University of Virginia Library

32. LETTER XXXII.

We stepped into the gondola to-night as the shadows
of the moon began to be perceptible, with orders
to Giuseppe to take us where he would. Abroad in a
summer's moonlight in Venice, is a line that might never
be written but as the scene of a play. You can not
miss pleasure. If it were only the tracking silently
and swiftly the bosom of the broader canals, lying
asleep like streets of molten silver between the marble
palaces, or shooting into the dark shadows of the narrower,
with the black spirit-like gondolas gliding past,
or lying in the shelter of a low and not unoccupied
balcony; or did you but loiter on in search of music,
lying unperceived beneath the windows of a palace,
and listening, half asleep, to the sound of the guitar
and the song of the invisible player within; this, with
the strange beauty of every building about you, and
the loveliness of the magic lights and shadows, were
enough to make a night of pleasure, even were no
charm of personal adventure to be added to the enumeration.

We glided along under the Rialto, talking of Belvidera,
and Othello, and Shylock, and, entering a cross
canal, cut the arched shadow of the bridge of sighs,
hanging like a cobweb in the air, and shot in a moment
forth to the full, ample, moonlit bosom of the
Gindecca. This is the canal that makes the harbor
and washes the stairs of San Marc. The Lido lay
off at a mile's distance across the water, and, with the
moon riding over it, the bay between as still as the sky
above, and brighter, it looked like a long cloud pencilled
like a landscape in the heavens. To the right lay
the Armenian island, which Lord Byron visited so often,
to study with the fathers at the convent; and, a
little nearer the island of the Insane — spite of its misery,
asleep, with a most heavenly calmness on the sea.
You remember the touching story of the crazed girl,
who was sent here with a broken heart, described as
putting her hand through the grating at the dash of
every passing gondola, with her unvarying and affecting
“Venite per me? Venite per me?”

At a corner of the harbor, some three quarters of a
mile from San Marc, lies an island once occupied by
a convent. Napoleon raised the buildings, and connecting
it with the town by a new, handsome street
and a bridge, laid out the ground as a public garden.
We debarked at the stairs, and passed an hour in strolling
through shaded walks, filled with the gay Venetians,
who come to enjoy here what they find nowhere
else, the smell of grass and green leaves. There is a
pavilion upon an artificial hill in the centre, where the
best lemonades and ices of Venice are to be found;
and it was surrounded to-night by merry groups, amusing
themselves with all the heart-cheering gayety of
this delightful people. The very sight of them is an
antidote to sadness.

In returning to San Marc a large gondola crossed
us, filled with ladies and gentlemen, and followed by
another with a band of music. This is a common
mode of making a party on the canals, and a more
agreeable one never was imagined. We ordered the
gondolier to follow at a certain distance, and spent an
hour or two just keeping within the softened sound of
the instruments. How romantic are the veriest everyday
occurrences of this enchanting city.

We have strolled to-day through most of the narrow
streets between the Rialto and the San Marc.
They are, more properly, alleys. You wind through
them at sharp angles, turning constantly, from the interruption
of the canals, and crossing the small bridges
at every twenty yards. They are dark and cool; and
no hoof of any description ever passing through them,
the marble flags are always smooth and clean; and
with the singular silence, only broken by the shuffling
of feet, they are pleasant places to loiter in at noon-day,
when the canals are sunny.

We spent a half hour on the Rialto. This is the
only bridge across the grand canal, and connects the
two main parts of the city. It is, as you see by engravings,
a noble span of a single arch, built of pure
white marble. You pass it, ascending the arch by a
long flight of steps to the apex, and descending again
to the opposite side. It is very broad, the centre
forming a street, with shops on each side, with alleys
outside these, next the parapet, usually occupied by
idlers or merchants, probably very much as in the
time of Shylock. Here are exposed the cases of
shell-work and jewelry for which Venice is famous.
The variety and cheapness of these articles are surprising.
The Rialto has always been to me, as it is probably
to most others, quite the core of romantic locality.
I stopped on the upper stair of the arch, and
passed my hand across my eyes to recall my idea of it,
and realize that I was there. One is disappointed,
spite of all the common sense in the world, not to
meet Shylock and Antonio and Pierre.

says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling
everywhere in these romantic countries. You can
not separate them from the characters with which poetry
or history once peopled them.

At sunset we mounted into the tower of San Marc
to get a general view of the city. The gold-dust atmosphere,

so common in Italy at this hour, was all
over the broad lagunes and the far stretching city;
and she lay beneath us, in the midst of a sea of light,
an island far out into the ocean, crowned with towers
and churches, and heaped up with all the splendors of
architecture. The Friuli mountains rose in the north
with the deep blue dies of distance, breaking up the
else level horizon; the shore of Italy lay like a low
line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta
empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sunset.
About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of
the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down
the Gindecca, and away off in the lagunes were sprinkled
the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in
one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with
its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay
the wide Adriatic. The floor of San Mare's vast
square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored marbles
with promenaders, its cafés swarmed by the sitters
outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of
my pleasantest hours in Venice was passed here.