statesmen,--the individualities of the men who were the makers of
+Florence. The Venetians had no sympathy with the Florentines. They
+could not understand the Florentine desire to live with the past
+rather than the present. There are very few names which stand out
+prominently in the history of Venice, names concerning which a great
+deal is known; but there are one or two stories that are picturesque
+and popular, stories which are ever fresh to the Venetians. One is of
+a prince, the beheaded Doge Marino Faliero,--not at all an important
+incident in Venetian history, but one that is very dear to the hearts
+of the people, because of its melancholy. The prince was a man of
+hasty temper and haughty nature, and could brook no slight to his
+dignity. Once a bishop kept him waiting, and that worthy, for his
+misdemeanour, received, to the astonishment of everyone, a sound box
+on the ear. Before he came to the throne, Faliero was of great service
+to the State. He was offered the throne of Venice at the age of
+seventy-six, and married a young and beautiful woman. The story runs
+that a young gallant called Michele Steno, having been turned out of
+her presence, insulted the lady and her husband by pinning an impudent
+message to the chair of the Doge. The young man was brought before the
+"Forty," excused on the plea of his age and impetuosity, condemned to
+prison for two months, and banished from Venice for a year
+afterwards. This slight punishment for so grave an offence stung
+Faliero to the quick. He felt that, though he occupied the Venetian
+throne, he had scarcely more power than the beggar at his gate. All
+his life he had been an active, energetic man, a ruler of men; his
+word had been law, and his counsels listened to with respect and acted
+upon. Now he was powerless. He was insulted by the young nobles, and
+had no power to punish them; his authority was entirely disregarded.
+This state of things grew worse and worse. Two of his old friends also
+were insulted by noblemen. At last Faliero's temper could endure no
+longer. In the April of 1355 he formed a conspiracy, and tried to
+assert his supremacy. Six months after his triumphant arrival in
+Venice as Doge, an old man and friendless, enraged at the insults
+offered to him, he struck one mad and foolish blow for freedom. The
+plot was betrayed on the eve of the catastrophe. The conspirators were
+strung up in one long ghastly line on the piazza. Faliero himself was
+beheaded at the foot of the stairs where a few short months before he
+had sworn the _promissione_ on assuming the office of Doge.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS]
+
+
+
+
+A GLIMPSE INTO BOHEMIA
+
+
+On one occasion we arrived at Venice early in the morning. I was
+frightened at the darkness and the stillness, and the tall black
+houses looming high above us: it seemed that brigands must be lurking
+there, ready to murder us. Absolute silence reigned, except for
+mysterious sounds as if melodious voices were calling a refractory
+dog--"Puppy," "Puppy," "Puppy," we heard on every side. It was the
+warning of the gondoliers as they passed one another in the darkness.
+I longed for some accustomed natural noise. If only something would
+fall and make a splash! The silence set one's nerves on edge. We hired
+a gondola, and glided swiftly and silently out into the darkness, our
+gondolier's ringing voice joining the chorus of "Puppy." And so
+dexterously did he handle his dainty craft that, even as we turned
+corners and passed other gondolas in the pitch-black darkness, not a
+sound was made, not a splash. I felt like beating the water with the
+palms of my hands to make a disturbance. This silent gliding went on
+for about twenty minutes, until suddenly we drew up by an enormous
+silver-grey palace down a side canal, one of the largest palaces in
+Venice, with broad marble steps and badly-made deal doors. After some
+time the doors were opened, and an old lady appeared, bowing and
+talking in rapid Italian. She led us up the steps and through a
+colossal hall of marble, all marble, with staircases on either side
+leading on to spacious landings, into a suite of rooms that seemed
+more like the state apartments of a king than those of an ordinary
+hotel.
+
+One of the first things I did when I awoke in the morning was to get
+out on to the roof of the palace and look about me. I always ask to be
+directed on to the roof when I arrive at a new place. And there I
+remained the whole morning, painting, deaf to the pleadings of my
+friends that I should come down and eat. It was the chimneys that
+fascinated me! From the decorative standpoint they were quite
+startling. Chimneys, chimneys, everywhere, and such chimneys--grouped
+into pictures in every direction! There were clusters of twos, and
+clusters of threes; and wherever there were spaces that could be used
+for decoration they were used to the full. Each one of these chimneys
+seemed to have its own particular character. Some bulged out at the
+top in graceful lines; some were square and stolid; others were light
+and airy. At the base of some bloomed a blaze of flowers from the roof
+gardens. Each one was different. When I learned that a book had been
+published on the chimneys of Venice I was not in the least surprised.
+
+  [Illustration: PALACE IN A BY-CANAL]
+
+When my friends were able to tear me away from chimneys we got into
+our gondola and allowed the gondolier to take us where he pleased, to
+drift about in the by-canals. I wanted my impressions of Venice to be
+quite haphazard. We glided in the gondola past marble palaces--green
+palaces, pink palaces, blue palaces, all toned and variegated with
+age. Venice struck me as being a highly-coloured city, the most
+brilliantly coloured I had ever seen. It was not, as most cities are,
+merely a background for brightly-dressed figures: the buildings
+themselves were coloured, and the gondolas and the figures were black
+and sombre. Every wall, every doorway, was coloured. We glided past a
+series of crazy old doorways of blues, greens, and vermilions. Each
+door was broken with many changes of colour, and the red, rusty
+ironwork above, just where it caught the sun, was of a rich golden
+sienna. Certainly Venice is the most highly-coloured city in the
+world. How different from the impressions one finds in Bond
+Street--the vicious water-colours in which the artist always insists
+on orange and vermilion sails and crisp, flowing reflections that have
+been painted on slanting tables: the water-colours that are so sought
+after and so saleable! That Venice is vividly coloured I admit; but
+there is a scumble over the city. Age has toned it. The pink palace
+reflected in the green water is totally unlike the pink palace of the
+blobby water-colours. There are blues, and violets, and old-rose
+tones, and a certain bloom in it that these artists never seem to
+give. And to a certain extent these pictures handicap one: one feels
+annoyed to think that Venice should be so caricatured. You see the
+Bridge of Sighs at daybreak; you see the Salute by moonlight; and
+somehow you cannot forget these eternal water-colours. There is a
+certain resemblance, sufficient to irritate.
+
+  [Illustration: THE ORANGE DOOR]
+
+Indolence was upon us. Already we were becoming apathetic. There was
+something about the atmosphere that encouraged a delightful
+languor. The residents said it was the sirocco. The sirocco seemed
+answerable for many deficiencies: it was always being blamed. Later,
+when we came in touch with the artists, we found that it was the
+normal excuse for not working. We discovered groups of them sitting
+about in the square drinking, and when we asked them if they had done
+any work they all said, "No: there is a sirocco on now: of course, we
+can't work." Venice is overrun with artists; yet how few you see at
+work! Here and there you will find a stray one in a gondola painting,
+but very rarely. We were drifting about idly. Our gondolier was quite
+a part of the picture--young, very handsome, with a musical voice. And
+I began in a dreamy way to muse as I watched him. My thoughts went
+back for the moment to the Thames--to an old gentleman toiling in a
+punt. He was once a handsome young gondolier like this one, gracefully
+piloting a gondola through the canals of Venice; but now he had grown
+old on the Thames. There is no doubt that the gondola is made for
+Venice: it is futile to try it elsewhere. And then the colour is
+right. The gondola ought to be black. It became so naturally and as a
+matter of economy. People used to spend too much money on their
+gondolas, and colours had to be forbidden.
+
+I was in a dreamy mood, and I began to wonder what became of the
+handsome young gondoliers--they were all handsome and all young. They
+could not remain so for ever. What became of the old ones? I soon
+learnt. When gondoliers grew to be too old for their tasks they
+drifted on to the landing-stages. There we saw them, with marvellous
+crooks, catching the gondolas and drawing them into the proper places.
+I examined these sticks, and was surprised to find that some of them
+were of very great value. The gondolier prizes and decorates his stick
+just as a bootblack tends his stand: only, where the bootblack has
+coppers and bits of tinsel, the Venetian has pure gold coins dating
+back to the time of the Doges. This love of collecting and cherishing
+beautiful things is characteristic of the peasant people of Venice.
+Women will spend their savings in inches of gold chain, which they
+join together into long strings, and sometimes a woman will have
+festoons of gold chain collected for two or three generations. It is
+their way of investing money.
+
+We drifted along all the afternoon through the canals, being hooked
+on to different landing-stages by these old gentlemen; and we came to
+the conclusion that this was really the end of our handsome gondolier.
+We were anxious to meet the artists of Venice, and had been told of a
+certain restaurant, the Panada, where they generally congregated.
+
+In the evening, then, we landed, and went thither to dine. The artists
+who went to the Panada, we had been told, were those who had "let
+themselves go" more or less--who had been taken hold of by the sirocco
+and had settled down to loafing. When they first arrived in Venice
+they went to wine-shops, little dark places, and dined off macaroni
+and harsh drink. The Panada was more or less organised for the
+convenience of artists. In the first place, you were not bored by
+having to tip waiters--a duty that is always trying to an artist who
+is in between two exhibitions. And nearly all the Panada artists were
+in that condition. They had nearly all had exhibitions in Bond Street
+which had been "great artistic successes"--in other words, they hadn't
+sold any pictures. Another point about the Panada that appealed to the
+artist was that his bills could run on indefinitely. The bills did
+run: in fact, the only things that seemed to be at all active in
+Venice, in spite of the sirocco, were the bills. The Panada was a
+paradise! Who could resist it? The cooking was excellent, as cooking
+must always be where painters are, for they are very particular
+people. The Panada was perfect; the Panada had a sanded floor; the
+Panada was the noisiest restaurant in Italy. It was our first
+experience of Bohemia, the painter's world, in Venice; and we sat
+there, over our untouched dinner, fascinated--fascinated by the
+general noise and confusion, fascinated even by the unsavoury smells.
+It was not clean; there was a great deal of smoke, and so much talk!
+The guests seemed to be screaming and talking at once in all the
+languages of the world. Two words I heard continually--"breadth" and
+"simplicity." Here and there was a little talk of "mediums" and
+"technique," but not much. It was generally broad principles that were
+discussed. There was no mistaking these groups of men. They were
+artists to their finger-tips in everything save work. They dressed
+like artists, talked like artists, and behaved like the artists one
+reads about in novels: the Ouida artists. They wore neckties reaching
+down to their waists, collars two sizes too large and cut very low;
+their hands were always a little soiled, and their finger-nails never
+quite clean. The waiters also were soiled. They were very toney
+indeed, and very apathetic--toes turned inwards, heads bent slightly
+forward. They were dejected from want of variety: there was no
+uncertainty in the Panada as to tips. They came in on the aggregate
+and received lump sums; but there was a general depression about the
+people that waited. All were soiled at the Panada--the waiters, the
+artists, and the linen. But we very soon began to talk of this dirt as
+tone, and then it didn't seem to matter so much. Everything seemed to
+be worked on more or less artistic principles. There were quaint
+decorative dishes. The puddings were pink; the butter was stained; and
+altogether it required great habits to enjoy food at the Panada. By
+perseverance, I was told, it was possible to acquire an appetite.
+There were tables of different sizes, and groups of artists belonging
+to different sects--some antagonistic, some sympathetic: Dottists, and
+Spottists, and Stripists. Sometimes when the Dottists and Spottists
+happened to be friends for the minute they would join their tables
+together and make one long one. But this was only now and then.
+Usually the groups in the Panada were formed of twos. Often genius
+sat alone. Now and then, when a big picture was sold, the restaurant
+was very festive: the artist had a dinner-party, to which everyone had
+been invited. But generally it was a small water-colour that was sold,
+and the party went off to a small café down by a side canal. There was
+one man who got himself up to look like King Charles, and he was King
+Charles to the life! Long hair rested on his shoulders, and an
+enormous tie adorned his neck; his trousers and waistcoat were
+fringed, and his boots and beard were pointed. He had a coat of velvet
+that through age had become marked with an opalescent mottle. If he
+stood in front of an age-toned palace you never knew which was coat
+and which was palace. He possessed no earthly goods, but paid his way
+all over the world by painting portraits. He would either cut you out
+in black paper for fivepence or draw an elaborate portrait in pastel
+for one franc fifty. This celebrated man came up to us, and began to
+paint our portraits. Before we knew where we were he had cut out,
+dry-pointed, and stippled us; and melted away, leaving behind him a
+whole tableful of works of art, side by side with his bill. Then
+another man introduced himself to us, and explained that this was
+quite the usual thing for "King Charles" to do. He pointed out
+how romantic and interesting it all was: he seemed quite convinced
+that the place was full of romance.
+
+  [Illustration: AN UNFREQUENTED CANAL]
+
+For us Bohemia had lost its romance. We felt that we had been green,
+grass-green, and that (to use a vulgarism) the gilt was off the
+gingerbread. The room was becoming stuffy; the Bohemians were noisy
+and dishonest; and the waiters, no longer toney, were dirty. So we
+paid our own bill and "King Charles's," and left the Panada and
+romance for the open air.
+
+In the piazza the band was playing the popular music that one knows so
+well from the barrel organs. Instinctively one thought of London,
+Soho, and performing monkeys. But this impression was swept away when
+I saw the picture that presented itself before me in St. Mark's. What
+an extraordinary change had come over the piazza since dinner! A swarm
+of locusts might have settled upon Venice--a dark, seething mass,
+clustering round the walls of St. Mark's and filling up every inch of
+space. They were pilgrims from Russia, thousands of them--men, women,
+and children--on their way to Rome--poor peasants who had saved up for
+this pilgrimage during their whole lifetime, sleeping the sleep of
+the righteous, their bodies pressed close against the holy walls of
+St. Mark's as though for sympathy. It was a dark-coloured crowd, all
+dressed in black, with big capes and long boots and little astrachan
+caps,--a strong silhouette of black against the brilliant background
+of St. Mark's. It was a marvellous picture, and pathetic. These
+peasants seemed to be waiting for a greater, deeper joy, when they
+would be transformed to new creatures and fly back to their native
+land on the wings of a beautiful faith. The moon herself shone down
+upon them caressingly, lighting up many a weary, travel-worn face,
+turning their sombre hues to silvers, and greens, and violets. St.
+Mark's, with this dark mass of people at her base, seemed almost
+flippant by contrast.
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MARK'S BASIN]
+
+This was a night of contrasts! The dirt and filth of the little
+restaurant, with its noisy Bohemians: and then the quiet night, a
+clear, bright, silvery blue night such as one only sees in Venice; the
+weary pilgrims and the sumptuous cathedral; the dainty lightness and
+gracefulness of St. Mark's and the broad, simple, strong tower rearing
+her head into the sky--the Campanile, now, alas! no more than a
+memory. It was a picture such as you see but once in a lifetime. This
+building of precious stones, one of the most beautiful in the
+world, so rich with gold and mosaic, jewels, marbles, and lapis
+lazuli, that even in the cold blue light of the moon and a few dim
+gas-lamps it seemed to be dancing and sparkling with colour,--this,
+and the sleeping peasants in their rags--what a contrast!
+
+Then, again, what a contrast suddenly to turn from these dark groups
+to the jewellers' shops and the huge windows full of glittering
+Venetian glass! To see the gaily-dressed crowds sipping their coffee
+outside Florian's famous café that had never been closed during three
+hundred years! Here was nothing but brightness and gaiety. An
+excellent band played in the middle of the piazza. Smartly-dressed
+young men and military officers in pale blue uniform strolled about
+the square, quite conscious that they were being regarded favourably
+by girls and their mothers sitting at the coffee-tables. Florian's was
+an ideal place for the artist. It was never shut. It was quite the
+fashionable thing to drink coffee there after dinner, and one had the
+chance of talking to one's friends and acquaintances. Fascinating
+fruits were brought round to us--grapes, and figs, and almonds dipped
+in caramel sugar and stuck on to sticks. The men smoked cigars as long
+as those smoked in Burma. So capacious were they that they put them
+on little stoves in the way a woman heats her curling-tongs, and by
+the time they had drunk their coffee the cigars were probably alight.
+
+When the band had stopped playing we went to Bauer's to drink beer.
+And so ended a typical day in the life of an artist in that most
+fascinating city on the waters.
+
+  [Illustration: HOTEL DANIELI]
+
+Thanks to the kindness of Mr. Bozzi, the manager of the well-known
+Danieli's Hotel, who often piloted me about the intricate network of
+streets, I became familiar with many of the unfrequented quarters,
+which, as a rule, remain absolutely unknown to the tourist.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: PORTA DELLA CARTA]
+
+
+
+
+ARCHITECTURE
+
+
+In architecture one finds a history of Venice. It is the most definite
+expression, the most faithful embodiment, of the local genius. It
+presents realistically the daily life and thought and work of a bygone
+race. The intense love of the early Venetians for colour shows itself
+in the gleaming gold, the veined marble, and the white sculpture.
+Another of their affections is symbolised by the frequent introduction
+of children in the sculptured works. There are children of all
+periods, of all appearances, illustrating various of the changes in
+thought and in ideals that were continually coming to pass. Those of
+the earlier time are sturdy, strapping youngsters, with a purposeful
+look about them; whereas the children of the fifteenth century are
+fat, chubby, and uninteresting.
+
+In the early stage of her history Venice was a Greek rather than an
+Italian city, and her buildings were of Byzantine type. That is
+easily explained. During her first great period Venice was connected
+by sea with Constantinople and the East, but cut off by the lagoons
+and marshes from Lombardy and the rest of Italy. Only a few of the
+Byzantine buildings remain. The period is principally marked by the
+precious stones and coloured marbles encrusted in the brickwork, and
+by the ancient reliefs inserted in the blank walls of churches and
+houses. Among Byzantine buildings St. Mark's comes first. The existing
+building began to be constructed at the close of the tenth century;
+and Byzantine architects worked at it for nearly a hundred years. It
+was largely remodelled afterwards, and was altered in decoration
+during the different reactions of architecture; but the bulk of it
+belongs to the early period, and is in the pure Byzantine style. Parts
+of it remind one greatly of St. Sophia in Constantinople, on the lines
+of which, I believe, St. Mark's was partially modelled. There were
+many Gothic additions in the shape of pinnacles and pointed gables
+above the chief arches, just sufficient intrusion of the Gothic
+element to add a touch of bizarre extravagance; and in the sixteenth
+century many of the old mosaics were superseded by jejeune Renaissance
+compositions, of no decorative value, incongruous with the
+general scheme. Nevertheless, the church as a whole, as I have said,
+still remains essentially Byzantine. The main fabric of the façade
+represents the original Byzantine Romanesque building, and is in
+almost every particular similar to the picture of the church given in
+the thirteenth-century mosaic. The turreted pinnacles and the false
+gables are Gothic additions of the fifteenth century--merely screens
+of decoration with no roof behind. The building is truly Oriental. In
+the shape of a Greek cross with four equal arms, it faces west, and
+has a high altar and a presbytery at the east end. It was first of all
+the domestic chapel of the Doge's Palace, and then the shrine of the
+body of St. Mark the Evangelist. Everywhere one sees the motto, "Pax
+tibi, Marce, Evangelista mea" ("Peace to thee, Mark, my Evangelist").
+There are the symbols of all the four evangelists,--Luke, a bull;
+Mark, a lion; John, an eagle; Matthew, an angel. There are scenes from
+the life of Christ--the Adoration of the Magi and Annunciation to the
+shepherds.
+
+  [Illustration: GRAND CANAL LOOKING TOWARDS THE DOGANA]
+
+Venice in the Byzantine period must have been a city of great
+architectural wealth and splendour,--far in advance of other Italian
+towns, although, of course, destitute of the engineering glories of
+France and Germany. One can tell this by the few remaining Byzantine
+palaces,--very few of them are purely Byzantine. There is the
+magnificent Palazzo Loredan, one of the most beautiful of all the
+palaces on the Grand Canal, and a splendid example of the Byzantine
+Romanesque period. It has about it a distinct tinge of Oriental
+feeling; the capitals of some of the columns are exquisitely
+beautiful, and there are not many Gothic alterations. Next to this
+palace comes the Palazzo Farsetti, Romanesque of the twelfth century,
+simpler in style and with less ornamentation. It is really more nearly
+pure Romanesque than Byzantine, and shows no Oriental influence
+whatever. It is graceful and dignified. The "Fondaco dei Turchi," a
+very early Byzantine Romanesque palace, assumed its name in the
+seventeenth century, when it was let to the Turkish merchants of
+Venice. Originally a twelfth-century palace, it has recently been so
+much restored as to have lost all its air of antiquity and the greater
+part of its earlier interest, although it still represents
+symbolically the splendid homes of the Byzantine period. It is much
+like St. Mark's, and is the only surviving example of a building all
+in one style. The arches, the capitals, the shafts, the parapets
+and decorative plaques, are modernised, to be sure; but they are
+typical if not original, and give one a very good idea of what the
+Grand Canal must have been like before the invasion of the Gothic
+style and the Renaissance.
+
+  [Illustration: A FAMOUS PALAZZO]
+
+One gleans a very good idea by means of these palaces of how extremely
+civilised and peaceful Venice must have been at that early period. In
+northern Europe the homes of mediæval nobles were dark and gloomy
+castles built mainly for defence, having single heavy oak doors
+studded with nails, and great iron gates and drawbridges; there were
+no openings in the ground floors, and the windows above were small and
+grated. For Venice such fortifications were unnecessary. Her palaces
+were airy and graceful; for she was protected from the outside by her
+moat of lagoons, and from the inside by her strong internal
+Government. These ancient buildings, the "Fondaco dei Turchi" and the
+rest, were even then gentlemen's palaces, always open and undefended,
+the homes of pleasure, with free means of access, broad arcades,
+plenty of light, and presenting a general air of peace and security.
+
+It is interesting to notice the later Venetian architecture (as
+exhibited in the Libreria and the Procuratie Vecchie), developed from
+this early open and airy style. The native Venetian ideal seems to
+have traversed all styles, and persisted through them all in spite of
+endless architectural changes. The Grand Canal was the street of the
+nobles--the finest street in the world, in the way of architectural
+beauties. From end to end there are palaces of all periods, from the
+Byzantine time to the eighteenth century, and all are palaces of the
+ancient Venetian nobility. The Grand Canal is to Venice what the
+Strand is to London and the Rue St. Honoré to Paris. It is the most
+wonderful street in the world. There is nothing so bizarre, so
+fairy-like, to be seen in any other city through the length and
+breadth of the globe. It is a marvellous book wherein every family of
+the Venetian nobility has signed its name. Every wall tells a story;
+every house is a palace; each was erected by some well-known
+architect. Pietro Lombardo, Scamozzi, Sansovino, Sammichele (the
+Veronese), Selva, Vissenti--these were the men who drew the plans and
+directed the construction of the houses; but unknown architects of the
+Middle Ages built some of the most picturesque.
+
+  [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GRAND CANAL]
+
+There were palaces of all styles. After a palace of the
+Renaissance comes one belonging to the Middle Ages in Gothic Arab
+style, much like the Ducal Palace, with balconies, lancet windows, and
+trefoils. Then there will be a palace adorned with great plaques or
+medallions of differently coloured marbles; anon a great bare sweep of
+rose-toned wall. All styles are here--Byzantine, Saracen, Lombard,
+Gothic, Roman, Greek, and Rococo--fanciful capitals, Greek cupolas,
+mosaic and bas-relief, classic severity combined with the elegant
+fantasy of the Renaissance.
+
+It is a gallery open to the sky, full of the art of seven or eight
+centuries. Think of the genius and money and talent expended on this
+one street by brilliant artists and munificent patrons! The Grand
+Canal was originally one of the navigable channels by whose aid the
+waters found their way, through the mud-banks, past the mouth of the
+Lido to the open sea. It is the original deep water which first
+created Venice. Up this canal the commerce of all countries used to
+reach the city in the days of her splendour. The Rialto, the most
+beautiful bridge in Venice, bestrides the canal in a single span. It
+was built by Antonio da Ponte. There are two rows of shops upon it;
+and one of the most picturesque scenes in the Grand Canal lies round
+about it--old houses with platformed roofs, bulging balconies, and
+stairways with disjointed steps.
+
+It is interesting to watch how Byzantine architecture gave place to
+Gothic when Venice began to conquer on the Italian mainland. Thus
+Gothic architecture came in, and the conquest of Padua and Verona
+completed it. The term "Gothic" is very elastic; but there are certain
+points by which one can tell whether a building is Gothic or not. It
+is Gothic if the roof rises in a steep gable high above the walls; if
+the principal windows and doors have pointed arches and gables; if it
+has a steep roof; if the arches are foliated--that is to say, if the
+shapes of different leaves are cut into the stone to form a species of
+delicate tracery like lacework, letting in the daylight. Foliation is
+especially characteristic of Gothic architecture; some of the windows
+in Westminster Abbey are foliated. Gothic architecture is very rough
+and loose and irregular; yet it has a wonderful tenderness and
+variation of design. Changeableness and variety are the great
+requirements of perfect architecture. One should be enabled to derive
+just as much pleasure and instruction from looking at a perfect piece
+of architecture as from reading one of the finest of classic
+books. Gothic architecture is essentially truthful and naturalistic.
+The architects of this period were peculiarly fond of vegetation,
+which is a sign of gentleness and refinement of mind. Gothic is
+principally independent. It juts out continually with many pinnacles;
+there is nothing broad, or uniform, or smooth, about a Gothic
+building; it is variable, rough, and jutting, though, nevertheless,
+graceful in the extreme. The materials were rougher then than in the
+time of the Byzantine architecture, and to atone for this it was
+necessary to introduce much workmanship.
+
+  [Illustration: PANORAMA SEEN FROM ST. MARK'S BASIN]
+
+The artists were enthusiastic in their love of Nature, and felt deeply
+all her changing and complex moods. For example, you may see the
+difference between a Renaissance and a Gothic palace by imagining the
+surroundings of the former, its background, gone. It would then be
+deprived of its charm; whereas if you took a Gothic palace and placed
+it anywhere, it would still be beautiful.
+
+The Ducal Palace expresses the Gothic spirit to perfection. It was the
+great work of Venice at this period. The best architects, the best
+labourers, and the best painters were employed in beautifying it. At
+one time the palace fell into decay, and it was obvious to everyone
+that it should be rebuilt and enlarged. But the alteration would be
+extremely expensive. Therefore a law was passed preventing anyone
+suggesting such alterations unless he had previously paid one thousand
+ducats to the State. At last a man arose who cared not for the
+thousand ducats, and suggested the necessary alterations. The palace
+was then rebuilt. It was palace, prison, senate-house, and office of
+public business, all in one. There were thirty-six great pillars
+supporting the lower stories alone, all decorated in the richest
+possible manner. There was no end to the fantasies of the sculptors at
+that period--exquisite curves, studied outlines, graceful but complex,
+solid and strong and beautifully proportioned braided work; lilies and
+flowers of all kinds intertwined. Much of the sculpture is snow-white,
+with gold as a background; some of it has glass mosaic let into the
+hollows. The cross is used a good deal; also the peacock, the vine,
+the dove.
+
+  [Illustration: THE DOGANA AND SALUTE]
+
+The palace of Semitecolo has some beautiful early-Gothic windows,
+having false cusps in the arches, so as to make the head a trefoil.
+One sees here the gradual growth of the arch until it culminates in
+the Doge's Palace type. There are beautiful balustrades to the
+balconies, original and belonging to the period. In the
+early-Gothic palaces one notices a certain softening of the
+angles--that is to say, in the fine fourteenth-century Gothic
+buildings. The early Gothic architecture has no cusps to the arches;
+it shows a transitional form between Venetian Romanesque and Venetian
+Gothic. There are first-floor arcades early-Gothic, with a somewhat
+Oriental curve in the arch derived by the early Venetian Gothics from
+Alexandria or Cairo. The capitals of the columns are characteristic of
+the period: there are dainty balconies with graceful, slender columns,
+and cusps to the arches.
+
+These Gothic palaces were built by a people who were laborious, brave,
+practical, and prudent; yet they had great ideas of the refinement of
+domestic life, and the Gothic palaces remain to-day much the same as
+when they were newly built--marble balconies, great strong sweeps of
+delicate-looking tracery, clustered arches. It is the Gothic window
+that is so perfect, so strong,--built, too, with material that was by
+no means good.
+
+There is so much rivalry, vanity, dishonesty, in the present day, that
+houses are badly and cheaply built; even in the best of them, bad iron
+and inferior plaster are used. How many of them, I should like to
+know, will be standing fifty years hence? Mr. Ruskin is much against
+our modern windows and the manner in which they are quickly
+constructed out of bad materials, and the bricks all placed one on top
+of the other slanting anyhow. The doors of Gothic palaces are all
+semicircular above. At one time the name of the family was placed over
+the entrance, and a prayer inserted for their safety and
+prosperity,--also a blessing for the stranger who should pass the
+threshold. Inside the houses there is always a large court round which
+all the various rooms circle, with a beautiful outside staircase
+supported on pointed arches with coned parapets and projecting
+landing-places. In the court there is always a well of marble superbly
+sculptured.
+
+  [Illustration: PALAZZO CONTARINI DEGLI SCRIGNI]
+
+The centres of the early Renaissance architecture were Florence,
+Milan, and Venice. Venice is the only city in which important examples
+of all three periods of the Renaissance are to be found--the early
+period, the culminating period, and the period of decay. The
+Renaissance found better expression in Venice than elsewhere in Italy.
+In fact, when Florence and Rome had entered upon quite another period,
+Venice continued it for fully twenty-five years longer. The Venetians
+were ambitious, exceedingly so; and this ambition was a source of
+great trouble to the rest of Italy. The balance of power seemed, in
+their opinion, to be weighing too heavily in the direction of the
+Queen of the Adriatic; and the peace of the peninsula, they felt, was
+not by any means assured. The greatest period for Venice was at the
+end of the fifteenth century, when she had conquered all the land
+about her from Padua nearly to Milan, and seawards to Dalmatia and
+Crete. In the market-places of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia,
+the Lion of St. Mark was set up as a sign of the subjugation. Even now
+one can trace the influence of Venice upon the art of these various
+places. But the Venetians certainly learnt a great deal from the
+people whom they conquered. Other influences were brought to bear upon
+Venetian architecture--as, for example, the Lombardi family, who
+probably belonged to some part of Lombardy. Venice seems at this time
+to have gathered unto herself many fine suggestions from the rest of
+Italy. In fact, Venice absorbed talent from the rest of the world. In
+quite early days she adopted Byzantine and Arabic architecture; then,
+in the sixteenth century, she took unto herself the art of the
+Milanese, who enriched the city with their work.
+
+A truly Renaissance building did not appear in Venice until sixty
+years after the first was erected in Florence, and then, strangely, it
+had little of the Florentine character. This, after all, is not
+extraordinary when one comes to think of the bitter war between
+Florence and Venice in 1467. She took her style of architecture from
+the countries which she had conquered and naturalised, such as the
+district of Lombardy; and in her turn she influenced them. The
+adoption of the Greek forms of Roman architecture which originated in
+Florence gradually spread and reached Venice; but the Venetians did
+not struggle, as did the Florentines, to revive and purify Roman
+architecture. Simply the tendency of the general taste inclined in
+that direction, and gave to their own Venetian forms of architecture a
+certain classic air. In the general form of the work of this period
+one cannot detect the classical influence; but, if you examine into it
+carefully, you will notice in small details, such as a capital, that
+some classical subject has been introduced in place of the usual
+symbolical one. You will also detect in purely Gothic composition
+signs of the new art influence. For example, in the mouldings there is
+an introduction of cupids among the foliage, and all the strange
+fables and gods of the heathen are represented there. This was the
+period when people were becoming more learned. Later, buildings were
+erected on purely classical lines; yet they still kept to the Gothic
+arch. Bartolomeo Buono of Bergamo was one of the greatest architects
+of his time. In 1520 the work of another architect was noticeable--that
+of Guglielmo Bergamasco.
+
+The question of the church exterior was one of the most difficult
+problems of the early-Renaissance architect, and he never solved it
+quite. The churches of Venice nearly all belong to the Renaissance;
+there were many of them rebuilt under the influence of either
+Palladian or Jesuit style. Palladio was a great architect; but he had
+nothing of the Catholic feeling. He was really more suited to build a
+pagan temple than to build a Christian church. The Jesuit style,
+moreover, is horrible, with its stumpy columns, bloated cherubs,
+unhealthy affectations, and fiery ornaments. It is a display without
+beauty or grace, merely overloaded and heavy. The church of the Scalzi
+is of extravagant richness. The walls are encrusted with coloured
+marble; there are frescoed ceilings by Tiepolo and Sansovino; bright
+tones prevail--more appropriate to a ballroom than to a house of
+prayer. One can quite imagine a minuet under such a ceiling. Many of
+the churches in Italy are built in this style, and are compensated
+only by the number and interest of the valuable objects which they
+contain. Almost every church has a museum such as would honour the
+palace of a king. There one sees Titians, Paul Veroneses, Tintorettos,
+Palmas, Giovanni Bellinis, Bonifazios. The church of the Scalzi has a
+broad staircase in red brocatelle of Verona, with truncated columns in
+marble, gigantic prophets, stone balustrades, and doors of mosaic. The
+Romanesque churches are really beautiful, with their pillars of
+porphyry, antique capitals, images standing out upon a glitter of
+gold, Byzantine mosaics, slender columns, and carved trefoils. The
+church of Santa Maria della Salute has been made famous by the picture
+of her by Canaletto in the Louvre. One of the most beautiful things
+within is a ceiling by Titian. Venetian arabesque ornament of the
+Quattri cento is tenderly sculptured, and the friezes are undercut in
+a reverent and delicate manner.
+
+  [Illustration: SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE]
+
+One of the most beautiful palaces of the Grand Canal is the Palazzo
+Corner-Spinelli. It is especially noticeable because of the number of
+windows in the basement,--there is no observable order in the placing
+of them. Then, again, there are contrasts in the shape of
+balconies. Some are small and curved inwards; others are long and
+straight. In 1481 the palaces became of a more advanced character. The
+central windows were grouped together; but this last feature is
+characteristic of Venetian architecture of all periods. One of
+Sammichele's finest works is the Palazzo Grimani, on the Grand Canal.
+It was carried out by others after Sammichele's death; nevertheless,
+it is very fine. It has great dignity and majesty, and is a
+composition such as will be found in Venice alone.
+
+Venice is, architecturally, the most interesting city in Italy. It
+contains works of all periods, from the early Christian foundation to
+the eighteenth century; and perhaps the best examples of each are
+there. First there was the school of the Lombardi; next, that of
+Sammichele and Sansovino, quite distinct, an influence direct from
+Rome. Then came, closely following, the schools of Palladio and
+Scamozzi; and a fourth is that of the seventeenth-century artists, who
+did good work in Venice, but on different lines. The best example of
+this late period in Venice is Santa Maria della Salute, erected in
+token of the cessation of the plague. It is situated at the sea gate
+to the presence-chamber of the Queen of the Adriatic. Few churches of
+any age can rival it architecturally. The composition is mainly
+pyramidal.
+
+The barocco style is nowhere so appalling as in Venice. It is most
+untruthful and unprincipled in character. There is a great deal of
+ostentation and bombastic pomp about it. A terrible example of this
+can be seen in Doge Valiero's tomb, where the marble is made to
+imitate silk and cloth wherever possible.
+
+The Palazzo Pesaro was built, rich and gross, typical of the domestic
+Renaissance, when architecture tended to decay. Technically it is a
+most inferior building. The figures in the sculpture are spasmodic in
+action, and restless; there is a projecting, diamond-like rustication,
+far too bold in treatment. The angles are an exaggeration of the style
+of Sansovino.
+
+  [Illustration: PALAZZO MENGALDO]
+
+There are three great causes of the decadence of Venetian
+architecture. First of all, it was started by purists who were bound
+too firmly to ancient usages, too much regulated by precedent,
+coldness, and formality. Secondly, a more disastrous influence was
+brought to bear--that of Michael Angelo, the example of freedom to the
+verge of licence. This revolution was brought about partly by the
+revolt of the public feeling against the restrictions of the
+purists, partly by real want of knowledge and failure to understand
+traditional weaknesses and systems of design with regard to
+construction. The purpose and use of features was misunderstood;
+uncontrolled freedom was allowed; ornament was added for its own sake,
+instead of being bound up in architectural lines. By such freaks and
+caprices almost every building at this time, though not ignoble in
+composition, was completely disfigured. Thirdly, the architects made
+the fatal mistake of using the excrescences of a weakness of the great
+masters and endeavouring to raise them to the dignity of features of
+design. Thus Venetian architecture withered and decayed, fading out
+into a pale shadow of what it had once been. That glorious art, which
+had once been so superb in the hands of the masters, sank into the
+execution of feigned architecture, false perspective, and fictitious
+grand façades, with bad statues in unreal relief.
+
+  [Illustration: OSPEDALE CIVILE]
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MARK'S]
+
+
+
+
+ST. MARK'S
+
+
+When you arrive before the Church of St. Mark's you realise that at
+last, after all your travels throughout the length and breadth of the
+globe, you have before you a building in which colour and design unite
+in forming perfection. Here stands without a shadow of doubt the
+finest building in the world, flawless. It is impossible to imagine
+that St. Mark's has been built stone by stone, that the brains of mere
+men have designed it, and that the hands of mere men have set it up.
+It must, you think, have been there from all time just as it
+is,--formed as the bubble is formed, and the opal. It is a revelation
+to look upon such perfect symmetry, such glorious colouring. Like an
+opal, St. Mark's shows no sign of age. It glitters like a new jewel,
+and might have been built but yesterday. Unlike most churches, it has
+no sombre, frowning air. Its spires do not launch themselves into the
+sky. It does not bristle with towers and arched buttresses. Rather the
+building seems to stoop and crouch. It is surmounted by domes, as is a
+Mohammedan mosque, and is a strange mixture of Oriental ornamentation
+and Christian symbolism. Horses take the place of angels; grace and
+splendour, the place of austerity and mystery. Who ever heard of gold,
+alabaster, amber, ivory, enamel, and mosaic being used in the
+construction of a Christian church? Who ever heard of dolphins,
+tridents, marine shells, trefoils, cupolas, marble plaques,
+backgrounds of vividly coloured mosaics and of gold? It is more like a
+fairy palace, or an Alcazar, or a mosque, than a Catholic church; more
+like an altar to Neptune than one to the Christian God.
+
+  [Illustration: PALAZZO DANIELI]
+
+The ultimate result of this apparent incoherence is a harmonious
+whole. Reverence and Christianity are here--an absolute and living
+faith. Even the most devout Catholic has no cause for complaint. With
+all its pagan art, St. Mark's preserves the character of primitive
+Christianity. The exterior is extremely complicated. There are many
+porticoes, each with columns of marble, jasper, and other precious
+materials; many mosaics on grounds of gold over each doorway;
+many historic stories and legends that these mosaics represent;
+many fantastic forms of angelic beasts, saints, Byzantine and
+Middle-Ages bas-reliefs, magnificent bronze doors, arcades, lamps,
+peacocks--so many that it is impossible to attempt to describe them in
+detail. Even to tell of the delicate structure and the subtle,
+ever-changing, iridescent colour is beyond me. It is almost
+bewildering when one thinks that at the time St. Mark's was built
+every house in every side street had much of the same extravagant
+richness, beauty of colouring, and superb architecture. As Mr. Ruskin
+says, it is absurd to imagine that churches were designed in a style
+particularly different from that of other buildings. There is nothing
+specially sacred in what we call ecclesiastical architecture. All the
+houses were built much in the same way. Only, while the houses have
+fallen into decay, the church has been preserved by a devoted
+populace. It is not often that one sees a coloured building, a
+building teeming with colour; but St. Mark's vibrates with colour.
+There are no blank spaces of grey stone. Every square inch is
+beautiful.
+
+When one enters from the bright sun, St. Mark's appears dim and dark;
+but you must not judge by that. To appreciate its beauties, the
+student should visit the church day after day. Gradually they will
+unfold themselves. That is what constitutes one of the charms of St.
+Mark's. It is as though one were in a carved-out cave of gold and
+purple, on a voyage of discovery all by oneself. At first you can see
+nothing; but as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, colours
+begin to grow upon you out of the gloom. Some minutes must elapse
+before you realise that the floor, which at first you took to be of a
+deep-toned grey stone, is a mosaic composed of thousands of
+differently coloured marbles--that you are walking on precious marbles
+of peacock hues. Golden gleams above your head attract you to the
+domed ceiling, and, to your delight and amazement, you discover that
+it is formed entirely of gold mosaic. You are passing a dim recess,
+and you see a blurred mass of rich colour; after a time you realise
+that you are looking at a famous masterpiece by one of the great
+Italian painters. You sit there as in a dream; and one by one the
+pictures and the mosaics, the Gothic images, the cupolas, the arches,
+the marbles, the alabaster, the porphyry, and the jasper appear to
+you--until what was darkness and gloom appears to be teeming and
+vibrating with colour.
+
+  [Illustration: FRANCESCA]
+
+St. Mark's carries one away from the everyday world. On the ignorant
+and the uninitiated it has a marvellous effect. Men and women and
+children flock to it by the thousands daily. Many and fervent are the
+worshippers one sees praying before some special saint or beloved
+Madonna. Some are weeping, and others kneel for hours on the cold
+stones. The unhappy people of Venice have many sins and sorrows, and
+there is much that is comforting to them in this rich, majestic
+church. The fainting spirit is revived and the most desperate person
+stimulated as he looks about him at the sparkling mosaic roof, the
+rich walls, and the dimly burning lamps. There is much in precious
+stones, music, sculptured figures, in pictures of heaven and hell,
+that appeals to these people. An infinite and pitiful God somewhere
+about them, these peasants of poor imaginations cannot understand.
+They want a faith that they can cling to--almost something that they
+can finger and touch. St. Mark's is to the poor of Venice like a
+beautifully illustrated Bible. There, in the cupolas, the story of the
+Old Testament is presented in mosaic, plainly for every eye to see,
+for the youngest and least educated to understand. It touches them,
+and appeals to them, and keeps their faith burning bright and clear.
+There they have the seven days of creation represented,--mysterious,
+weird, and primitive,--discs of gold and silver representing the sun
+and the moon. There are the Tree of Knowledge, the Temptation, the
+Fall, and the Expulsion from Paradise. Then comes the slaying of Abel
+by Cain, Adam and Eve tilling the ground. There is a strange mosaic of
+the Ark, with the animals going in two by two on a background of gold;
+there are the stories of Abraham, of Joseph, and of Moses, all
+quaintly executed, full of detail and without regard to anatomy. There
+is no struggle to imitate Nature, and the colouring is good.
+
+In the time when St. Mark's was built there were no cheap Bibles, and,
+if there had been any, the poorer classes could not have read them.
+Thus the great Church was an endless boon to them, one which could
+never be quite exhausted. Many and splendid are the lessons these
+mosaics and pictures taught and continue to teach. The mysteries and
+beauties of the Bible are impressed upon the mind in a manner that
+cannot be effaced. All the virtues are there--Temperance quenching
+fire with water; Charity, mother of the virtues, and the last attained
+in human life; Patience; Modesty; Chastity; Prudence; Lowliness of
+Thought, Kindness, and Compassion; and Love which is Stronger than
+Death. These lessons the Venetians have continually before them, to
+help them to bear the troubles of this world, and giving them hope for
+the peace of another. Most of the pictures in mosaic are typically
+Byzantine, mainly symbolical and of the first school of design in
+Venice. Upon these pictures the people of Venice live and thrive
+spiritually: the pleasure is real and pure. Colour has a great
+influence upon the emotions, just as music has; and colour was used in
+the earliest times to stimulate devotion and repentance. There are
+pictures in which the most profound emotion is expressed. When one
+sees the pictures of Christ's life and passion, one cannot but be
+touched.
+
+By the medium of paintings in the churches, people began to understand
+and appreciate art, and to feel the need of it in their homes. Not
+only is St. Mark's an education to the poor and the ignorant: it is
+also an education to the student and to the artist. Here you have
+pictures of the nation of fishermen at their greatest period; also you
+find legends splendidly told, such as the story of the two merchants
+who brought the bones of St. Mark from Alexandria under cover of
+pork, crying "Swine! swine!" You see the priests, the Doge, and the
+people of Venice as they were in the days of her power.
+
+In one of the dim corners of St. Mark's is a statue of an old man on
+crutches with a finger on his lip. This is a Byzantine architect who
+was sent to Pietro Orseolo from Constantinople, as the cleverest
+Eastern builder of his time, to construct St. Mark's Church. He was a
+bow-legged dwarf, and undertook to build this marvellous edifice,
+unequalled in its beauty, on condition that a statue of himself should
+be placed in a conspicuous position in the Church. This was arranged.
+One day the Doge overheard the architect say that he could not execute
+the work in the way he had intended. "Then," said Orseolo, "I am
+absolved from my promise"; and he merely erected a small statue of the
+architect in a corner of the Church.
+
+  [Illustration: ST. MARK'S PIAZZA]
+
+Think of the makers of St. Mark's--the great men who worked together
+with brains and hands to make her what she is! The army of artists,
+painting, designing, sculpturing, one after the other from generation
+to generation in this great cathedral! Titian, Tintoretto, Palma,
+Pilotto, Salviati, and Sebastian were among the painters whose
+designs were used for the mosaics; Bozza, Vincenzo, Bianchini,
+and Passerini, among the master mosaicists; Pietro Lombardo,
+Alberghetti, and Massegna, among the sculptors. Then, the other
+thousands, all men of extraordinary talent, of whom astonishingly
+little is known, fervent workers! Throughout eight centuries they
+worked, and with what care and skill and patience! At what a cost,
+too, these masterpieces must have been achieved! Think of the temples
+and the quarries that have been robbed of their gold, and of the
+marbles, the alabaster, and the porphyry. All the saints and prophets
+and martyrs are there; the stories of the Virgin, of the Passion, and
+of Calvary; all the scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
+
+The early Venetians seem to have revelled in colour and in rich
+materials. The builders laid on the richest colour and the most
+brilliant jewels they could find. They were exiles from ancient and
+beautiful cities, and when they succeeded in war their first thought
+was to bring home shiploads of precious materials. Just as the
+Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Arabs had an intense love of colour, so
+had the early Venetians, who used precious stones in great abundance,
+even in their own private houses. A most extraordinary thing is that
+there is nothing vulgar about the costliness of St. Mark's. Although
+both inside and out it is rich beyond words, rich in precious stones,
+rich in every way, the building is full of reserve. There is no
+ostentation, no vulgarity. The jewels used in its construction do not
+for one moment interfere with one's sense of the beautiful, or with
+reverence and religion. They simply give a rare luxurious feeling to
+the place, and in the ignorant inspire respect for a Church thus
+encased and honoured with the richest in the land.
+
+Then, again, the jewels do not form a principal part of the
+ornamentation. One looks first at the exquisite workmanship; and
+afterwards are noticed the precious materials, which form a
+subordinate part and do not interfere with the design. It is almost as
+though a veil had been swept over the whole building, both inside and
+out, bringing together this wealth of colour and forming it into a
+complete whole. It has the effect of a marvellous glaze--of a picture
+that has had a thin glaze swept over it. Wherever you look, the Church
+teems with colour; but it seems to be piercing through a veil. It is
+not vivid positive colour, but colour breaking through a skin. In the
+East I have seen millions of pounds' worth of jewels in one heap,
+with the sun shining on them, and I was overpowered with this wealth,
+I was inspired with their costliness;--but St. Mark's does not affect
+you at all in this way. Rich man and peasant are alike in this
+respect: they are elevated and stimulated in that building, not
+because of its costliness, but because of its extreme beauty. The
+technique is marvellous, but not obvious: the moment you are conscious
+of technique you may be sure that the work is poor. You never wonder
+how St. Mark's was built; and that is the highest tribute to the
+marvellous arts which it expresses.
+
+  [Illustration: SCUOLA DI SAN MARCO]
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: A QUIET WATERWAY]
+
+
+
+
+PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE
+
+
+One of the chief characteristics of the Venetian school of painters,
+and one of the most attractive to all art lovers, is their great
+appreciation of colour. In most of their work colour seems to be the
+chief motive. Pictures by Venetian painters never suggest drawings.
+They strike you not as having been coloured afterwards, but as having
+been painted essentially for the colour. One sees this throughout the
+whole school. And in their paintings they do not go to extremes. There
+is no exaggeration in their colouring. They do not err, as do so many
+schools, either on the foxy-red side or on the cold steely colouring.
+Unfortunately, much of the beautiful colouring of these pictures is
+lost by age. One has to become accustomed to that ugly brown skin
+which has formed upon the surface before one can realise what great
+colourists these early Venetians really were. The pictures somehow
+cause one to resent oil as a medium. One realises how different they
+must have looked when fresh from the easel, and wishes that these
+great masters could have painted with a medium more lasting--as did
+the Chinese, whose works are as young and fresh now as if they had
+been painted yesterday: the years have left no trace whatever: the
+simple colouring is the same to-day as it was a hundred years ago.
+Many of the earlier paintings, those of the Gothic Venetians, the
+less-known men, are a good deal better preserved. Their canvasses have
+not turned black; the glazings have not departed; and there is no
+smoky film upon them, as in the case of the works of the great
+masters, such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Giovanni Bellini, men who
+came a hundred years afterwards. It may very possibly be that the
+pigment which painters used then was purer and less adulterated.
+Certainly one sees in the various schools all over the world that the
+older the pictures are the better preserved they are. Age never
+improves a picture--unless, indeed, it is an extremely bad one, when
+time serves as a thin veil.
+
+  [Illustration: CANAL PRIULI]
+
+Undoubtedly these great colourists, the Venetians, influenced the
+various schools of painters all over the world, and are still
+influencing them. Originally they worked for the churches, and colour
+was used exactly as music was used--to appeal to the senses, to the
+emotions: to influence the people, to teach them biblical stories and
+parables. It also educated the people to understand painting and to
+feel the need of it in their daily lives.
+
+At about this time the Renaissance began to express itself, not only
+in poetry and other literature, but also in paintings; and it found
+clearer utterance in Venice than elsewhere. The conditions at this
+time were perfect for the development of art. Venice at that period
+lent herself to art. She was at peace with the whole world, and she
+was prosperous. The people were joyous, gay, and light-hearted. They
+longed for everything that made life pleasant. Naturally, they wanted
+colour. And Venice was not affected by that wave of science which
+swept over the rest of Italy. The Venetians were not at all absorbed
+in literature and archæology. They wanted merely to be joyous. This
+was an ideal atmosphere for the painter. Such a condition of things
+could not but create a fine artistic period. The painter is not
+concerned with science and learning, or should not be. Such a
+condition of mind would result in feeble, academical work--in
+struggling to tell a story with his medium, instead of producing a
+beautiful design. That is partly why the Venetian school has had such
+a strong influence on art, even until the present day. The conditions
+were perfect for the development of art, because the patrons were
+capable of appreciating beautiful form and beautiful colour. Because
+the public would have it, this new school of painters appeared. The
+demand was created, and the supply came.
+
+There was undoubtedly great friction among the painters of this
+period, exactly as there has been lately with the modern
+impressionists and the academic painters. Some of the old Venetians
+resented the new school that was springing up; but they had eventually
+to bend and try to paint in sympathy with the senses and emotion of
+their patrons. You find this new mode of thought expressed strongly
+even in the churches and in the treatment of religious subjects. The
+old ideals were altered. Men no longer painted saints and Madonnas as
+mild, attenuated people. The figures were lifelike and full of
+actuality. The women were Venetian women of the period dressed in
+splendid robes and dignified; the men were healthy, full-blooded, and
+joyous. Florence, however, at this particular period was undergoing
+quite a different mood. The Florentines preferred to express
+themselves in poetry and in prose. That was the language the masses
+understood. Painting was not popular. There has always been a literary
+atmosphere about Florence, and one feels it there to this day; it is
+essentially the city for the student.
+
+When painting became so much a vogue in Venice, painters began to try
+and perfect the art in every possible way. They struggled for
+actuality. Art began to develop in the direction of realism. The
+Venetians wanted form and colour in their pictures; but they wanted
+also a suggestion of distance and atmosphere. In those early pictures
+you find that painters smeared their distance to give it a blurred
+look. That was the beginning of perspective. Painters of this period
+seem to have been marvellously modern. They were quite in the
+movement. There has never been any attempt at harking back to earlier
+periods.
+
+Venice was very wealthy at this time, and Venetian people never missed
+an opportunity of parading wealth. They loved glory where the State
+was concerned, and encouraged pageantry by both land and sea. They
+loved to see Doge and senators in their gorgeous robes, either on the
+piazza or on the Grand Canal. Then there came a demand for painted
+records of these processions and ceremonials. All this was encouraged
+by the State for political reasons. Pageantry entertained the people,
+and at the same time made them less inquisitive. Much better, these
+great officials argued, that the people should be enjoying things in
+this way than that they should begin to inquire into the doings of the
+State. Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio were the first pageant painters
+of the period. Paolo Veronese, who came much later, also loved
+pageantry, elevated it to the height of serious art, and idealised
+prosaic magnificence. He painted great banquets, and combined
+ceremony, splendour, and worldliness with childlike naturalness and
+simplicity.
+
+  [Illustration: OSMARIN CANAL]
+
+First of all, as has been shown, it was the Church that called for
+pictures--to represent their saints and to enforce biblical legends.
+Painting became more and more popular. People became more and more
+educated to understand painting, until at last they wanted their
+domestic and social lives depicted. Also they wanted to hang these
+pictures in their homes. Pictures were neither so rare nor so
+expensive in those days as they are now, and people could afford to
+buy them--even the lower and the middle classes. Immediately there
+sprang up painters who satisfied the demand. In those days there were
+no academies and no salons wherein artists fought to outdo one another
+as to the size and eccentricity of their pictures; there were no
+vulgar struggles of that kind. Painters simply supplied to the best of
+their ability the wants of the people. Naturally, the public required
+small pictures, suitable to the size of their houses. Therefore, they
+needed gay and beautiful colour, and pictures in which the subjects
+did not obtrude themselves forcibly. Thus, in the natural course of
+events pageantry found less favour, and pictures of social and
+domestic life found more. Religious subjects were rather deserted. By
+the aid of books people could learn all the stories of the Bible.
+Besides, they were not at that period in a devotional or contrite
+mood. They were too happy and full of life to feel any pressing need
+for religion.
+
+Painting took much the same position with the Venetians as music has
+with us now. The fashion for triumphal marches and the clashing of
+cymbals in processional pictures had died out, and the vogue of
+symphonies and sonatas had come in. No one at that time seemed quite
+capable of satisfying the public taste. Carpaccio, whose subtle yet
+brilliant colouring would have exactly suited it, never undertook
+these subjects. Giovanni Bellini attempted them; but his style was too
+severe for the gaiety of the period.
+
+However, there was not long to wait. Soon appeared a man who told the
+public what they wanted and gave it to them. He swept away conventions
+and revolutionised art all over the world. He was a genius--Giorgione.
+Pupil of Bellini and Carpaccio, he combined the qualities of both.
+When he was quite a youth painters all over the world followed his
+methods. Curiously enough, there are not a dozen of this great
+master's works preserved at the present day. The bulk of them were
+frescoes which long ago disappeared. The few that remain are quite
+enough to make one realise what a great master he was. The picture
+which most appeals to me is an altar-piece of the Virgin and Child at
+Castelfranco. It is painted in the pure Giorgione spirit. St. George
+in armour is at one side, resting on a spear which seems to be coming
+right out of the picture; while on the other side there is a monk, and
+in the background are a banner of rich brocade and a small landscape.
+
+The Renaissance, the rejuvenation of art, seems to have slowly
+developed until at length it culminated in Giorgione. He was the man
+who opened the door, the one great modern genius of his period, whose
+influence remains and is felt to this day. Velasquez would never have
+been known but for Giorgione. Imagine this young man with his new
+ideas and his sweeps of golden colouring suddenly appearing in a
+studio full of men, all painting in the correct severe style
+established at the period. Such a man must needs influence all his
+fellows. Even Giovanni Bellini, the Watts of his day, acknowledged the
+young man's genius, and almost unconsciously began to mingle
+Giorgione's style with his own. We cannot realise what they meant at
+that period--these new ideas of Giorgione. He created just as much of
+a "furore" as when Benvenuto Cellini, in his sculpture, allowed a limb
+to hang over the edge of a pedestal. He needed this to complete his
+design. Since then almost everyone that has modelled has hung a limb
+over a pedestal. But Benvenuto Cellini started this new era. So, in
+much the same sort of way, did Giorgione. He cut away from convention,
+and introduced landscape as backgrounds to his figure subjects. He
+was the first to get actuality and movement in the arrangement of
+drapery. The Venetian public had long been waiting, though
+unconsciously, for this work; and Giorgione was so well in touch with
+the needs of the people that the moment he gave them what they wanted
+they would take nothing else.
+
+In the work of Giorgione the Renaissance finds its most genuine
+expression. It is the Renaissance at its height. Both Giorgione and
+Titian were village boys brought to Venice by their parents and placed
+under the care of Giovanni Bellini to learn art. They must have been
+of very much the same age. It is interesting to watch the career of
+these boys--the two different natures--the impulsiveness of the one
+and the plodding perseverance of the other. Giorgione shot like a
+meteor early and bright into the world of art, scattering the clouds
+in the firmament, bold, crowding the work and the pleasure of a
+lifetime in a few short years. His work was a delight to him, and life
+itself was full of everything that was beautiful. He was surrounded
+always by a multitude of admiring comrades, imitating him and urging
+him on. Giorgione was ever restless and impetuous by nature. When
+commissions flagged and he had no particular work in hand, he took to
+painting the outside of his own house. He cared not a whit for
+convention. He followed his own tastes and his own feelings. He
+converted his home into a glow of crimson and gold,--great forms
+starting up along the walls, sweet cherub boys, fables of Greece and
+Rome,--a dazzling confusion of brilliant tints and images. Think how
+this palace must have appeared reflected in the waters of the Canal!
+Unfortunately, the sun and the wind fought with this masterly canvas,
+conquered, and bore all these beautiful things away. Indeed, many of
+Giorgione's works were frescoes, and the sea air swept away much of
+the glory of his life. His career was brief but gay, full of work and
+full of colour. This impetuous painter died in the very heyday of his
+success. Some say he died of grief at being deserted by a lady whom he
+loved; others that he caught the plague.
+
+  [Illustration: A SOTTO PORTICO]
+
+Of what a different nature was Titian! He studied in the same bottega
+as Giorgione, and was brought up under much the same conditions. But
+he was a patient worker, absorbing the knowledge of everyone about
+him, ever learning and experimenting; never completing. He did not
+think of striking off on a new line, of executing bold and original
+work. He wanted to master not one side of painting but all sides. He
+waited until his knowledge should be complete before he declared
+himself, before he really accomplished anything. He absorbed the new
+principles of his comrade Giorgione, as he absorbed everything else
+that was good, with unerring instinct and steady power. Titian was
+never led away in any one direction. He was always open to any new
+suggestion. As it happened, it was just as well that Titian worked
+thus at his leisure, and Giorgione with haste and fever. Titian had
+ninety-nine years to live; Giorgione had but thirty-four. There is an
+interesting anecdote told by Vasari with regard to these two young
+men. They were both at work on the painting of a large building, the
+Fondaco dei Tedeschi; Titian painting the wall facing the street, and
+Giorgione the side towards the canal. Several gentlemen, not knowing
+which was the particular work of either artist, went one day to
+inspect the building, and declared that the wall facing the Merceria
+far excelled in beauty that of the river front. Giorgione was so
+indignant at this slight that he declared that he would neither see
+nor speak to Titian again.
+
+Titian does not seem to have been very much appreciated by his
+patrons at the beginning of his career. He inspired no affection. He
+was acknowledged as the greatest of all the young painters; but the
+Republic, it would seem, was never very proud of the man who did her
+so much credit and added so greatly to her fame. Even although the
+noise of his genius was echoed all over the world,--although the great
+Emperor himself stooped to pick up his brush, declaring that a Titian
+might well be served by a Cæsar,--although Charles the Fifth sat to
+him repeatedly, and maintained that he was the only painter whom he
+would care to honour,--the Venetians do not seem to have been greatly
+enamoured of him. Perhaps it was that they missed the soul, the purity
+and grace and devotion, of the pictures of Bellini and Carpaccio.
+Certainly, as far as one can judge, he did not have a prepossessing
+nature. He was shifty in his dealings with his patrons and unfaithful
+in his promises. He seems to have belonged to a corrupt and luxurious
+society. Pietro Aretino had a very bad influence on Titian. He taught
+him to intrigue, to flatter, to betray. Aretino was a base-born
+adventurer for whom no historian seems to have a good word. He was,
+however, a man of wit and dazzling cleverness, with a touch of real
+genius. Aretino corresponded with all the most cultured men of his
+time, and he had the power of making those whom he chose famous. It
+was he who introduced Titian to Charles the Fifth.
+
+Titian's pictures were much more saleable in foreign courts than in
+his own country. Abroad they did not seem to have the lack of soul
+which the Venetians so greatly deplored. It was the old case of the
+prophet having no honour in his own country. Certainly in the art of
+portraiture Titian has never been surpassed. At that period he had the
+field completely to himself. Nothing could have been more magnificent
+than Titian's portraits. They help to record the history of the age.
+It was in Titian's power to confer upon his subjects the splendour
+that they loved, handing them down to posterity as heroes and learned
+persons. His men were all noble, worthy to be senators and emperors,
+no coxcombs or foolish gallants. Titian was more at home in pictures
+of this kind than in religious subjects. His Madonnas are without
+significance; his Holy Families give no message of blessing to the
+world.
+
+In the prime of his life he moved from his workshops to a noble and
+luxurious palace in San Cassiano, facing the wide lagoon and the
+islands. All trace of it has disappeared, and homes of the poor cover
+the garden where the best company of Venice was once entertained. It
+is said that Titian gave the gayest parties and suppers--that he
+entertained the most regal guests. Nevertheless, although made a
+knight and a count, and a favourite at most of the courts in Europe,
+he was greatly disliked by the Venetian Signoria, who in the midst of
+his famous supper-parties called upon him to demand that he should
+execute a certain work for which he had received the money long
+before. He seems to have been exceedingly grasping--a strange trait in
+the character of a painter. One sees throughout his correspondence,
+until the end of his life, a certain desire and demand for money.
+Undoubtedly he often painted merely for money alone, turning out a
+sacred picture one day and a Venus the next with equal impartiality.
+Anything, it was said, could have been got out of Titian for money.
+The Venetians never loved Titian's works, though foreign princes
+adored them. He seems to have laboured, until the end of his life,
+more from love of gain than from necessity. He was buried at the
+Frari, carried thither in great haste by order of the Signoria,--for
+it was at the time of the plague, when other victims were taken to
+the outlying islands and put in the earth unnamed.
+
+Somehow, in reading the life of Titian one is brought right away to
+the twentieth century. Here is the painter with the attendant
+journalist, Pietro Aretino, the boomer. Aretino was a journalist, the
+first. He took Titian in hand and "ran" him for all he was worth. Had
+it not been for this system of booming, Titian would probably not have
+been well known during his lifetime. In the Academy of the Fine Arts
+one can trace by his pictures a splendid historical record of Titian's
+life, and can see plainly the changes in popular feeling and their
+effect upon his work. For very many years he lived and painted
+constantly, and then was killed by the plague!
+
+There is a picture painted by him when he was fourteen years of age--a
+picture which contains all the qualities, in the germ, of his later
+work: marvellous architecture, pomp, yet great simplicity and luminous
+colour. Here also is the last picture he ever painted--at the age of
+ninety-nine. Think of the interval between the two! It is sombre,
+pious. There is something pathetic about it. This great painter, whose
+work showed such fury, audacity, vehemence,--the man who had
+always the sun on his palette--was now painting mildly, carefully,
+obviously with the shadow of approaching death upon him.
+
+  [Illustration: A NARROW CANAL]
+
+A marvellous picture by Titian hangs in the Academy of the Fine Arts.
+It is considered to be one of his finest pictures--the masterpiece of
+all his masterpieces--the eye of the peacock, as it were. This picture
+was neglected for many years, hidden away in an obscure portion of a
+church, and covered with a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. The
+custodian had almost forgotten the subject of the picture and the name
+of the painter. One day a certain Count Cicogna happened to visit the
+church. Being a great connoisseur and lover of art, he noticed this
+picture, and could not resist moistening his finger and rubbing it
+over a portion of the canvas. To his amazement, this portion emerged
+young and fresh, and as highly coloured as when it left the painter's
+hands--a picture bearing upon it the unmistakable stamp of Titian's
+genius! The delight of the Count can be imagined. He suggested to the
+custodian, with great care and tact, that he would present to the
+church a bran-new glossy picture, very large, of some religious
+subject; and mentioned in a casual way that they might give him the
+dilapidated old picture as a slight return. This was the Assunta. It
+was painted for the church of the Frari. Fra Marco Jerman, the head of
+the convent, ordered it at his own expense. Many a time when the work
+was in progress he and all the ignorant brethren visited the painter's
+studio and criticised his picture, grumbling and shaking their heads,
+and wondering whether it would be good enough to be accepted, whether
+it would be sneered at when uncovered before all Venice. They
+undoubtedly thought that they had done a rash thing in engaging him.
+Think of the agony of Titian, hindered by these ignorant men, being
+forced to explain elaborately that the figures were not too large,
+that they must needs be in proportion to the space! It was not until
+the envoy of the Emperor had seen the picture and declared it to be a
+masterpiece, offering a large sum of money for its purchase, that the
+Frari understood its value, and decided that, as the buying and
+selling of pictures was not in their profession, they had better keep
+it.
+
+  [Illustration: BRIDGE NEAR THE PALAZZO LABIA]
+
+Tintoretto painted, according to the popular feeling of his period,
+for the good of mankind. This we certainly owe to the Renaissance--the
+desire to benefit mankind, and not only men individually.
+Tintoretto felt this strongly. One sees not only the effect of this
+new era of thought in his work: one sees also human life at the base
+of it. Tintoretto worked for the good of mankind, and his work throbs
+with humanity. There was atmosphere, reality, in it. He was, it is
+true, a pupil of Titian; but it was Michael Angelo whose works had the
+greatest attraction for him. He loved Angelo's overwhelming power and
+gigantic force. Tintoretto's pictures seem to possess much of the
+glowing colour of Titian; but he paid greater attention to
+chiaroscuro. He seems to have had the power of lowering the tone of a
+sky to suit his composition of light and shade. His conception of the
+human form was colossal. His work showed a wide sweep and power. He
+turned to religion, not because it was a duty, but because it answered
+the needs of the human heart--because it helped him to forget the mean
+and sordid side of life, braced him to his work, and consoled him in
+his days of despair. The Bible was not to him a cut-and-dried document
+concerning the Christian religion, but a series of beautiful parables
+pointing to a finer life. Then, Tintoretto asked himself, Why keep to
+the old forms and the old ideals? Why should the saints and biblical
+people be represented as Romans, walking in a Roman background? He
+himself thought of them as people of his own kind, and painted them as
+such. Thus, he argued, people became more familiar with the Bible,
+more readily understood it.
+
+Tintoretto painted portraits not only of Venetians, but also of
+foreign princes. Although he painted with tremendous rapidity, the
+demand was greater than the supply. His paintings were popular. They
+gave pleasure to the eye, and stimulated the emotions. He painted
+people at their best, in glowing health and full of life. Under his
+marvellous brush old men became vigorous and full-blooded. His
+pictures give the same sort of pleasure as one finds in looking upon a
+casket of jewels--they are just as deathless in their brilliancy. The
+portrait that the popular taste called forth in Titian's day was just
+about as unlike the typical modern portrait as you could possibly
+imagine,--the colourless, cold, unsympathetic portrait of the
+fish-eyed mayor in his robes.
+
+  [Illustration: THE HOUSE WITH THE BLUE DOOR]
+
+At the age of fifteen, Jacopo Robusti--tintoretto, the little
+dyer--was brought by his father, Battista Robusti, to the studio of
+the great painter Titian. There he stayed for a little while, until
+one day Titian came across, in his bottega, some drawings that
+showed promise. On discovering that they were from the hand of Jacopo,
+he sent the boy away. Young as he was, Tintoretto had all the
+arrogance of the well-to-do citizen. He would brook no man's No, and
+would not yield his own pretensions for the greatest genius in
+Christendom. He did not need money: he was independent: and he started
+boldly to teach himself. Boiling with rage at the affront Titian had
+put upon him, he was determined to make a career for himself. He
+studied the works of Michael Angelo and of Titian, and inscribed upon
+his studio wall, so that his ambition might always be before his eyes,
+"Il desegno di Michael Angelo, e' il colorito di Titiano." He studied
+casts of ancient marbles, and made designs of them by the light of a
+lamp, in order to gain a strong effect of shadow. Also, he copied the
+pictures of Titian. Seeking, by every means in his power, to educate
+himself, he modelled figures of wax and plaster, upon which he hung
+his drapery. And always, whether painting by night or by day, he
+arranged his lights so as to have everything in high relief.
+Tintoretto's inventions for teaching himself were endless. Often he
+visited the painters' benches in the piazza of St. Mark's, where the
+poor men of the profession worked at painting chests and furniture of
+all kinds. In those days there were too many painters. The profession
+was overdone. Many young men who had real genius worked at the
+benches. Titian was the great man at the moment, and Palma Vecchio.
+But Tintoretto did not care. He forced his work down men's
+throats--gave it to them for nothing if they would not pay for it. He
+was always ready with his brush, and would paint anything from an
+organ to an altar-piece. He worked like a giant, with tremendous sweep
+and power; no subject was too great or too laborious; and always he
+had a desire to do his best.
+
+Tintoretto would not be trifled with or condescended to. He would not
+have his work under-valued, and would allow no patrician, not even a
+prince, to play the patron to him. He was determined not to be set
+aside. He flung his pictures at people's heads, and insisted on
+undertaking any great piece of work there was to do. Thus,
+Tintoretto's pictures are to be seen everywhere in Venice--in almost
+every church, every council-hall, every humble chapel, every parish
+church, every sacristy. He neglected no opportunity to make his work
+known. He worked with extraordinary rapidity. Whenever Tintoretto came
+across a fine fair wall he prevailed upon the master-mason to
+allow him to paint it. A fifty-foot space he would cover with avidity,
+asking nothing for his work but the cost of the material, giving his
+time and labour as a gift.
+
+  [Illustration: CANAL IN GIUDECCA ISLAND]
+
+Portraiture was the outcome of realism, and one of the most important
+discoveries of the Renaissance. People began to feel that they wanted
+not only their affluence in possessions, but also their own individual
+faces and features, handed down to posterity. Thus portraiture began
+to creep in. At first it appeared in the churches under cover of
+saints and Madonnas; gradually it became possible to distinguish one
+from another--it was not always the same face. Painters took models
+from life as their saints. But portraiture in painting was very slow
+in reaching perfection. Sculpture had accomplished that long before;
+now that the latest craze was for portraiture, it was the sculptors
+who were the most prepared to take it up, and stepped forward to
+execute commissions. They had plenty of material in the way of old
+Roman coins and busts. Donatello and Vittore Pisano were the two men
+who first offered to satisfy the new want. Donatello executed
+marvellous studies of character, and Pisano medals such as have never
+been seen before or since. But even these men, fine as their work
+undoubtedly was, felt that the public could not long remain satisfied
+merely with the sculptured portrait. They must have colour. Donatello,
+therefore, began to stain and colour his busts, showing that painting,
+not sculpture, was to be the portrait art of the Renaissance. Vittore
+Pisano also gave up his sculpture, and turned his attention to
+portrait-painting; but he was only an amateur in this direction, and
+did not meet with much success. No portrait-painter of any merit was
+produced in that generation. The idea was entirely new. Men had not
+had sufficient time in which to study the human face. The next
+generation ushered in Mantegna, who painted a marvellous portrait of
+Cardinal Sciramo; but he went too far in the other direction. He
+painted his man as he was--as he saw him, line for line. He painted
+the soul and heart of him--and the soul and the heart were black.
+Venice was revolted with such a portrait. It seemed indeed indecent
+that a man's character should be laid bare in such a way. It was a
+picture they did not care to hang in the Council Chamber, a picture
+that was unpleasant to live with. The Cardinal belonged to the State.
+His honour was their honour, and it must not be defiled. The
+Venetians came to the conclusion that portraits must be painted not in
+full-face but in profile. Thus the characteristics of a man, if they
+be not pleasant, do not come out clearly. This accounts for the number
+of profile portraits. The age wanted an agreeable portrait. This
+Giorgione provided. He realised that the treatment must always be
+bright, joyous, romantic. His followers trod in his footsteps: the
+master's style was too strong and pronounced to be much deviated from.
+Giorgione seems to have reached the topmost height of art at that
+period. Even Titian, for a generation after his death, followed in
+Giorgione's lines; only, Titian's work was a little more sober, a
+little less sunny. He had the sense to see that Giorgione had expanded
+the old rule and done something worth adopting, and for a time he
+simply followed this joyful outburst. His early years fell at a time
+when life was glowing, radiant, almost intoxicating in its vigour. But
+youth and joy cannot last; nor could the Renaissance spirit. Gradually
+the trouble and the strife from which the whole of Italy was suffering
+filtered into Venice, and cast a serious aspect over art and social
+life. Venice, of all the states in Italy, was the last to feel this
+sobering influence. She had been defeated both in battle and in
+commerce; and, although she was not totally crushed under the heel of
+Spain, life was not the endless holiday it promised to be. Men took
+themselves more seriously, and the quieter pleasures of friendship and
+affection began to be more sought after. Religion revived in
+importance. Men clung to it, as they always do in time of trouble, for
+comfort and support. It was no longer a political sentiment, but a
+personal one. Art declined as the sunshine and the gaiety that had fed
+and nourished it ebbed away. When men began to feel that individually
+they were of no avail, that they were subject to the powers round
+about and above them, the death-blow of great art fell. Titian was
+influenced by his environment, and his painting changed completely. He
+produced pictures that would have been looked upon with scorn in his
+earlier days. The faces of his men are no longer smooth and free from
+care. One saw there struggle and suffering, and all that life had done
+for them. But Titian was not a pessimist at heart. The joy and gaiety
+in which he had been brought up formed part of his character. Whatever
+changes may have happened to his country politically, nothing could
+alter that entirely. And it was no doubt this early training and
+the atmosphere in which he was brought up that made his pictures the
+masterpieces they were. You notice the men who came after Titian--how
+they began to decline. For example, Lorenzo Lotto had been brought up
+in the heyday of the Renaissance; but the new order of things, the
+change from national virility to national decadence, enfeebled him.
+Then, again, the coming in touch with poets and men of letters,
+victims flying from the fury of Spain, was a new stimulant to art. It
+did not exactly improve it; but it certainly changed it.
+
+  [Illustration: THE ORANGE SAIL]
+
+A fine period of painting does not come in a day, nor does it end in a
+day; and, although the universal interest in the Venetian school dies
+with Titian and Tintoretto, it does not die unnoticed. The torch of
+art flickered up many times in Venice before it was finally
+extinguished. The men who came immediately after Tintoretto had not
+the strength to start off on any new lines. They simply fell back on
+variations of the earlier masters, showing much of the masters'
+weaknesses, but few of their great qualities. Some even were so
+inartistic as to attempt to pass off their pictures, on ignorant
+people, as Titians and Giorgiones. However, before the Republic
+disappeared there were two or three men who took the first rank among
+the painters of the period, provincial artists, men whose art was
+sufficiently like her own to be readily understood, such as Paul
+Veronese. The provinces were not declining so rapidly as Venice was.
+They were less troubled by the approaching storm. Men there led
+simple, healthy lives; Spanish manners were long in reaching the
+provinces, and, when they did, the people were slow to succumb. Men in
+the provinces had stamina, simplicity, and courage with which to meet
+the new order of things. They combined ceremony and splendour with
+childlike naturalness. Consequently, the works of Paul Veronese
+delighted the Venetians. The more fashionable and ceremonious private
+life in the city became, the more were the people charmed with his
+simple rendering.
+
+  [Illustration: A QUIET RIO]
+
+Gradually the taste of the Venetians turned towards pictures in humble
+quarters--in the provincial towns and in the country. In the Middle
+Ages the country was so upset that it was not safe for people to
+venture out of the city; but with the advance of civilisation this
+state of affairs was altered. People began to delight in country life.
+The aristocracy took villas in the provinces, and the poorer
+people wanted representations of them in their houses. The painters of
+the period, Palma and Bonifacio, began to add pastoral backgrounds to
+their works. But the first great landscape painter was Jacopo Bassano.
+His treatment of light and atmosphere was masterly, and his colouring
+was jewel-like and brilliant. It was Bassano who started that great
+Spanish school which was to culminate in Velasquez. Venice did not
+produce many great painters in the eighteenth century--only three or
+four. The city itself remained unchanged: it was just as beautiful,
+still the most beautiful and luxurious city in the world: it was the
+people who changed. They became apathetic, placid, and drifting,
+perfectly contented with one another and with their lots in life,
+never trying to better themselves in any way. There were no
+difficulties, no problems to be solved. People were just as gay as
+they were serious, just as much interested in paintings as they were
+in politics. This was a vegetable period.
+
+It is strange that such a demoralising time should have seen the rise
+of a great master; but it certainly saw him in Canaletto. That artist
+differed from nearly all the Venetian painters in that he had complete
+mastery of technique. His work is just as fine technically as that of
+Velasquez or that of Rembrandt. It shows marvellous dexterity and
+power. He understood his materials better than any other Venetian
+painter--better even than Giorgione.
+
+Guardi and Tiepolo followed Canaletto. In Tiepolo's work especially
+you realise the character of these eighteenth-century people. At that
+time Venice was sliding downhill rapidly. Her people were aping
+dignity. They dressed extravagantly, not so much for the love of
+colour and splendour as for swagger. They were degenerating rapidly.
+Here and there lesser masters appeared; but Venetian art became poorer
+and poorer, until it reached the condition of the present day, when in
+Venice there is no art at all. The kind of work which the people
+appreciate sickens and saddens you--those sunlit photographs glazed
+with blue to counterfeit moonlight, and tricky, vicious
+water-colours,--brutal pictures with metallic reflections and cobalt
+skies,--all wonderfully alike, all with the same orange sail, and all
+equally untrue.
+
+  [Illustration: HUMBLE QUARTERS]
+
+Year by year painters continue to paint Venice without the public
+showing signs of weariness. Perhaps the failure of the artists to
+reproduce the undying charm of that dazzling jewel of cities is
+both the excuse and the reason for the pertinacity of the tribe.
+Womanlike, she eludes them; manlike, they pursue. Few have seen the
+real Venice, the Venice of Ruskin and Turner and Whistler. Venice is
+not for the cold-blooded spectator, for the amateur or the art
+dabbler: she is for the enthusiastic colourist and painter, the man
+who sees, and does not merely look.
+
+Sir Edward Burne-Jones was wont to declare that to paint Venice as she
+should be painted one must needs live for three thousand years: the
+first thousand should be devoted to experiments in various media; the
+second to producing works and destroying them; the third to completing
+slowly the labour of centuries. He would never have dreamed of
+spending a painting holiday beyond Italy--that is, unless he had been
+permitted to live for over five thousand years; and even then, it was
+his firm opinion, no man could paint St. Mark's, which was
+unpaintable--mere pigment could not suggest it.
+
+  [Illustration: RIO DI SAN MARINA]
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: A SQUERO OR BOAT-BUILDING YARD]
+
+
+
+
+STREETS, SHOPS, AND COURTYARDS
+
+
+In the crooked and bewildering streets of Venice, which open out from
+the great piazza and lead all over the city, one sees the true life of
+the people. It is there that the poor congregate. The houses teem with
+humanity. There the true Venetians are harboured. One comes to know
+them well, and the manner of life they lead; and so gay and
+light-hearted are they, it is strange if one does not like them in
+spite of all their faults. Was there ever more irregularity than in
+the streets of Venice? All the houses seem to be differently
+constructed. Some are lofty; others are squat; some have balconies and
+chimney-pieces thrust out into the street so as almost to touch the
+houses opposite. Nearly every house has at one time been a palace, and
+each is in a different stage of decay--houses that have once been the
+homes of merchant princes, palaces in which perhaps even Petrarch may
+have feasted,--inhabited now by the poorest of Venetians. The weekly
+wash flutters from the balconies (the linen of Venice is famed for its
+whiteness), and frowsy heads appear at Gothic windows. Worms have
+eaten and rust has corrupted everything destructible. Yet now and then
+one is astonished at the preservation of certain portions of the
+buildings. In that labyrinth of streets one never knows what surprise
+may be in store. You will come across beautiful early-Gothic gateways
+covered with sculptured relief and inlaid designs of leaves; a
+fourteenth-century palace with the faint remains of the paintings of
+some artist with which at one time it must have been covered; lovely
+remnants of crosses let into the walls; Renaissance wells of the
+sixteenth century; delicately-carved parapets; a great stone angel
+standing guardian at some calle head; irregularly twisted staircases
+of the fifteenth century; a Gothic door with terra-cotta mouldings;
+and churches without number. Some of the finest architectural gems in
+Europe are here, and almost every house is invested with a strange
+history. The place seems inexhaustible. As you walk in those old
+streets the shadows of the mighty dead go with you--those great
+men who lived glorious lives for Venice and for art. There is an
+old-world atmosphere about the streets. They twist and turn, and
+sometimes are so narrow that there is scarcely room for two people to
+pass each other; at times they are so dark and still that the
+scuttling of a rat into the water makes one start. Venice is full of
+contrasts, full of the unexpected. It is as if Providence, seeing fit
+that one's eyes should not become satiated with beauty unalloyed,
+throws in little marring touches--shocks to your feelings, cold
+douches of water, as it were--in order to give value to the marvellous
+colouring and antiquity of the water city. For example, from the world
+of Desdemona, where one can fancy one sees her lean from a traceried
+window and catch a distant echo of a mellow voice out on the water
+singing a serenade, it is rather a shock suddenly to find yourself in
+the piazza of St. Mark. It is easy to lose oneself in the streets of
+Venice. In a minute you can step from the past to the present, and
+find yourself among the marbles of St. Mark's and the arcades of the
+Ducal Palace--in the tourist's Venice, amid glittering shops full of
+modern atrocities, mosaic jewellery, wood-carving, imitation glass,
+and what not--Americans and other globe-trotters staring up at St.
+Mark's, laughing and reading their guide-books.
+
+  [Illustration: THE WEEKLY WASH]
+
+For all artists and lovers of the picturesque the side streets of
+Venice--_calle_, as they are called--are fascinating beyond words.
+Every house has a character peculiarly its own. Each is in a way
+unique and totally dissimilar to its fellows; each is proud in the
+possession of relics of architectural beauties. Every street is made
+up of magnificent palaces and churches, fine examples of architecture
+in such rich and varied wealth and diversity of styles that one is
+almost overpowered. There are old Gothic palaces, venerable specimens
+of Renaissance or Venetian period. Time indeed has laid heavy hands
+upon them; but it seems to have augmented their charm. This homely
+aspect of Venice interests. The old houses and the rickety archways
+appeal to the observer, if he be not too keen of smell. Here are
+marvellous and varied combinations of rich colouring--weather-worn
+bricks, grated windows, and brilliant shutters picturesque and shabby
+by the lapse of time, and shops half lost in gloom. Most of the houses
+are of distempered rose-colour at the top and moss-green at the
+bottom. The sun shines on the roof, and the water laps at the base.
+There are land-gates and water-gates to most of the houses--one
+opening upon a canal, the other upon a courtyard.
+
+  [Illustration: A BACK STREET]
+
+I lived for six months in Venice, and have seen these streets under
+every possible aspect. I have seen them in the early morning, at
+mid-day, in the evening, at night, in the rain, in the sun; and I can
+never decide at what time of the day they appear most fascinating.
+Perhaps it is after a rain-shower, when every tone upon the old walls
+is brought out and accentuated--greys and pale sea-greens and the old
+Venetian red with which so many of the houses used to be distempered.
+The shops in Venice are very thickly set. Most of them open right down
+to the ground, and the wares, which are varied, appear to ooze out
+into the street. Here is a corn-dealer's shop with open sacks of
+polenta flour of every shade of yellow; there a green-grocer's shop
+where vegetables are sold--such a wealth of colour in the piles of
+tomatoes, vegetable marrows, and great pumpkins cut down the middle to
+display their orange cores. The richer shops, however, are blocked up
+several feet high, and have latticed windows.
+
+I love to wander through these streets at night, when the squalor and
+the misery of Venetian life are hidden by the darkness, and one sees
+only beauty. Here are subjects for the etcher, for Rembrandt and
+Frans Hals,--marvellous effects of light and shade. The streets are
+pitch-dark; there is nothing to mar the lovely fair blue nights of
+Venice--no vicious shaft of electric light to bleach the colour from
+the sky. These side streets are lit by the candle and the lamp.
+Perhaps the most picturesque of all the shops at night are the
+wine-shops. There one sees, beneath some low blackened doorway, a rich
+golden-brown interior. In the midst of this golden gloom one dim
+oil-lamp is burning--the most perfect light possible from the
+painter's standpoint: by it, the dark faces and gesticulating hands of
+the men gathered round a table are turned to deep orange. This is all
+one sees growing from out the encircling gloom--faces, hands, and a
+few flecks of ruby light, as the glasses are raised. Every shop down
+these narrow streets has its shrine to the Virgin Mary, with its
+statuette, its fringes, and its flowers; and at night these shrines
+are illuminated according to the poverty or the wealth of the
+proprietor--some have only a tiny dip, others have a candle or a group
+of candles, while well-to-do folk boast a row of oil-lamps. Rich or
+poor, each has its offering, its tiny beacon. The children may go
+without bread, and the mother may lack warm clothing; but the Holy
+Mother must not be robbed of her due. There is certainly a wonderful
+simplicity of faith about these people. The cook-shops are fascinating
+by night. There are innumerable stalls; in fact, nearly all the
+shopping seems to be done from stalls; even the butchers have open-air
+stalls. At night chestnut-roasters, toffee-vendors, pumpkin-and-hot-pear
+men hold full sway. These are generally surrounded by groups of
+open-mouthed children gazing with delight at the long twisted strings
+of toffee in the hands of the operator. Almost a still greater
+attraction to the young folk of Venice is the chestnut-roaster; he
+generally takes up his position in the courtyards, as does the
+coffee-roaster. Courtyards seem to be the favourite haunts of the
+coffee-roasters,--partly, I suppose, because all the doors of the
+houses round about open into them, and housewives can be easily
+supplied. They seem to be constantly roasting coffee berries night and
+day; the whole place reeks with the fragrant odour. They are
+picturesque by day, these busy workers, but far more picturesque by
+night, when the gleam of their ovens shows orange in the purple gloom,
+and the leaping flames light up the faces of the children round
+about, handsome little faces with a certain grandeur in them--boys
+with bronze cheeks, dark hair, olive complexions, black eyes, and
+sometimes a touch of colour in their red flannel caps and their
+multicoloured patches of garments. There is something barbaric and
+fine and graceful about them, half-encircled, as they are, by the
+filmy blue smoke from the ovens. A Venetian Good Friday celebrated in
+a poor and populous part of Venice at night is most picturesque. The
+people of the quarter--the coffee-roasters, the cook-shop men, the
+footmen, and the wine-sellers--arrange to sing a chant in twenty-four
+verses, a grave and sombre chant following the life of our Lord in His
+Passion. Each verse takes about five minutes to sing, and there is a
+pause of equal length between each two verses. During every interval
+the crowd, who have been quiet, begin to chatter, the men smoke, and
+the boys rush and tumble. Directly the precentor begins, silence falls
+upon them once more. Most of the people in that particular quarter
+subscribe to the erection of a shrine with plenty of candles and
+little glass lamps. It is a picturesque sight--the yellow light from
+the altar lamps falling on the group of men and women gathered round
+the singers and the many heads thrust out of windows and balconies,
+on the fair, devout, and serious faces of the children, on the
+handsome women and the bronze-faced men.
+
+All the world in Venice lives out of doors: they breakfast and lunch
+and dine, all in the open air. All of them live in lodgings or hotels,
+and principally in the bedrooms, which are for the most part
+comfortless and dreary,--their only merits are a frescoed ceiling,
+sometimes really fine and old, and a balcony. One can procure a marvel
+of a palace in Venice for the cost of a garret in London. There is no
+real home-life in Venice. Rich and poor, mothers, fathers, children,
+and servants,--all take their food in the open air. There are
+restaurants and cafés for the well-to-do, endless eating-houses for
+the poorer classes, and sausage-makers for the gondoliers. Cookshops
+swarm. There you see great piles of fish and garlic, bowls of broth,
+polenta, and stewed snails, roast apples, boiled beans, cabbages, and
+potatoes. Every holiday, every saint's day, has its special dish.
+Carnival time sets the fashion for beaten cream or panamonlata; at San
+Martino gingerbread soldiers are popular; and for Christmas time there
+is candy made with honey and almonds. A certain broth consumed by the
+very humblest is made from scraps of meat which even the
+sausage-makers will not use: as may be imagined, the soup is highly
+flavoured. In the midst of all these stalls and eating-houses it is
+extraordinary how little there is eaten in Venice,--merely a mouthful
+here and there,--a kind of light running meal. A Venetian, no matter
+how rich he might be, would never dream of inviting you to a set meal.
+There is no heavy food, no cut from the joint. If a Venetian invites
+you to an entertainment, he will give you a cup of coffee perhaps, or
+a glass of wine and a biscuit,--rarely more. He will never invite you
+to eat a great meal; he never takes it himself. The eating-house and
+the stall appear to be more or less of an excuse for gossip and the
+meeting of neighbours.
+
+If the streets of Venice are bewitching by night, they are certainly
+delightful in the early morning. It is then that one receives the most
+vivid impressions. There is a certain freshness in one's perceptions
+at the dawn. The poor wretches who make their beds in the streets, or
+on the steps, or at the base of columns, shake themselves and shamble
+off. Troops of ragged "facchini" fill the streets, and quarrel noisily
+over their work. The great cisterns in the market-place are open, and
+the water is brought round to your house by dealers, stout young
+girls with broad backs and rosy cheeks; they carry it in two brass
+buckets attached to a pole, and empty it into large earthenware pots
+placed ready for its reception in the kitchen. These girls, called
+"bigolanti," supply the place of water-works. At this hour you see the
+shops opening like so many flowers before the sun. Butchers set forth
+their meat; fruit shops, crockery shops, bakers', cheap-clothing, and
+felt-hat shops, show their various wares. You see peasants at work
+among vegetables, building cabbages and carrots into picturesque
+piles, and decorating them with garlic and onions, while their masters
+are still sleeping on sacks of potatoes. Great barges arrive from
+Mestre, Chioggia, and Torcello, laden with vegetables and fruit.
+Eating-houses begin their trade. You see men and women taking their
+breakfast, and a savoury smell of spaghettis and eels on gridirons
+fills the air. Gondoliers begin to wash their gondolas, brush their
+felces, polish the iron of their prows, shake their cushions, and put
+everything in order for business. Picturesque old women, carrying milk
+in fat squat bottles, make the round of the hotels and restaurants at
+this early hour. They are good to look at, with their dark nut-brown
+faces and dangling gold earrings under their large straw hats. Their
+figures are much the shape of their bottles; and they bring a pleasant
+atmosphere into Venice, an atmosphere of fields and clover-scented
+earth, and milk drawn from the cream-coloured cows. Fishermen, a
+handsome class, with weather-beaten faces, in blue clothing, come
+striding down the calle, shallow baskets of fish on their heads. They
+set up their stalls and display their soles and mackerel, chopping up
+their eels into sections and crying, "Beautiful, and all alive!" At
+this hour everyone is making bargains, and the result is a continual
+buzz; but there is nothing discordant about the street cries of
+Venice. A peculiarly beautiful cry is that of the man who comes round
+every morning with wood for your kitchen fire. The fuel-men cut their
+wood on the shores of the Adriatic, and anchor their barges at the
+Custom House, leaving them in charge of mongrel yellow dogs, who guard
+so vigilantly and are so extremely aggressive that never a splinter is
+taken from the barges.
+
+  [Illustration: THE WOODEN SPOON SELLER]
+
+The street cries are full of individuality, and the tradesman brings a
+little art to bear on the description of his wares. The song of the
+sweep, exquisitely sad, quite befits the warning, "Beware of your
+chimney!" There is nothing gay about the sweep: he is a very
+melancholy person, and his expression is in sympathy with his music.
+The pumpkin-vendor is coy, and his cry has a winning pathos; his is
+not an easy vegetable to launch on the market, and he has developed
+into a very bashful person. His cry is cooing and subtle: he almost
+caresses you into buying, which is necessary, as no one in his right
+senses really desires a pumpkin. The fruiterer is different. He is
+handsome, fat-cheeked, and has scarlet lips, strong black hair curling
+in ringlets, and gold rings in his ears. His adjuration is a round,
+full, resonant roar, like a triumphant hymn; and there is altogether a
+certain Oriental splendour about his demeanour. It is not necessary
+for him to be subtle: there is always a sale for melons and pears,
+chestnuts and pomegranates. He uses colour as a stimulant to his
+customers, and dwells upon the hue of his fruit. "Melons with hearts
+of fire!" he cries. Also he flatters. To a dear old gentleman passing
+by he will hold up a clump of melons, some of them sliced, or a group
+of richly coloured pomegranates, and say, "Now, you as a man of taste
+will appreciate this marvellous colour; you are young enough to
+understand the fire and beauty of these melons"; and the old
+gentleman will go on his way feeling quite pleased and youthful. Some
+of the cries are quaint. I once heard a man say, "Juicy pears that
+bathe your beard!" and another said his peaches were "ugly but
+good,"--they certainly were not beautiful to look upon. Almost the
+most melodious salesmen are the countrymen who pace the streets with
+larks and finches in cages, and roses and pinks in pots.
+
+At mid-day the streets are enveloped in a warm golden light; there are
+rich old browns, orange yellows, and burnt siennas--all the tints of a
+gorgeous wall-flower. A ray of sun in a bric-à-brac shop attracts your
+attention; and you get a peep through a window with cobwebbed panes,
+high up in a flesh-coloured wall, at some of the objects
+within,--brass pots and pans gleam from the walls, bits of china and
+porcelain, strings of glass beads, some quaint old bookcases with
+saints carved in ivory, fragments of old brocade woven with gold and
+gorgeous,--all kinds of strange curiosities, looking crisp and
+brilliant in the sunlight. Suddenly you are blinded by a patch of
+golden yellow. It is an orange-stall placed before a pink palace
+flecked with the delicate tracery of luminous violet shadow. Away down
+in the interior of the stall, where the sun does not shine, it
+appears almost purple by contrast to the brilliant mass of golden
+fruit. The background of all these shops is neutral: the objects for
+sale form the only brilliant and positive colour.
+
+The palaces and houses are mostly pink and white. There are pinks, and
+greys, and blues, and so on. It is not the painted, coloured city that
+one had imagined it to be: Venice is very grey. But its greyness is
+that of the opal and the pearl. I have often heard people say how
+strange it is that the colours always seem brighter in Venice than in
+any other city--the shutters and the doors and the shops. The answer
+is not far to seek. It is because the background and the general
+colouring is neutral. There are no large patches of positive colour:
+even St. Mark's, choke-full of colour as it is, has no positive colour
+in its composition. Take a peep into a carpenter's shop. Through the
+iron grating, rusty and red with age, you see the quaint old craftsman
+at work, his flesh tone very much the colour of the wood he is
+planing; piercing black eyes look through and over the large
+bone-framed glasses that he wears; he suggests the carpenter of Japan;
+and, judging from the amount of shavings you see about the floor, you
+gather that he is a dignified, not what may be called a feverish,
+worker. He is, however, evidently an artist: you see dainty specimens
+of wood-carving hung round on the walls. Most of the carpenters of
+Venice seem to be old men. There appear to be very few middle-aged
+people at all. They seem to be either young boys and girls or ancient
+men and women. Whether it is that Venetians age quickly, I do not
+know. The old women are extraordinary. You can scarcely imagine how
+anything so crooked and foul and old and frowsy, with so little hair,
+so few teeth, so many protruding bones, and such parchment-like skin,
+can be human. Their faces seem to be shrunken like old fruit: I have
+seen women with noses shrivelled and with dents in them like
+strawberries. It is extraordinary to watch these women on their
+shopping excursions. How they bargain! They think nothing of starting
+the day before to buy a piece of steak, and sometimes spend a whole
+day haggling over it. Some of the shopmen are swindlers,--fat, greasy
+men, very fresh and brisk, who have reduced cheating to a fine art.
+
+  [Illustration: WORK GIRLS]
+
+It is only after living in Venice for some months that one begins to
+understand the bargaining in the streets. You will see two men
+talking--one the shopman, the other the purchaser--and if you
+know anything of the language, and watch carefully, you will find it
+the most marvellous bit of acting imaginable. They bargain; the
+customer turns in scorn, and goes; he is called back; the goods are
+displayed once more, and their merits expatiated upon. The customer
+laughs incredulously and moves away. The seller then tries other
+tactics to fog his client. Eventually he makes a low offer, which is
+accepted; but even then the shopman gets the best of it, for he has a
+whole battery of the arts of measurement in reserve. There is really
+no end to the various possibilities of "doing" a man out of a
+halfpenny.
+
+Beggars are a great trial in the streets. The lame, the halt, and the
+blind breathe woe and pestilence under your window, and long
+monotonous whines of sorrow. Fat friars in spectacles and bare feet
+come round once a month begging bread and fuel for the convents. Old
+troubadours serenade you with zithers, strumming feebly with fingers
+that seem to be all bone, and in thin quavering voices pipe out old
+ditties of youth and love.
+
+There are lottery offices everywhere. Around them there is always a
+great excitement. The missing number, printed on a card framed in
+flowers and ribands, is placed in the windows daily. Some say that the
+system of lottery should be done away with; but it might be cruel to
+deprive the poor wretches of hope. The lottery brings joy to many
+despairing people.
+
+Venetian women are good-looking. One sees them continually about the
+streets. Nothing can surpass the grace of the shawl-clad figures seen
+down the perspective of the long streets, or about some old stone well
+in a campiello. They are for the most part smart and clean. You see
+them coming home from the factories, nearly always dressed in black,
+simple and well-behaved. Their hair is of a crisp black, and well
+tended; their manner is sedate and demure. There is no boisterousness
+about the Venetian girls, no turning round in the streets, no
+coarseness. Many of them are very beautiful. You see a woman crossing
+an open space with the sunlight gleaming on the amber beads about her
+throat and making the rich colour glow brighter beneath her olive
+skin. A shawl is thrown round her shoulders, and her jet-black hair is
+fastened by a silver pin. She wears a deep crimson bodice. The choice
+of colour of these women is unerring in taste. Their shawls are
+seldom gaudy, generally of blue or pale mauve; vivid colours are
+reserved for the bodices.
+
+Then, there are the bead-stringers. You see them everywhere: handsome
+girls with a richness of southern colour flushing beneath warm-toned
+skins, eyes large and dark, with heavy black lashes, the hair twisted
+in knots low on their necks, and swept back in large waves from square
+foreheads, a string of coloured beads round their necks, and flowered
+linen blouses with open collars. You see them with their wooden trays
+full of beads. The bead-stringers are nearly always gay. They laugh
+and chat as they run the beads on the strings. They often form a very
+pretty picture, as they bend over their work and thread turquoise
+beads from wooden trays.
+
+In the courtyards, some women are hanging white clothes on a line
+before a yellow wall; others are leaning out of their windows,
+gossiping with neighbours. Never was there a more gossiping set of
+women: every window, every balcony, seems to be thronged with heads
+thrust out to chatter.
+
+Venice is divided up into campi or squares. Each campo has a church, a
+butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker, and everything else that is
+necessary to life, including a café and a market.
+
+Venetian children, as a rule, are very badly reared, and many of them
+die at an early age. It is a belief and a consolation that the little
+ones go straight to heaven, there to plead their parents' cause and to
+arrange for their reception.
+
+May is the best month in which to see the streets. The intoxication of
+spring is in the air, and in the bright sunlight the colours burn and
+glow. Although you cannot see them, you are constantly reminded that
+there are gardens in Venice. Suddenly over the red brickwork of a high
+wall you will see clumps of tamarisk, hanging mauve wisteria, or the
+scarlet buds of a pomegranate, while the scent of syringa and banksia
+roses fills the air, the birds sing in the enclosure, and the perfume
+of honeysuckle trails over the wall of a garden of a foreign prince.
+Few crowds are more cheerful or better ordered than a Venetian crowd.
+There is a light-heartedness about these people that is very engaging;
+they have a marvellous frankness of manner, a sublime indifference to
+truth. The smallest Venetian child is a born flatterer, and will tell
+you, not what he thinks, but what he imagines you wish to hear. The
+people are the most engaging in the world, free from care or doubt as
+to right or wrong. This carelessness is characteristic of the whole
+Italian race. Venetians give the impression of being always determined
+to enjoy life to the full. They are continually coming together, for
+the purpose of pleasure, on one pretence or another, and the flashes
+of wit in the street are sometimes very amusing. The Venetians have
+always been, and still are, a great festa-loving people. When the
+Republic fell, the brave ceremonies came to an end; but the original
+passion is still kept alive. The festa in Venice are chiefly of
+religious character. For example, once a year each parish church
+honours the feast of its patron saint by processions to all shrines
+within that particular parish. Very picturesque are the streams of
+priests and people crossing the bridges and passing along the fondanta
+of some small canal,--a brilliant ribbon of vermilion and gold winding
+through the grey-toned city: porters of the church (in blouses of
+white, red, and blue) bearing candles, pictures, and banners; bands
+playing the gayest operatic tunes; priests and the parocco carrying
+the Host under a canopy of cloth of gold; long files of the devout
+holding candles; and boys with crackers and guns. At night there is
+dancing in the largest campo of the parish. On Good Friday the streets
+resemble a feast rather than a fast. The people are in their best and
+gaudiest clothes; children are rushing and romping and turning
+somersaults, whirling their rattles, fitting up shrines and then
+appealing to the crowd for coppers,--human mites of six or seven
+constructing "Santo Sepolcro," or Holy Graves, from old bottles,
+sprigs of bay stuck in, and odd candle-ends. One may witness touches
+of sentiment in a Venetian crowd; but the depths are seldom stirred.
+Sometimes sentiment finds expression in the rilotti--popular Venetian
+songs.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: CHIOGGIA FISH MARKET]
+
+
+
+
+THE ISLANDS OF THE LAGOON
+
+
+There is no piece of water more extraordinary than the lagoons of
+Venice. They cover an area of 184 square miles of water, shut off from
+the sea by a narrow strip of sandy islands, which are called the Lidi.
+The form of the lagoons is, roughly, that of a bent bow. How did they
+happen to be formed thus? That is a difficult question, and there are
+various opinions. Certainly the lagoons are a great feature of the
+city. They gave shelter to the founders flying from the Huns on the
+mainland, and the health of the community depends on their regular ebb
+and flow. A lagoon is not a lake; neither is it a swamp, nor open sea.
+It is a strange piece of natural engineering. There are really,
+although we cannot see them at high tide, four distinct water systems,
+with separate watersheds and confluent streams. The sea comes in once
+a day as from a great heart, pulsing in through the four breaks in
+the Lido barrier, cleaning and purifying the lagoon, and afterwards
+bearing away the refuse of the city. At low tide one can see these
+channels distinctly winding in and out of the mud-banks. In the spring
+they are bare, with long trails of sea-grass. In autumn they are brown
+and bare, and at high tide the whole surface is flooded. On the
+mainland shore of the lagoon there is a certain territory, called
+Laguna Morta, where the sea and the land fight a continual battle. It
+is the home of the wildfowl. Here salt sea-grasses grow, tamarisk,
+samphire, and, in the autumn, sea lavender. Farther, the ground
+becomes solid, and the Venetian plain begins, with its villas,
+poplars, vineyards, and mulberry groves.
+
+Nothing is more delightful than to spend a whole long day upon the
+lagoon when the air is sweet and the breeze is fresh from the Lido.
+There are fishing-boats coming in from their long night, with spoil
+for the Rialto market, crossing and recrossing one another as they
+tack. The bows are painted, and the nets are hung mast-high to be
+mended and dried in the sun. Their sails are folded close together,
+like the wings of great vermilion moths. These sails, which are
+picturesque in the Venetian landscape, are of the deepest oranges and
+reds, rich red browns, orange yellows, and burnt siennas, contrasting
+strangely with the cool grey waters of the lagoon upon which they
+float.
+
+One can wander for miles along the Lido on the Adriatic side. The
+lizards bask in the hot sand; the delicate, pale sea-holly mingles
+with the yellow of the evening primrose. From the Lido you can see
+right away to the south-east, and in the horizon can discern the faint
+blue hills above Trieste and the top of Monte Maggiore. From there the
+city looks well: one sees the Ducal Palace, faintly pink, the green
+woods of the public gardens, and the vast blue Venetian sky. The true
+native seems to have a strange affection for the Lido. One cannot tell
+why or wherefore; but it is so--"Lido" has ever been a name to conjure
+with. One cannot tell what associations and sensations of pleasure and
+charm are connected with it. At the present day it is a flat piece of
+somewhat marshy ground, with large gardens intersected by canals.
+
+The woods of the Favorita, on the shore of San Elizabetta, are
+delightful, with their groves of acacia and catalpas, where the ground
+is carpeted with wild flowers, and the grass is greener than elsewhere
+in Venice, and the nodding violets grow. Behind the acacia grove
+there is a Protestant burial-ground where rest the bones of many
+Englishmen who came to Venice for pleasure and stayed to die. The tomb
+of our ambassador, Sir Francis Vincent, is here. A beautiful walk is
+towards the ramparts of San Nicolo, where the blackbirds sing in the
+old convent garden, and in summer crimson poppies, purple salvias, and
+vivid green grass are luxuriant. San Nicolo di Bari is the patron
+saint of sailors. They have erected a magnificent church dedicated to
+his memory on the most beautiful point of the Lido. Here the crews of
+the merchantmen and warships of the Republic would linger for a while
+before sailing, to ask a blessing on their voyage. The saint's remains
+do not really rest here. Venice failed in her endeavour to obtain them
+by force from the people of Bari; but she spread the fiction among the
+people. To this day the sailors of the lagoon firmly believe that San
+Nicolo still watches over and protects them, and when in doubt or
+danger are enabled by the campanile of his church to find the direct
+course to the Lido port. At the Lido is the cemetery of the Jews. The
+graves are covered with sand and vegetation, and children never
+hesitate to dance on them,--in fact, to do so is a favourite pastime.
+If one remonstrates, they will look at you with wide-open eyes,
+and explain that these are only graves of Jews,--a Jew with the
+Venetians being no better than a dog. The grave of a Christian is
+treated with the greatest reverence: even the children and the
+gondoliers salute it as they pass. There is something pathetic about
+the Jewish graves, from the stones over which the inscriptions have
+been effaced.
+
+  [Illustration: CHIOGGIA]
+
+Chioggia is one of the greater islands. It has a large town with an
+immensely broad street and a wide canal. Here is the most famous and
+most picturesque fish-market of all suburban Venice. In it one comes
+across the finest Venetian types, magnificent models for painters,
+bronzed Giorgione figures and black-eyed swarthy women. Their dialect
+is beautiful, far more so than that of Venice proper; and at night
+Ariosto is read publicly in the streets by a musical sweet-voiced
+Chiozzotto. Here the dramatist Goldoni lived, and the painter Rosalba
+Carrera, and the composer Giuseppe Zarlino. Chioggia reminds one of
+the Jewish quarter in the east end of London. The people, mostly
+fishermen, are extremely poor.
+
+This is the place for colour. There is colour everywhere--in the sails
+of the boats, in the costume of the people, and even in the red
+cotton curtains of the churches. Unfortunately, one's stay there was
+brief--because of the insects. A fisherman in Chioggia took us for a
+sail. We had bargained for an hour's journey; but we had not been out
+for more than ten minutes before he landed us on the rocks and
+demanded five francs. We were entirely at his mercy, and were forced
+to concede; but his action struck us as being high-handed. Sometimes
+the fishermen of Chioggia, if they are so inclined, will tell you
+tales of Angelica and Orlando, and the pageant of the Carolingian
+myth.
+
+Torcello is one of the most interesting islands of the lagoon. It is
+seven miles from Venice, and a pathway is made to it through the sea
+by stakes. The island is for the most part a waste of wild sea moor.
+Grey and lifeless in colour, it is a desolate place, and you feel as
+if you were at the end of the world. At one time it was extremely
+populous; but now it is impossible to live there, because the marshes
+breed malaria. Any count whose title and estates the Venetians deem
+improbable they call "the count from Torcello." One passes six miles
+of the most beautiful scenery on the way thither. The entrance is by a
+canal, and the banks on either side are covered with dwarf bushes and
+lilac trees. Thirteen hundred years ago the grey moorland looked much
+as it does now--except that where a city stood the cattle feed, what
+was once the piazza of the city is a grassy meadow, and a narrow
+pathway is the only street. Two hundred years after the invasion of
+Attila, the inhabitants of Aquileia and Altinum, with their most
+precious possessions, flew from their houses to the island of
+Torcello. Now there is scarcely a sign of human habitation; and only
+the ruins of an old quay, an ancient well, foundations of marble
+buildings, a great church, and a campanile, are left to show what at
+one time was a populous city, which was called the mother of Venice.
+By the remains of these buildings one can see that they were
+constructed by men in great distress, seeking a shelter, yet not
+wishing to attract the eyes of their enemies by their splendour. The
+church of Torcello shows force and simplicity of character, and a
+certain reverent religious feeling on the part of its founders.
+Everything is on a small and humble scale. The columns which support
+the roof are no higher than a man. Yet these columns are of pure Greek
+marble, and the capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture. One
+sees everywhere in this church an earnest and simple desire to do
+honour to God in the temple they were erecting, and that it should not
+form too great a contrast to the churches they had loved and seen
+destroyed. Torcello is equally delightful in springtime and in autumn.
+In spring the orchards are in full bloom, and the hedges throw their
+pink and white sprays of thorn against the sky. In autumn the water
+meadows are a shimmer of purple and red from the masses of feathery
+lavender that grow there. It has much the same colour and feeling as a
+Scotch moor. Torcello is interesting from its venerable traditions,
+its desolation, its wildness, and its profound silence.
+
+There are many expeditions on which one could go if one had the time
+to spare. For example, there is an island near Torcello called San
+Francisco in Deserto. The name is well applied: St. Francis' island
+certainly stands in a desert. There is still an islet monastery of the
+Franciscan order. The brethren show you with much enthusiasm a stone
+coffin in which the founder of the convent was in the habit of lying
+in order to acclimatise himself to the sensation of death. Also there
+is pointed out a penitential cell which was once inhabited by the
+saint, and a tree (said to have sprung from his staff) which he
+planted. This legend may sound mythical; but perhaps it may not
+be so. It is quite possible for a staff, even if it has lain by for
+some time, to shoot out in several places in green sprigs; and one of
+these, cut in proper manner, might easily take root and grow into a
+tree. The real charm of the island lies in the garden of the
+monastery, where narcissus are abundant and there is a great avenue of
+cypresses, the finest in Venice.
+
+  [Illustration: IN MURANO]
+
+Triporti is different: in fact, no other island of the lagoon is quite
+like it. Here are great sweeps of sandy land covered with coarse grass
+and heather and pools of brackish water. The island is more or less
+uncultivated, and the air is full of strange aromatic odours from the
+sea. It is a marvellous place to bathe in: the sand is fine and soft
+and yellow, and the sea lies wide open before you, warm and limpid.
+
+If you have any doubt as to where Murano is, look for a great black
+cloud hovering over an island; and you may be sure that there are the
+glass factories of Murano. Glass-making is the only industry now
+practised in the lagoon. The factories are no longer numerous, Murano
+having declined from her ancient splendour. The secret of the magician
+is exposed; and Murano has no longer the monopoly of bevelled
+mirrors, great glasses, and crystal balls. Such work is executed in
+Birmingham quite as well as in Murano. The old art is lost. Still,
+Murano is interesting. There is perhaps more life in it than in any
+other of the islands. Workmen sift glass upon the pavement; women, at
+the doors, sit busily knitting, or stringing beads; fishermen, clothed
+in a dark greenish grey, are disentangling their nets, which hang over
+the boats in apparently inextricable confusion; there are street
+vendors of all kinds, calling out the nature of their wares to the
+passerby. There are five thousand inhabitants in the city of Murano.
+Its grand canal is almost as broad as that of Venice. The beautiful
+palaces, with their doors and windows of marble,--some of red Verona
+marble, some deeply enriched with mouldings, others with arcades of a
+singular grace and delicacy--are now inhabited by the very poorest of
+the poor. The church of San Donato, the Matrice or mother church of
+Murano, stands in a field of fresh green grass. It is said that a
+virgin appeared in a vision to its founder, Otho the Great, showing
+him this very meadow overgrown with scarlet lilies, and bidding him
+erect a church there in her honour. Murano, on the whole, is a
+dreary little town. Wealth, beauty, and elegance have passed away; the
+country is devoted to cabbages and potato patches. Still, it has charm
+even in its decay. How beautiful Murano must have been at the time
+when Cardinal Bembo and so many famous literati lived there! It must
+have been an earthly paradise, with its luxurious vegetation, lordly
+palaces, and magnificent gardens. In this city the horse is a quaint
+and unexpected animal. He is not wanted. He is quite as ridiculous and
+useless as a unicorn would be in the streets of London. He annoys one,
+this strange beast,--making one think of mountains, valleys, fields,
+trees, streets, and carriages, at a time when one is eager to be
+satisfied with sparkling lagoons, gondolas, and a palace for hotel.
+
+  [Illustration: MRS. EDEN'S GARDEN IN VENICE]
+
+The gardens in Venice have a character all their own. They are highly
+prized, for space is scarce. The soil is rich, formed of lagoon mud;
+but only certain plants will grow freely in it--because of the salt
+air. The variety that will bloom, however, is quite enough to make a
+good show--flowering and aromatic shrubs, roses (especially banksia),
+most bulbs, and (blooming the finest and happiest of all in Venetian
+soil) carnations, the "garofoli" which play so large a part in Italian
+love-stories.
+
+On the Giudecca there are two gardens, each quite different from the
+other in character and appearance, but both illustrating what a
+Venetian garden may be like. In one all the resources of art and
+wealth have been brought to bear, and there is a succession of
+brilliant beds of colour. In the middle is a green oasis, a kind of
+English orchard, where the turf is as fine and as velvety, as deep and
+green, as that of any English lawn, and the orchard trees throw a
+delicate tracery of flickering shadows. There are beds of splendid
+colour, varying with the seasons. In fact, there is almost an Oriental
+lavishness about this garden: the scent of the flowers is almost
+oppressive. The other garden is not less beautiful; but it is set
+apart for profit rather than for pleasure. There are aisles upon
+aisles of vine-covered pergolas, crossing one another; and one can
+saunter down these cool promenades for hours, absolutely bareheaded. A
+narrow strip is divided from the rest of this garden by a thick hedge.
+Here, in one glorious mass, are all the flowers that will grow freely
+in Venice--the flame-coloured trumpets of the bigonici, by bowers of
+roses over-arching walks, banksias festooning the walls, and one
+corner completely filled by a splendid _Daphne odorifera_ which by her
+perfume draws the butterflies. However, one cannot quite
+understand the spirit that prompted Alfred de Musset to write those
+verses the last of which runs:--
+
+     À Saint Blaise, à la Zuecca,
+     Dans les prés fleuris cuellir la verveine;
+     À Saint Blaise, à la Zuecca,
+     Vivre et mourrir là.
+
+  [Illustration: TIMBER BOATS FROM THE SHORES OF THE ADRIATIC]
+
+There are now at Saint Blaise no pastoral and poetic places where
+lovers could stroll hand in hand by the pale moonlight: the gardens,
+somewhat marshy, are cultivated principally for market purposes. The
+Giudecca Canal is the commercial harbour of Venice. The churches of
+Redentore and Maggiore lie on the farther side of it. In this canal a
+group of small vessels lie all day long at anchor--twenty or thirty of
+them, laden with wood brought from the Istrian coast, and sold in
+Venice. When it has been disposed of, the captain calls his crew from
+the distant cafés and wine-shops, releases the watch-dog from his post
+on deck, weighs anchor, and creeps down the Adriatic to reload again
+with fuel. This is all the Venetian commerce of to-day--this and a few
+beads, glass, wood-carving, lace, and bric-à-brac, such as would
+scarcely load a modern trading-ship. Nine hundred years ago the trade
+of Venice was important. By the close of the eleventh century, the
+city was commercially supreme in Europe. Yet she manufactured nothing.
+She was supreme simply by the exercise of the merchant's calling. She
+was Europe's greatest ship-owning power and commercial head. Her
+merchants, conveying cloth, velvet, serge, canvas, various precious
+and commercial metals, glass beads, and other goods, received in
+return drugs, spices, dyes, precious stones, rugs, silks, brocades,
+cotton, and perfumes, which were sold at a high rate of profit. The
+population of Venice was then two hundred thousand; the annual exports
+were valued at ten million ducats; there were three hundred sea-going
+vessels, eight thousand sailing vessels, three thousand smaller craft,
+seventeen thousand mercantile sailors, and a powerful navy with eleven
+thousand able-bodied seamen.
+
+San Giorgio is of note as the place for red mullet from the Adriatic.
+Nothing equals the fish: none other is so appetising, so red and fresh
+in colour--one would feel inclined to eat of it if only for its hue.
+The best place to procure mullet is in a certain tavern where
+gondoliers and sailors mostly congregate: here they can drink wine
+free of duty. The tavern is invariably filled with such men, all
+stretched out on benches round the table. San Giorgio is the
+place for sunsets also: from nowhere else in the lagoon can one see
+such a marvellous variety, such changes of sea and sky. The church
+possesses a wonderful Entombment by Tintoretto.
+
+  [Illustration: BY A SQUERO OR BOAT-BUILDING YARD]
+
+San Servolo is a very small island beyond San Giorgio, yet one of the
+brightest jewels in the coronet of the lagoon--almost entirely covered
+with buildings.
+
+Burano has a population of some nine thousand. The people are chiefly
+engaged in fishing and in towing. One sees boatfuls of them returning
+from the sea; and lines of them towing heavy mud-filled barges on the
+way to Pordenone, all the men stepping in time with one another and
+bending to the rope with a will. There is something statuesque about
+these toilers. With their long, cleanly-moulded limbs, they remind one
+of ancient Egyptian bronzes. The sculptor would find plenty of scope
+in Burano. The people, however, are of evil repute by heredity. They
+are the scapegoats of the lagoon. If anything goes wrong, the blame is
+always laid upon them. They work harder and receive less pay than the
+inhabitants of any other island. In the old days terrible quarrels
+used to arise among the women, either in the market-place or when they
+sat in their doorways making that exquisite lace for which the town
+is famous. To the present day lace is made at Burano, and even now the
+women quarrel over their work. If one did not know the language, one
+would not imagine that they were quarrelling--the dialect is so soft
+and sweet, the words dying away in a kind of sigh.
+
+Mazzorbo is connected with Burano by a long wooden bridge. There are
+very few houses here, and very few inhabitants. The island is given up
+to flower gardens and the cultivation of fruit. Every day boats laden
+with fruit, to be sold at the Rialto, are sent to Venice. Most of the
+inhabitants of Mazzorbo are extraordinarily beautiful and sweet of
+nature. These characteristics are very often found among those whose
+business is chiefly connected with mother earth. Gardeners of all
+nationalities are generally gentle and charming persons.
+
+San Lazzaro is where the Armenian monks spend their quiet lives, happy
+in the study and culture of their gardens. This convent of theirs is a
+gem of colour set on the lagoon, painted a deep crimson and looking
+like some gorgeous tropical flower. There is a terraced walk in the
+garden, and the cloister is rich in flowers and planted with cypress
+and oleander trees. It is a place in which to bask in the sun,
+and watch the crabs fighting with one another on the sloping wall. One
+can see the sun setting behind the Euganian hills, and watch the first
+stars appear and the piazza lights shine out.
+
+  [Illustration: IN A SIDE STREET, CHIOGGIA]
+
+Malamocco is not often visited by strangers; yet there is much that is
+beautiful in the place, and a certain old-world air that fascinates
+one. It is a good deal older than Venice; and its people, friendly and
+clean persons, are always careful to explain to you that they are not
+Venetians. The famous white asparagus, for which the evil-smelling mud
+makes excellent soil, grows plentifully in Malamocco.
+
+San Elena was once an exceedingly lovely island. It lies near to the
+city, and is only a short distance from the public gardens. The grave
+of Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, at once an empress and a
+saint, is said to have been here. There was also a very beautiful
+Gothic cloister. Now the old monastery walls have been pulled down,
+and a hideous iron factory has been erected; the quiet convent
+cemetery has been dug up, and the crosses have been thrown aside to
+make way for iron-girded workshops.
+
+For expeditions on the lagoons it is always well to choose a pearly,
+silvery-grey day, when everything is delicate in colour and mellowed
+by a semi-transparent haze. The lagoons are not always grey and calm.
+They have their moods. I have seen a fair green sea grow black beneath
+a sudden storm. Sometimes Venice will appear blue and rosy, the smooth
+sea as green as in Canaletto's pictures, the white cupolas of Santa
+Maria della Salute and the silver domes of St. Mark's standing out as
+on an azure background. Then great masses of grey clouds will come up,
+the sea is festooned with foam, and black gondolas skim over the water
+like swallows flying before a storm. Sometimes the sky is clear and
+the light vivid, the water shines like silver, and one cannot tell the
+horizon from the sea; the islands appear like brown specks, and the
+ships seem to be sailing in the sky. At others the sea, under an east
+wind, is cold and hard as steel. In winter the lagoons are wrapped in
+damp mists, so thick that, however good a navigator you may be, you
+must needs lose your way; steamers and gondolas loom out and then
+disappear, swallowed up by the dense wall of vapour, and the shipping
+looks ghostly, tall and gaunt.
+
+  [Illustration: SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE]
+
+Away out in the remote and unfrequented regions of the lagoon are
+small isolated huts, mud-plastered, single-roomed cabins, built on
+piles, which guard certain valli, to which the fish are driven in the
+spring, to spawn. These consist of deep ditches surrounded by
+palisades of wattled cane. Here the men stay sometimes for days,
+fishing with nets, or standing upright in the long light boats waiting
+for their prey. Some of the valli have the most uncanny names: one is
+"The Val dell' Inferno," and another "The Val dei Sette Morte." Of
+this last there is a terrible story, which has taken deep root in the
+imagination of the people. Six fishermen were living in a valle. They
+had with them a boy, who, when they went out on the lagoon, stayed at
+home to cook for the men. One day, when they were returning with their
+boatload, they found the body of a drowned man floating out to sea.
+They picked the body up and laid it on the prow. The boy came to meet
+them, crying that breakfast was ready. When they were seated at their
+meal he asked why they had not brought the man who was lying in the
+prow. The fishermen said, jokingly, that he had better go and call
+him. This the child did, but soon returned with the news that he had
+shouted to the man in the prow, who had neither moved nor answered
+him. "Go again," said the men. "He is a deaf old fool. You must shout
+and swear at him." The child went once more to the boat, and shouted
+and swore at the man; but still he would not wake. "Go out again and
+shake him by the leg, and tell him that we can't wait until doomsday
+for him," said the fishermen. So the boy went, climbed into the boat,
+and shook the man by the leg. This time the man in the prow sat up and
+said, "What do you want?" "Why don't you come?" asked the boy. "They
+can't wait until doomsday for you." "Go back," he said, "and tell them
+I am coming." The boy went back to the hut, and told the men, who were
+laughing and joking over their meal, that it was all right: the man in
+the prow was coming. At this the fishermen turned very pale and
+laughed no more. Then they heard heavy footsteps coming slowly up the
+path; the door was pushed open; the dead man came in, and sat down in
+the boy's place, making seven at the table. The eyes of the other six
+were fixed on the seventh, their guest. They could neither move nor
+speak. The blood grew colder and colder in their veins. When the sun
+rose and shone in at the window, it shone on seven dead men sitting
+round the table in the valle.
+
+Despite this tale, Venetian people are bright and essentially
+practical. They are not deeply imaginative. Horrors, weird fancies,
+and love of the preternatural are quite foreign to the Italian
+temperament.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: RIO E CHIESA DEGLI OGNISSANTI]
+
+
+
+
+SOCIAL UPS AND DOWNS
+
+
+A great change came over society in Venice early in the latter half of
+the nineteenth century. The people were dull, and sullen, and poor.
+They resented their political position bitterly. The feeling with
+which they were possessed was their great hatred of the Austrians.
+They did not hate the Austrians individually; but they did
+politically, and therefore socially. If you wanted to know the
+Austrians, you could not know the Venetians: if you were friendly with
+either, you must cold-shoulder the others. Society in Venice was
+divided into two distinct sections. Once gone over to a side, you had
+no withdrawal. If a girl intermarried she was cut off for life from
+her family. Whatever the Venetian can or cannot do, he can certainly
+hate, and that well. He may be dull and dispirited; but he is fiercely
+patriotic, and his hatred of the Austrian was very strong. Most of
+the nobility were exiled. The rest kept severely to themselves. They
+never attended popular festivities, and even among the poorer classes
+of Venetians very few old customs were kept up. The people felt keenly
+the contrast of what had been and what was. A bridge of boats was
+still built over the water to the church of the Redentore; but it was
+very little used. The carnival, which was wont to last for six weeks,
+was kept up but a single night; and then it was a farcical show. Only
+a few dressed-up beggars tore through the streets, singing songs at
+the cafés for drinks, and they were looked upon by the crowd with
+melancholy scorn.
+
+Venetian people of good family seldom went to the play or to the
+opera. Austrian bands played there. The places of entertainment were
+mostly kept up by foreigners, and were consequently not what they
+might have been. To find good Italian opera one had to go to London or
+to Paris. Still, the Venetians love music. It is born in them: they
+have a passion for the art which nothing can subdue. Even the veriest
+street urchin sings his gutter song with a fervour such as we do not
+know of in the north. Despite the ban from which they suffered, the
+theatres were not uninteresting. Scarcely any Italian can act
+badly. Practically in every case he has the dramatic instinct. But
+there was no gay buzz in the audience, no flitting from box to box.
+The theatres were filled with Austrians, who took their pleasure
+quietly. The artisans and other poor Venetians, who saved up their
+money to go to the play, certainly did enjoy it. They cheered and
+hissed with vehemence, and between the acts drank aniseed and water,
+and ate candied fruits on sticks fashioned at the ends into
+toothpicks.
+
+  [Illustration: A CAMPIELLO]
+
+Marionette shows were very popular. The theatre was tiny, and the
+stage was tiny; everything was arranged in accordance with the small
+dimensions of the actors. The marionettes talked very volubly, so much
+so that it was sometimes difficult to follow them. The plays, written
+expressly for the marionettes, were of all descriptions, from
+melodrama to farce. Sometimes there were ballets. The audience was
+generally amusing. It consisted principally of boys. The hat was
+passed round, and if the proprietor considered that there was not
+sufficient money collected he would shout, "O you sons of dogs!" and
+close the theatre.
+
+If any Venetian of good family gave a ball or a party, he was looked
+upon with suspicion by the poor, who had no holidays, no tips, small
+trade, and large taxes. The Austrians gave balls and parties
+occasionally, but not very often. They hated Venice, where they were
+regarded as a pestilence, and shunned by all save their own
+countrymen. This strange antagonism continued for a few years, until
+the Austrian occupation ceased and Venice was united to the rest of
+Italy.
+
+The Emperor of Austria's birthday afforded a good example of the
+inter-racial bitterness. All night long Austrian bands paraded the
+streets, cannons were fired at intervals, and fireworks let off. It
+seemed as though by unnecessary ostentation of artillery the Austrians
+were endeavouring to reach the throne in Vienna. But a dead silence
+reigned in Venice. Not a single Venetian was abroad. The Austrians had
+their celebrations all to themselves. It was rather pathetic to see
+them trying to work up joy and enthusiasm. Next morning the
+celebrations were continued. Service was held in St. Mark's Church;
+and the soldiers stood outside in the square in long rows, drawn to
+attention, the sun shining on their resplendent uniforms and handsome
+faces--a gallant array! Not a single Venetian showed himself. Not a
+blind was drawn. Not one curious woman's face appeared at a
+window. Even a Venetian servant girl would not have exchanged a
+civility with an Austrian officer that day. There was a dreadful hush
+everywhere. Venice was like a dead city. One felt that the people were
+stuffing their ears, and covering their eyes, behind drawn blinds. The
+Austrians tried hard to be jubilant and gay; but very obviously they
+did not succeed. In the evening they went to the opera, endeavouring
+to spread out and make more of themselves; but the large house was
+practically empty. The day after that, Venetian life flowed back again
+into its accustomed channels. The people were laughing and chatting
+and filling all the eating-houses, as though making up for lost time.
+One wondered what the antagonism would all end in.
+
+  [Illustration: FISHING BOATS FROM CHIOGGIA]
+
+There was in Venice a committee which looked after Venetian interests.
+On all the public anniversaries bombs were fired and flags were flown.
+In all the Government Departments the committee placed spies, who were
+so clever that they were seldom detected by the Austrians. Even in the
+cathedrals those men would sometimes explode bombs. The antagonism
+between the Venetian and the Austrian was shown in the piazza,
+perhaps, more than elsewhere. The military band played there three
+times a week, winter and summer,--played gloriously all the best
+Italian airs. Much as they loved music, the Venetians walked up and
+down the quay, or in the arcades. They would not enter the square
+until the music was finished. Such was their pride! The cafés had no
+longer their gay and lively reputation. Only at Florian's did the
+Austrians and the Venetians sometimes intermingle--and that was
+because of the foreigners. Usually the Venetians had their separate
+cafés, and the Austrians theirs--the Quadri and the Specchi.
+
+The piazza of St. Mark's seems to be the very heart of Venice, the
+very core, from which everything radiates, only to return. If you lose
+yourself in Venice, and go on walking, you will be sure to find your
+way back to the piazza sooner or later. At eight o'clock the piazza
+was at its very gayest. Nothing could be more lively, more amusing. It
+was lined with cafés--the cafés "Suttil," "Quadri," "Costanza," and
+"Florian"; which last reminds one very much of the "Café Royal" in
+Paris, and was certainly quite as famous. The old proprietor of this
+restaurant was greatly patronised by the Venetian nobility, who were
+loud in their praises both of himself and of his viands. The first
+Florian lived in the time of the Empire. There is a charming
+story told of him and the artist Canova. The old hotel-keeper was very
+much troubled with gout, and Canova, to whom Florian had rendered many
+services, modelled the affected leg in plaster, in order that he might
+have a shoe made which would fit exactly, and so ease the pain. No
+doubt (but this is pure surmise) Florian favoured the artist, in
+return for his kindness, with a dish of his famous "sorbet au
+raisins."
+
+  [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE]
+
+Street vendors of all kinds swarmed in the piazza at
+night--flower-girls of the most obliging natures, who, if you would
+not buy their wares, would thrust a bouquet into your hand gratis (you
+were, of course, supposed to repay them at some other time). There
+were musicians of every sort and kind--some with guitars; others with
+mandolines; some playing selections from the operas; others singing
+"Funiculi" and "Santa Lucia" in high tenor voices; deep-chested,
+bronze-faced men who explained that they were once operatic stars, but
+were now reduced, by the injustice of managers and the villainous
+tempers of the prima donnas, to street singing. There were men who
+went about selling frosted fruits on long sticks, crying "Caramel,
+caramel!" and giving descriptions of their wares in almost every
+European language. People of all races were there--red-faced
+Englishmen and fair women, with their rosy daughters in sailor hats,
+on the way from Switzerland, the respectable English father explaining
+St. Mark's with a comprehensive wave of the hand. There were
+Frenchmen, Americans, Austrians, Italians, either talking volubly or
+deadly quiet; Greeks, with long bluish-black hair floating out behind
+them, and caps with silk top-knots (these were captains of small
+vessels coming from Cyprus and Syria, and they went to the Café della
+Costanza, where they could procure mocha and the pipe they loved
+best); and young Venetian gentlemen who spent their lives for the most
+part in drifting from one café to another, generally handsome,
+well-dressed men with immaculate linen and pointed beards carefully
+cut, carrying long canes, and the lightest of kid gloves (their main
+object seemed to be to stare at all the pretty women); and Austrians,
+smart, good-natured people, who frequented their own cafés, with much
+talk and laughter and rattling of swords. Now and then one saw
+Venetian women of the upper classes on the piazza, but very rarely.
+They were extremely indolent and lazy, and seldom went out. The
+weather, they would tell you, was never sufficiently fine: there was
+too much sun, or a sirocco was coming, or a cloud threatened rain: the
+slightest thing deterred them. Often the utmost exertion a Venetian
+woman would allow herself in the day was to pass from her sofa to her
+balcony to breathe the freshness of the flowers. Consequently, she had
+a complexion which was extremely delicate, a sort of pearly whiteness.
+Sometimes she would take a turn or two in the piazza with her husband
+or brother as cavalier, and languidly sip anise and water at the Café
+Florian.
+
+For the most part the ancient aristocracy of Venice lived in
+retirement and were very poor. They dwelt in palaces whose walls were
+covered with priceless paintings by great masters, with which they
+would not part. They dined off a dish of polenta or fried fish, which
+a valet brought from a tavern near by. Their poverty and the fear of
+spies and informers combined in making society in Venice extremely
+reserved. It was impossible for a stranger to penetrate into the
+midst.
+
+In summer, in the months of the dog-star, those few among the
+patricians who were well-to-do flew to their villas on the banks of
+the Brenta, on the mainland. They returned to Venice in winter, only
+because, they said, the odours from the lagoons at that time were
+unhealthy and caused fever. Those who had no country houses, and could
+not afford to travel, shut themselves up in their palaces and drew
+down their blinds until it was the fashionable time to appear. In the
+dead season there were no lamps lit in the great entrances, and the
+palaces were silent. The family lived in the back rooms on the top
+story. The rest of the house was let. Most of the palaces were built
+round courtyards, and the contessa might go thither as often as she
+pleased to interview tradesmen and bargain for fish--there at least
+she would be free from espionage.
+
+As a matter of fact, it was pleasant to be in Venice at that season.
+The heat was less: the sun did not bake the ground as it did on the
+mainland. Owing to the sirocco which blew across the water, the air
+was cool and sweet. Human beings, however, are ever the slaves of
+custom, and it was the fashion for Venetian noblemen to spend the
+summer months on the Brenta. The river scenery had a fascination for
+them, just as the Thames has for Londoners. All along the banks were
+rows of little, bright, stuccoed villas, somewhat flimsy, each with
+its patch of garden and its shrubbery at the back, where the
+family sat all day. Now and then one saw a nobleman's palace breaking
+the line of somewhat uninteresting houses. Such was the magnificent
+villa at Stra, belonging to a princely Venetian family, with its great
+sweeps of green lawns, its orangeries, its alleys, and quaintly cut
+yews. Venetians love nature when it has been trimmed by man. Certainly
+the banks of the Brenta are very beautiful, especially in spring, when
+the water is covered with lilies of yellow and white, and the banks
+are lined with scented flags, and the larks tip the surface of the
+water with violet wings and sing as they mount against the sun. It is
+not unlike the scenery of some quiet English stream.
+
+  [Illustration: CHIOGGIA]
+
+This custom of spending the summer months in the suburbs of Venice was
+called "villeggiatura." It was one of the gayest times of the year for
+the Venetians. They lived by night. All day long they lay behind
+closed blinds, while the sun parched and baked the ground. Only from
+five o'clock in the afternoon until four in the morning could they be
+said to live. Then they held dances, card-parties, and flirtations.
+During these hours, when the temperature was low, amusement and
+pleasure reigned supreme; but no sooner did the sun begin to rise
+than, as surely as Cinderella disappeared at the stroke of twelve, the
+gay society of the Brenta vanished, and the place lay dead and silent
+once more under the intolerable glare.
+
+How different society in Venice was in the early days! Then the houses
+were marvels of luxury; the finest wit, the most brilliant
+conversation, and the most delightful music were to be heard in
+Venice. It was not in the houses of the old aristocracy that the most
+brilliant people--painters, writers, poets, and politicians--assembled.
+It was in the houses of women who were looked upon as more or less
+shady persons, whom no Venetian gentleman would dream of introducing
+to his wife. The wives of the aristocracy were seldom seen except at
+public functions. They took much the same position in society as the
+"honoured interior" takes in Japan at the present day. (The geisha,
+although she is infinitely more entertaining, has no social status
+whatever.) The Venetian lady of quality, unlike the "honoured
+interior," dressed in the most magnificent style. In the estimate of
+her husband nothing was too gorgeous or too costly for her to wear.
+Among all those of the larger towns of northern Italy, Venetian women
+of the sixteenth century were the first to wear needle-point.
+
+Although the ideal woman of that time had to be tall, a Venetian
+mother never troubled herself about the height of her daughter. At any
+moment she could transform the girl's dwarfish stature to that of a
+splendid giantess by the use of a pair of high pattens, which were
+unnoticed beneath the long stiff dress. Neither was the colour of the
+hair a source of inconvenience. Should a girl's locks be of a mousey
+nondescript shade, her mother, instead of using injurious dyes, made
+her daughter sit every day for three hours in the front balcony where
+the sun shone the brightest, dressed in a crownless hat, so that her
+tresses might be pulled through it, and a very broad brim, in order
+that her face should not be tanned. Then the damsel's maid would sit
+and comb her mistress's hair, bleaching in the sun. Girls were never
+dressed so richly as their mothers. In fact, the uniform dress was
+very simple, generally plain black or white. When they went to church
+they wore long white veils, or falzulo, and on ordinary occasions long
+gauzy silk ones, through which they could see, yet not be seen. On her
+marriage day the girl was first introduced into society, and saw the
+bridegroom for the first time. After marriage the rules which ordered
+her life were not nearly so restricting.
+
+In 1614 certain regulations were passed with regard to dress and
+household extravagances--the amount of money to be spent on dress,
+liveries, gondolas, jewellery, feasts and entertainments, gold and
+silver plate, and even the dishes and the menus of dinner-parties. All
+these were limited.
+
+The earliest nobility consisted of twenty-four families who ruled as
+tribunes over the twelve islands of the lagoons that formed the
+Venetian State. Some of these families are still represented in
+Venice. In the year 1296 a rigid and definite aristocracy was formed.
+Those who held chief places in the management of the State, whether
+they were noble or they had gained importance through their riches,
+determined to establish themselves as the permanent rulers of Venice,
+and to close the doors of office against all parvenus. Thenceforward
+only near relations of those who sat in the Great Council could be
+recognised as members of the caste. The twenty-four families,
+nevertheless, had distinction, and were called the "old houses."
+Admission to the Venetian nobility was rarely conferred on anyone save
+foreign princes or distinguished generals. Now and then, when the
+State was sorely in need of money, a Venetian family was ennobled; but
+for the most part the aristocracy guarded their privileges most
+zealously.
+
+In the days of her decadence, in the eighteenth century, the
+tightly-laced, lackadaisical men and the hooped and brocaded women of
+Venetian society lived a curious, aimless, artificial life. Their
+greatest pleasure seems to have lain in gossiping, eating, drinking,
+and generally struggling to kill time. It was an inane life, frigid,
+without freedom, without heart, without strong emotion. All pleasures
+seem to have been carried out by rule. Even the laughter and the jokes
+were artificial. There can be but small wonder that society fell into
+broken fortunes.
+
+The ideal nobleman of to-day is a stronger, more active, finer person
+altogether than his senatorial ancestor. His character is healthier.
+He adopts more or less a country life. He owns property on the
+mainland, and is very much occupied in trying to make it pay. He rears
+cattle, grows crops, makes wine on his own premises, is interested in
+silk-growing and in model farms, and competes for agricultural prizes
+offered by the Government. His Venetian palace does not interest him
+greatly. He spends a few months there in the season, gives one or two
+large entertainments, and is constantly making alterations and
+improvements; but his heart is in the country, and he leaves Venice
+for his rural palazzo on the slightest pretext. This Venetian noble of
+to-day thinks a great deal of himself. His temper is haughty, and
+there is no softness or geniality about him. Nevertheless, he is a
+decided improvement.
+
+What society there is still to be found in Venice is constituted by
+foreigners, mainly English and American. One of the great things to be
+done is to take a gondola and go to the Canal of the Slaves, beyond
+the public gardens on the island of St. Peter--to the home of an old
+fisherman celebrated for his fish dinners. This fisherman's cottage is
+just as celebrated in Venice as the Trafalgar Hotel in London, or the
+Ship Tavern at Greenwich, or La Rapée in Paris. Here, however, is a
+more picturesque environment--boats drawn up on the yellow sand, nets
+stretched to dry in the sun, planks forming a landing-place in front
+of the houses--all is very simple. One eats the fish dinner in a
+garden, under an arbour shaded by vines, where flowers and edible
+vegetables grow in charming but ill-kept confusion. The host is
+jovial; his wife, a great authority, is the cheerful mother of
+many children.
+
+  [Illustration: THE FISH MARKET]
+
+One finds on one's travels that each city has its local and peculiar
+dish--Marseilles its "bouille à baisse"; Venice its "soupe au
+pidocchi"--mussels, gathered in the lagoons and canals, flavoured with
+spices and aromatic herbs. Personally, I would rather this Venetian
+viand were not so classical; but you would touch the people to the
+quick if you refused their offering. After it come oysters from the
+arsenal, eels and mullet from Chioggia, fried sardines, white wine of
+Policella, and fruits from the hills of Este, Marselice, and
+Montagnana. At the end of the repast one is presented with a bouquet
+from the garden.
+
+
+
+
+GONDOLAS AND GONDOLIERS
+
+
+No conveyance in this world is more delightful than the gondola. In
+appearance it is undoubtedly the most beautiful vessel in the world.
+Like most characteristic objects appertaining to Venice, it is
+suitable to the place: in fact, it is the outcome of the place. There
+is nothing strange or unnatural about Venice. Everything there seems
+to have come about through force of necessity, and is therefore
+perfectly beautiful. Even as the hansom cab suits London, or the
+'rickshaw suits Japan, or the jaunting-car suits Ireland, so the
+gondola is the vessel for Venice. You cannot separate the lagoon from
+the gondola. One completes the other. Without either Venice would be
+impossible. The gondola alone can wend its way through the intricate
+water-streets of the Queen of the Adriatic.
+
+There is no indication of movement whatever in a gondola. The craft
+has no springs, no cogs, no jarring wheels or oily machinery, no
+vibration. Simply one sees the palaces glide by in front of one, and
+hears the water making a lapping noise under the bows. The gondolier
+is out of sight. Nothing blocks your view of sea and sky, save the
+slender steel ferro at the prow. The gondola is built for leisure: one
+cannot quite imagine it, let us say, in America. It is a historic
+vessel, with a flavour of sentiment and antiquity about it, built by a
+leisured people for idleness, not for business or for hurry. It is
+long and slender, flat-bottomed, and tapers towards each end, where it
+rises considerably above the water. It draws but little water, and has
+much the form of a skate. The felce (cabin), placed somewhat astern,
+is draped with black cloth, which can be removed in the summer-time to
+make room for a striped awning. This, however, the true Venetian
+loathes: rather than use it, I am sure, he would be willing to swelter
+under the felce. On each side of the cabin there is a window, which
+can be closed in three separate ways--by a bevelled Venetian glass let
+down; by a blind with movable blades; by a strip of cloth dropped
+over.
+
+  [Illustration: MIDDAY ON THE LAGOON]
+
+The gondola is made to hold four people. There are morocco cushions on
+either side. As the seats are very low, you are supplied with two
+silken cords with handles, to assist you to rise. As the cabin is too
+small to turn in, one must enter a gondola backwards. The woodwork is
+carved according to the wealth of the owner or the taste of the
+gondolier. Sometimes it is very elaborate. Above the door is generally
+a copper shield on which the coat-of-arms of the owner is engraved,
+surmounted by a crown; on the felce there hangs, in a small frame, an
+image of the Holy Virgin, or of St. Mark, or of St. Theodore, or of
+St. George, or of some saint for whom the gondolier has a special
+devotion. The lantern also hangs here--a custom which, as the gondolas
+sometimes run without the star in front, is gradually dying out. On
+account of the coat-of-arms, the saint, and the lantern, the left is
+the place of honour: there the ladies are placed, or any aged or
+distinguished person. There is in the felce a sliding panel, through
+which one can communicate with the gondolier on emergency. At the prow
+there is a halberd-like piece of iron, smooth and polished, called
+"the ferro," much like the finger-board of a violin. This serves for
+decoration, for defence, for counterpoise to the rower in the stern,
+and to test the height of the bridges. It is the pride of the
+gondolier to keep this always as bright as silver. Often when a crowd
+of gondolas are moored thickly about the landing-stage, the ferro is
+used as a wedge, by the aid of which boats can be divided. The rower
+plies his oar standing on a small platform on the poop, not far behind
+the cabin, and facing the direction in which the gondola is to move.
+
+The skill with which the gondolier manages his graceful craft is
+extraordinary. He stands quite upright on the poop, one foot placed
+firmly in front of him, and throws the weight of his body forward on
+his oar to such an extent that one fears he may follow it into the
+water. It is only by long habit that he can procure the necessary
+balance. The gondola is sensitive to the least impression, and the
+downward stroke has the effect of sending the boat round. It is only
+by turning the blade in the water, and raising it gradually upward,
+that the gondola can be kept straight. The oar rests in a fork,
+beautifully designed to allow free movement. The gondolier, sole
+director of his craft, uses the oar sometimes as a paddle, and
+sometimes as a boathook. He rows always on one side. Under the hands
+of an efficient man, the gondola glides over the water like a living
+thing, turning the corners of canals with great precision.
+
+Sometimes on festa days the gondoliers practise feats, such as setting
+the vessel full-tilt and with all their might against the stone wall
+of a quay, going with such rapidity that you expect man and boat to be
+dashed to pieces. Just at the last moment, with a powerful turn of the
+oar that is interesting to watch, he stops dead at the base of the
+quay, sometimes nearly grazing it. In much the same way, in the At
+Maidan of Constantinople, long ago, Arab and Turkish horsemen charged
+against stone walls and suddenly pulled up.
+
+Very different is the gondola in the hands of an amateur. Many are the
+duckings that ensue. Some of the young patricians, however,
+occasionally don the traditional jacket, cap, and girdle of a
+gondolier, and guide their own craft in a remarkably graceful manner.
+
+Few people have any knowledge of the real meanings of the gondoliers'
+cries, some of which are peculiarly sweet and characteristic. When a
+man wants to pass on the left, and does not intend to use the backward
+stroke, he cries, "Premi!" If, on the other hand, he wishes to pass on
+the right, he cries, "Stali!" Sometimes, if when turning a dangerous
+corner he wishes to be especially emphatic, he cries, "Premi! Premi!"
+and "Stali! ah, Stali!" The gondola can be stopped immediately,
+however great the rate at which it is travelling, by placing the blade
+in front of the fork. If a man is really expert he stops his gondola
+very suddenly, making a great deal of foam with his oar. When stopping
+a gondola thus the gondolier cries, "Sciar!" As you approach the
+landing-stage a crowd of ragamuffins, old and young, called
+"crab-catchers," come forward, holding in their hands staffs, with
+bent nails attached, with which to secure your gondola as you place
+your foot on shore.
+
+The gondolier is a voluble, gossiping person. He loves to have a chat
+at the top of his voice with another of his kind, and to scream
+repartee across the water. He enjoys nothing more than a quarrel,
+especially with a man who is across the canal. Invariably they pass
+from pertinent observations on their personal appearances to
+defamation of their women. If such language were used at close
+quarters on either bank they would come to blows. I once saw two
+gondolas hook on to each other by mistake with their iron axes, and
+I shall never forget the discussion that ensued. It made one's
+blood literally curdle! The men looked like two angry sea-birds
+pecking at each other as they pulled and pulled in their endeavour to
+release themselves. When this had been accomplished they stood
+upright, each on his own poop, brandishing their oars as though they
+longed to kill. As a matter of fact, there is rarely any violence
+among Venetians except in language. "Body of Bacchus!" one shouts.
+"Blood of David!" the adversary answers. These mythological oaths
+being not sufficiently comforting, they continue: "Low crab!"
+"Sea-lion!" "Dog!" "Son of a cow!" "Ass!" "Son of a sow!" "Assassin!"
+"Ruffian!" "Spy!" Having reached the worst taunt in their vocabulary,
+they take to cursing the rival saints. "The Madonna of thy landing is
+a street-walker who is not worth two candles!" one will cry. "Thy
+saint is a rascal who does not know how to make a decent miracle!" the
+other will rejoin. The profanity becomes more terrible as the distance
+between them increases. Possibly next time they meet they will drink a
+glass of wine together without remembering the quarrel.
+
+  [Illustration: A TRAGHETTO]
+
+The gondolier is a more intelligent person than the ordinary hackman.
+He knows all the histories of the different places of interest, and
+relates them for the benefit of foreigners. He has a few words of
+French and English. Of course, he is a rogue by nature, and will cheat
+you on every possible occasion; but that conduct is common to the
+carriers of all countries. And there is something very frank and
+amusing about the way in which they commit their petty thefts. A
+gondolier likes to serve Englishmen or Americans, who pay good prices;
+but a German is beyond his comprehension. The Teuton either goes by
+the tariff or walks--an eminently foolish act, in the gondolier's
+opinion.
+
+Every gondolier belongs to a traghetto (ferry-boat station), from
+which gondolas cross over to Venice from various points on the
+Giudecca. These traghette have been established for centuries--no one
+knows exactly how long; but certainly they were in existence in the
+fourteenth century. To a gondolier a traghetto is, as it were, a club.
+There are sixteen traghette. Each is governed by its own laws and
+constitutions, which are still strictly kept; each has its own
+history, archives, and parchment documents. By this society are
+regulated the gondolier's wages, the limits of his obedience, his
+holidays, everything appertaining to his welfare. There is at each
+traghetto a little house in which the gondoliers can sit and gossip
+and mend their boats.
+
+One sees some of the finest types there. Years ago they used to sing
+there on moonlight nights, in their beautiful broken Venetian patois,
+verses from Tasso. It is long since they have done this as a habit;
+but they will do it sometimes if you pay them sufficiently well. One
+often hears them singing on the lagoon to the accompaniment of an
+Englishman's golden coins. You can almost imagine on such occasions
+that you are living away back in the Middle Ages--except that now the
+Venetians drink a good deal, as they certainly never did then, and
+sing in thick, guttural voices, somewhat hoarse, but on the whole
+beautiful, as the musical Venetian dialect must always be. The songs
+that they sing are all about lovely maidens and romantic excursions on
+the water. The singing is very fine from a distance, the melody of a
+human voice floating out on the calm and silence of the night. The
+gondoliers are proud of their talent, and value it highly.
+
+Nearly every gondolier belongs to a bank. He is a capable financier.
+In company with twenty-nine other men, he deposits 10 lire, and
+pledges to pay a weekly sum of 1 lira throughout the year. On his
+failing to pay up once a week, 10 per cent. on each lira is charged.
+Gondoliers are supposed to borrow a certain amount, for which 10 per
+cent. is charged, every year. The accounts of the bank are settled in
+September, and then a new venture is started.
+
+The gondolier is an inflammable person. He is much taken up with
+pretty women getting in and out of gondolas. Love-making with him
+begins on the bridges in the narrow canals, or at the windows. One
+fine day, generally very early in life, when propelling his boat
+slowly down a side canal, he sees at an iron grated window the face of
+a girl. Instantly becoming enamoured, boldly he takes up his position
+every day underneath her casement, waiting for a look, sighing for a
+smile. If by chance the maiden should appear and return his salute, he
+takes himself off with great joy; and at the end of the day, when his
+work is done, he and a friend in whom he has confided dress themselves
+in their best, and call upon the father of the girl, formally to ask
+her hand. He states his family, his profession, the amount of his
+income, and the extent of his love. Two or three months are allowed to
+elapse. Then there will be more gazing at the window and meeting in
+the calle. If by the end of that time their affection has
+declared itself sincere, the lover and his parents are invited to
+supper at the girl's home. Every stage in a Venetian's love affair is
+marked by feasts, generally suppers. On this occasion the young man
+again asks the father's consent. This is accorded him, and the pair
+are blessed. The ceremony is called the "dimanda." A little later
+comes the betrothal ("segno"), when the lover presents the girl with
+her wedding ring, and, if he can afford it, other rings as well. There
+is a sumptuous supper, and thenceforward they are called respectively
+"novizza" and "spoza." During the time of the betrothal the poor
+gondolier is kept very busy buying and giving presents to the lady of
+his choice. He must give the proper things at the proper times, and
+never by any chance make the mistake of purchasing a comb or scissors,
+for one is an emblem of the witch, and the other signify a cutting
+tongue. He must remember to present to her at Christmas a confitura of
+fruit and raw mustard-seed, and a box of mandolato; on All Souls' Day
+a box of fare; at the Feast of St. Mark a boccolo or button-hole of
+rosebuds; at Easter a fugazza or cake; at Martinmas roast chestnuts.
+The thing for the girl to give in return is a silk handkerchief: it
+is not considered etiquette to present her lover with a gift of great
+value.
+
+  [Illustration: MARIETTA]
+
+In Venice everything is ruled by custom. The most important acts in a
+Venetian's life are bound and fettered by it, and he would never dream
+of breaking through. He will sacrifice anything for custom, and never
+count the cost. For example, if one saw a gondolier at a festa, or at
+a baptism, or at a wedding, you might take him for either a rich man
+or a spendthrift. As a matter of fact, he is neither the one nor the
+other. Only, he is bound by custom to do certain things and spend a
+certain amount of money at a festa, and he does it regally. He may
+have to pinch and scrape at home afterwards; but that is another
+matter.
+
+The gondoliers are a very conservative people. They are the slaves of
+custom. Custom is to them a religion. They much prefer their ancient
+customs to any new order of comfort or convenience. Their lives are
+simple, bright, and easy; their wants are very few and moderate.
+House-rent is cheap: they can procure a fallen palace in moderately
+good repair for half a franc a day. They are frugal and easily
+pleased; their constitutions are sound; their climate is fine, and the
+air they breathe is pure. Consequently, the gondolier can live
+happily, with his wife, on a franc and a half a day. His meals, to be
+sure, are always the same--coffee and bread in the morning, polenta
+and fish at mid-day, a soup of shell-fish or artichokes at night. When
+the family begins to be large, the gondolier's life is not ideal;
+still, in spite of the hunger and poverty and crowding in Venetian
+houses, a great deal of joy manages to find room. If a baby lives, he
+grows up into a fine healthy man, robust and happy; but usually he
+dies, especially if he is one of many. Venetian women seem to have
+naturally not the slightest idea how to bring up a baby. It is only
+after constant habit and practice, and the loss of lives, that a
+mother seems to grasp the first principles of a baby's upbringing.
+Before that she will feed it, at two months old, on black coffee, sour
+apples, and wine; allow it to swallow all kinds of lotions and
+concoctions prepared by the doting old crones of the quarter. As the
+child grows older she lets it wear during winter the clothes which it
+wore in summer. Then she wonders why out of eight children only four
+are living. It is a beautiful sight to see a great gondolier nursing
+his little child. He may be harsh and bullying to his fellows; but he
+treats Baby with the utmost tenderness and gentleness. The child is a
+good deal safer in his arms than in those of the mother.
+
+The chief amusements of the gondolier are to go to the opera or to see
+marionettes, to make up a party and spend the day in the country, to
+compete in a rowing match, and to give a little supper at a wine-shop.
+It is on such days as these that the true freshness and warmth of his
+nature appear, and one sees the gondolier as he is--mirthful, pungent,
+gay.
+
+There are two things about which the gondolier is particular. One is
+his bread, and the other is his wine. One seldom finds good wine in
+Venice. It is only when the red wine arrives fresh from Padua and
+Verona that it is good. Then everyone rushes to the wine-shops; for
+nothing spreads quicker than the reputation of a good wine, and
+everyone clamours for it. Very soon it becomes watery and sour. The
+white wine the gondoliers do not like at all. Of bread there are all
+kinds. One is expected to have a preference for a certain make, and
+there are many different makes. There are the Chioggian bread, the
+"pane Commune," the "pane col agid," and many others.
+
+  [Illustration: BAMBINO]
+
+Men of the gondolier class do not think a great deal of religion. That
+is reserved for women. Church-going is no longer a habit with the men.
+Still, whenever matters of ancient custom step in they invariably do
+their duty--as in events of domestic life, such as confirmations,--and
+the little chapel to the Madonna at each traghetto has always its
+flowers and its few candles placed there by the reverent hands of the
+gondoliers.
+
+Times were good for the gondoliers when Venice was rich and
+prosperous. Nowadays their gains are meagre, and they number hundreds
+where they numbered thousands in the old days. Noblemen kept six or
+seven gondolas, with attendant gondoliers, and, besides paying them an
+ample salary, on festa days allowed them to exact any payment they
+chose.
+
+If you are staying in Venice for any length of time, it is better to
+hire a gondola and gondolier by the month than by the day. One only
+pays five francs a day, and when off duty the youth makes an excellent
+servant in the house. He comes and knocks at your water-gate at a
+certain time every day; also he will wait at table, act as footman,
+take care of the children; in fact, he will do everything one wishes;
+and he pays the proprietor of the gondola, out of his own pocket, one
+franc a day. It is the ambition of every gondolier to serve an
+"Inglese."
+
+They say that Venice is always silent; but I can vouch that it is not
+so. At night, if your lodgings are anywhere near a landing-place, you
+will find that it is very noisy indeed. The gondoliers sleep at their
+posts on the pedestals of the two columns as they sit waiting for a
+job, and they love their repose in the sunshine; but at night they
+become extremely lively, and keep up a perpetual disturbance of
+laughter, shouts, and songs until two o'clock in the morning. They sit
+on the marble steps, or on the ends of their gondolas; or they eat
+shell-fish and drink wine under the light of the lamps in the niches
+of the Madonnas at street corners; vagabonds from their beds in the
+street arise and join them.
+
+One sees on the lagoons gondolas of all kinds, carrying passengers of
+all kinds, and it is sometimes interesting to peep inside as they
+pass. There are official gondolas, with the Italian banner floating at
+their sterns, carrying some cold, stiff functionary in full-dress
+uniform, his breast covered with decorations. Another carries English
+people, phlegmatic tourists, to Chioggia; another, with lowered felce,
+hides lovers who are going to breakfast somewhere on the lagoon; yet
+another, a larger gondola, takes a family to the sea baths at the
+Lido. There is a red craft waiting at the foot of some steps; a red
+bier is brought out of a church by a red cortege,--it is a corpse, to
+be buried in a cemetery on an island on the way to Murano. (When
+anyone dies in Venice a notice is posted up on his house, and on the
+houses round about, stating the age, place of birth, and the illness
+of which he died; also saying that he has received the Sacrament and
+died a good Christian; prayers are asked for his soul.) There are
+gondolas in which are musical instruments of all kinds--violins of
+Cremona, cornets, mandolines, tambourines,--a complete orchestra.
+Quite a large flotilla of gondolas follow in its wake. One has
+fastened to the side a bluish monster splashing and making the water
+foam. That is a dolphin, a marine curiosity which is displayed by the
+proud possessors under all the balconies as they pass, collecting
+money in a hat. In order that it may be seen to advantage, the animal
+is kept half in the water and half out.
+
+If one is at all interested in gondolas--that is to say, in the making
+of them,--nothing could be more fascinating than to spend a few hours
+in a squero (building yard). Any gondolier will be pleased to take
+you there, for he is inordinately proud of his craft. The squeri are
+picturesque; but somehow one always associates them with pitch. The
+place reeks with it. Always in one corner there stands the pitch-pot,
+sending a stream of thick black smoke up into the air. Small boys
+prance around, looking like young imps among the smoke and blaze, and
+wave smearing brushes in their hands. Long lines of boats, like some
+strange fish out of water, are drawn up, waiting to be cleaned or
+mended. The bottom of a gondola has to be dried thoroughly and quickly
+before receiving its coat of melted tallow. This is done by lighting a
+blazing fire of reeds under the boat, the flames leaping high into the
+air. Volumes of smoke arise, roll up over the house-tops, and are
+swept away by the breeze. Boys dance a kind of war-dance round the
+flames. The art of gondola-building is exacting. Three qualities are
+absolutely necessary to the formation of a perfect craft. It must draw
+but little water; it must turn easily; and it must be rowable by one
+oarsman only. To secure this, the hull is built of light thin boards,
+and only a portion of the flat bottom rests upon the water. Thus the
+boat swings as on a pivot. Then, the gondola is not equally divided by
+a line drawn from stern to bow: in order that the rower may be
+balanced, there is more bottom on one side than on the other. The
+various woods of which a gondola is made must be chosen with great
+care. They must be well seasoned and without knots, for the planks are
+liable to warp and the knots to start. Once every twenty days in
+summer the gondolier forfeits his four lire and takes his gondola to
+the squero to be cleaned and scraped. Weeds rapidly collect at the
+bottom when the water is warm, and the deadly toredo bores holes
+through the planking. The gondola is hauled up high and dry, and a
+fire burnt underneath it. A whole day's earnings in the summer season
+is a great loss to the gondolier; but if he keeps his gondola in good
+condition it will last him for a considerable time, perhaps for five
+years, and, besides, when the bottom of the boat is kept clear of
+weeds and well greased the speed is greater. When a gondolier sells
+his craft it becomes a ferry-boat for five years, the woodwork slowly
+bowing and bending until it becomes a gobbo half buried in the water.
+Later it is sold for five lire, broken up, and burnt in the glass
+manufactories of Murano.
+
+  [Illustration: A SQUERO OR BOAT-BUILDING YARD IN VENICE]
+
+The natural history of these objects and their gradual development
+through centuries would form a fascinating chapter. To gain some idea
+of what the gondola once was, it is as well to study the pictures of
+Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio in the Academy. There you will see
+Venetian nobles in their gondolas with their light Eastern rugs. The
+ferro was not then hatchet-shaped, with six teeth, as it is now, but a
+round club of metal. The rower was tall and graceful, standing on the
+poop in his parti-coloured hose and slashed doublet. One can see by
+these pictures what a great change the gondola has undergone. Those
+who have not been to Venice, and wish to know something of a gondola
+in its later stage, would do well to study the pictures of Guardi and
+Canaletto. Therein the gondola has not its old brilliant colouring;
+but what it has lost in colour it has gained in grace.
+
+Some of the gondoliers are most skilful in managing without either
+keel or rudder; like the Vikings of old, steering with an oar behind.
+A good man is devotedly attached to his gondola. He knows its
+character and peculiarities. To the initiated every gondola differs in
+a hundred details from its fellow, although they may all have
+apparently been built on the same model. A gondolier's skill in rowing
+depends largely upon his knowledge of his craft. One can generally
+gauge the efficiency of a man by the brightness of his ferro. The
+slightest spot of dew or rain upon it produces a spot of rust which
+takes weeks of constant rubbing to efface. There is a good deal of
+brass-work which has to be kept clean; the cushions must be brushed,
+and the paint scrubbed; and altogether a gondolier spends quite an
+hour and a half a day on the toilet of his craft, polishing, oiling,
+and scrubbing. His own person does not occupy nearly so much of his
+attention.
+
+  [Illustration: UNDER THE MIDDAY SUN]
+
+The gondola is so closely connected with the life of the sea city that
+most of one's impressions of Venice are wound round and about it. It
+is not always safe out on the lagoon in a gondola. Often in summer or
+in autumn a gale will suddenly arise. Great masses of cloud will
+gather in the east, and gain upon you; they are curved into an arc by
+the pressure of the wind from behind, although upon the water there is
+scarcely enough breeze to fill a sail. These great billowy battalions,
+dark and angry, advance slowly, steadily; the water changes from a
+pale transparent to a pale sea-green as thick as jade. A feeling of
+oppression fills the air, a brooding stillness, for five minutes,
+while the storm-clouds gradually overtake you. Then comes a low
+humming noise like that of a threshing machine: it is the wind on the
+nearest island. You down sail and make for the first port in view. The
+hurricane leaps out from the city, striking the water and tearing it
+into foam, flinging the spray high in air. There is hurry and
+confusion in the sky; the thundery clouds are rent and riven; and
+through the gaps of dull-coloured vapour you see the steely blue of
+the storm-clouds boiling as in a cauldron; and far above all is blue
+sky and sunlight; a rainbow spans the lagoon. Then the whole tornado
+sweeps away south-westward. The sun sets, leaving the sky dark, but
+with flaming streamers; then night falls over all. There is lightning
+and storm away in the distance. The heavens assume their customary
+deep blue, and the breeze is fresh and cool. These summer storms are
+sometimes almost tropical in their fury; but they are quickly over.
+Their path is narrow--usually confined to one line on the lagoon;--but
+where they strike they leave devastation in their track.
+
+The Venetians love festas, and in the days of the city's wealth and
+pride the State lavished great sums and much care upon its
+entertainments. Certainly the natural capacities of the city gave
+splendid scope for great spectacles. It was a magnificent background,
+and seemed to invite display. The pictures of Bellini, Carpaccio,
+Veronese, and all the rest of the old Venetian masters, prove how
+deeply the people must have loved the pageants and State processions.
+With the collapse of the State these customs fell into disuse. For
+example, there was that wonderful old sport--how picturesque it must
+have been!--the battle on the bridge between the Nicolotti and the
+Castellani, rival factions of black and red. There also was the
+regatta (I am not sure if it continues)--a great spectacle that could
+not be surpassed by any in Europe. A race was rowed in light gondolas,
+smaller than those of ordinary use. The Grand Canal was crowded with
+boats of all sizes--sandolas, barche, barchette, tipos, cavaline,
+vigieri, bissoni,--there is no end to the variety of Venetian craft.
+The façades of the palaces fluttered with flags, tapestries, carpets,
+and curtains,--anything that would add to the general mass of colour.
+The balconies were filled with people; every window had its bevy of
+heads. Down below on the water the scene was brilliant. The course was
+kept by large twelve-oared boats, all decorated symbolically. One
+represented the Arctic regions, the rowers being dressed as polar
+bears, with blocks of ice for seats; another the tropical regions,
+with palms and gorgeous flowers. In the evening there was a serenade,
+starting from a point above the Rialto. The singers and the orchestra
+were placed on a barge decorated and lighted by many coloured lamps,
+and the music of Donizetti's "A te, o cara" filled the air. The object
+of every gondolier on an occasion of this kind was to get his padrone
+as near to the music as possible, whether he wanted it or not. The
+singers' barge, therefore, was surrounded by a solid mass of gondolas,
+which floated slowly down the canal together, getting denser as the
+canal narrowed to pass under the Rialto bridge. It was a fantastic
+scene--with the masses of Bengal lights, the rising moon, the gondolas
+swaying gently to the rhythm of the song and the sea, and the
+statuesque gondoliers, creatures of the sea, standing upright on the
+stern of their vessels, or, oars in hand and hair blown by the breeze,
+silhouetted against a background of deep-blue sky.
+
+  [Illustration: THE RIALTO]
+
+The gondolier in Venice is an important person to the stranger. Half
+one's comfort depends on his worthiness or unworthiness. He is like
+the girl of childhood's fame "who, if she was good, was very very
+good, but, if she was bad, was horrid." If you are the employer
+of an ideal gondolier you will find him thorough, ready-handed, and
+versatile. In passing rapidly through Venice one does not properly
+appreciate his worth. You must own him for some months before you
+discover that he will attach himself to you and identify himself with
+your interests in an almost feudal manner. He will save you an
+infinity of trouble, and repay your confidence with honesty. The
+gondolier usually prefers to have a foreigner for a master. The
+foreigner pays well, never grumbling at the full tariff of five lire a
+day: also, as the foreigner does not know the language or the place,
+the gondolier becomes of some importance in the eyes of his
+neighbours, who bid for his patronage. With a Venetian master he would
+be paid from three to five lire a day; the work would be harder, and
+the hours later.
+
+When the squerariola (gondola builders) have finished their work, the
+vessel will probably have cost three hundred lire. Even then the craft
+is not by any means complete. There are the steel ornaments and many
+other details to be bought and bargained for,--things not procurable
+at the squero. For the steel prow (ferro), which must have the edges
+of its teeth in one straight line, and in these days of hurried
+workmanship is not always to be found, one must seek in all the
+smithies in Venice. A good gondolier, however, will often possess a
+ferro, an heirloom, made of hand-wrought iron, not cast in mould,
+heavy and brittle, as are the new ferri, but light and pliant. A ferro
+of the good and ancient make, if properly cared for and not allowed to
+rust, will outlive many a gondola. For the sea-horses, the rude
+carvings, the pictured Madonnas, the rugs and the covering for the
+felce,--all, in fact, that helps to make the gondola the picturesque
+craft it is,--one must go to the various shops in Venice.
+
+Modern progress and modern ideas are rapidly sweeping away the ancient
+and hereditary profession of the gondolier. One feels that his life
+and that of the traghetto are drawing to a close--that soon they will
+be things of the past. What would the Grand Canal be like without its
+swiftly gliding gondola, black-hulled, black-roofed,--its most
+characteristic feature? What a terrible thing it will be when that
+exquisite art is forgotten,--when the Venetian can no longer judge the
+turn of a corner or balance himself on the poop,--when for the
+picturesque cries "Stali!" and "Premi!" will be substituted the clank
+and thud of the steamers' screws! When a company first began to run
+steamers from Venice to the railway station and public gardens, the
+gondoliers struck. For three whole days there were no gondolas running
+in Venice; the canals were full of tightly packed vessels, while their
+owners hung together in groups at the wine-shops, talking. A strange
+and scratch fleet of nondescript boats plied between Venice and the
+islands, and the expression of the gondoliers, as they leaned over the
+bridges and watched the amateur watermen struggling with their oars,
+was quite unique. On the second day a notice was posted up in every
+traghetto begging the men to return to their work, and not to bring
+dishonour on a profession which had always been such a source of pride
+to Venice. This had no effect. The gondoliers merely enlisted the
+services of a barrister, getting him to take a copy of their demand to
+the Company--that the offending steamers should be removed. That was
+impossible. The steamers were cheap and useful, and the gondoliers
+could not be allowed to dictate to the State. However, they were told
+that if they returned peaceably to their work something might be done
+for them. They persisted in their strike, until suddenly--no one ever
+knew why, or whence it came--a single gondola started running from
+one of the ferries. That broke the ice. The gondoliers rushed to their
+crafts and untied them. The strike was forgotten. The men's first
+thought was to find good custom. I have always felt that there was
+something touching in this hopeless struggle of the gondoliers against
+the modernity that is fast settling on and demoralising Venice.
+
+
+
+
+     PRINTED BY
+     NEILL AND COMPANY, LIMITED,
+     EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Venice, by Dorothy Menpes
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42998 ***