From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn Part 12

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

VENICE, Sept 18th.

It was with real regret that we left Lake Como, where we had pa.s.sed ten very quiet but very happy days. But all things pleasant must have an end, and so on Monday morning we departed. Steamers ply up and down the lake, but as none left at an hour early enough to connect with a train that reached Venice the same evening, we took a boat and were rowed to Lecco. It was a three hours' pull for two strong men; but as we left at half-past seven, the eastern mountains protected us from the heat of the sun, and we glided swiftly along in their cool shadows. Not a breath of air ruffled the bosom of the lake. Everything in this parting view conspired to make us regret a scene of which we were taking a long, perhaps a last, farewell.

At Lecco we came back to railroads, which we had not seen since the morning we left Munich for Ober-Ammergau, more than two weeks before, and were soon flying over a cultivated country, where orchards of mulberry trees (close-trimmed, so as to yield a second crop of leaves the same season) gave promise of the rich silks of Lombardy, and vines covered all the terraced slopes of the hills.

In the carriage with us was a good old priest, who was attached to St.

Mark's in Venice, with whom we fell in conversation, and who gave us much information about the picturesque country through which we were pa.s.sing. Here, where the land is smiling so peacefully, among these very hills, "rich with corn and wine," was fought the great battle in which Venice defeated Frederick Barbarossa, and thus saved the cause of Italian independence.

At Bergamo we struck the line from Milan to Venice, and while waiting an hour for the express train, sauntered off with the old priest into the town, which was just then alive with the excitement of its annual fair. The peasants had come in from all the country round--men and women, boys and girls--to enjoy a holiday, bringing whatever they had to sell, and seeking whatever they had to buy. One might imagine that he was in an old-fashioned "cattle show" at home. Farmers had brought young colts which they had raised for the market, and some of the brawny fellows, with broad-brimmed hats, answered to the drovers one may see in Kansas, who have driven the immense herds of cattle from Texas. In another part of the grounds were exposed for sale the delicate fabrics and rich colors which tempt the eye of woman: silks and scarfs and shawls, with many of the s.e.x, young and old, looking on with eager eyes. And there were sports for the children. A merry-go-round picked up its load of little creatures, who, mounted on wooden horses, were whirled about to their infinite delight at a penny apiece--a great deal of happiness for a very little money. And there were all sorts of shows going on--little enclosures, where something wonderful was to be seen, the presence of which was announced by the beating of a drum; and a big tent with a circus, which from the English names of the performers may have been a strolling company from the British Islands, or possibly from America! It would be strange indeed, if a troupe of Yankee riders and jumpers had come all the way to Italy, to make the country folk stare at their surprising feats.

And there was a menagerie, which one did not need to enter: for the wild beasts painted on the outside of the canvas, were no doubt much more ferocious and terrible to behold than the subdued and lamb-like creatures within. Is not a Country Fair the same thing all over the world?

At length the train came rushing up, and stopping but a moment for pa.s.sengers, dashed off like a race-horse over the great plain of Lombardy. But we must not go so fast as to overlook this historic ground. Suddenly, like a sheet of silver, unrolls before us the broad surface of the Lago di Garda, the greatest of the Italian lakes, stretching far into the plain, but with its head resting against the background of the Tyrolean Alps. What memories gather about these places from the old Roman days! In yonder peninsula in the lake, Catullus wrote his poems; in Mantua, a few miles to the south, Virgil was born; while in Verona an amphitheatre remains in excellent preservation, which is second only to the Coliseum. In events of more recent date this region is full of interest. We are now in the heart of the famous Quadrilateral, the Four great Fortresses, built to overawe as well as defend Upper Italy. All this ground was fought over by the first Napoleon in his Italian campaigns; while near at hand is the field of Solferino, where under Napoleon III. a French army, with that of Victor Emmanuel, finally conquered the independence of Italy.

More peaceful memories linger about Padua, whose University, that is over six hundred years old, was long one of the chief seats of learning in Europe, within whose walls Galileo studied; and Ta.s.so and Ariosto and Petrarch; and the reformer and martyr Savonarola.

But all these places sink in interest, as just at evening we reach the end of the main land, and pa.s.sing over the long causeway which crosses the Lagune, find ourselves in VENICE. It seems very prosaic to enter Venice by a railroad, but the prose ceases and the poetry begins the instant we emerge from the station, for the marble steps descend to the water, and instead of stepping into a carriage we step into a gondola; and as we move off we leave behind the firm ground of ordinary experience, and our imagination, like our persons, is afloat.

Everything is strange and unreal. We are in a great city, and yet we cannot put our feet to the ground. There is no sound of carriages rattling over the stony streets, for there is not a horse in Venice.

We cannot realize where and what we are. The impression is greatly heightened in arriving at night, for the ca.n.a.ls are but dimly lighted, and darkness adds to the mystery of this city of silence. Now and then we see a light in a window, and somebody leans from a balcony; and we hear the plashing of oars as a gondola shoots by; but these occasional signs of life only deepen the impression of loneliness, till it seems as if we were in a world of ghosts--nay, to be ghosts ourselves--and to be gliding through misty shapes and shadows; as if we had touched the black waters of Death, and the silent Oarsman himself were guiding our boat to his gloomy realm. Thus sunk in reverie, we floated along the watery streets, past the Rialto, and under the Bridge of Sighs, to the Hotel Danieli on the Grand Ca.n.a.l, just behind the Palace of the Doges.

When the morning broke, and we could see things about us in plain daylight, we set ourselves, like dutiful travellers, to see the sights, and now in a busy week have come to know something of Venice; to feel that it is not familiar _ground_, but familiar _water_, familiar ca.n.a.ls and bridges, and churches and palaces. We have been up on the Campanile, and looked down upon the city, as it lies spread out like a map under our eye, with all its islands and its waters; and we have sailed around it and through it, going down to the Lido, and looking off upon the Adriatic; and then coursing about the Lagune, and up and down the Grand Ca.n.a.l and the Giudecca, and through many of the smaller ca.n.a.ls, which intersect the city in every direction. We have visited the church of St. Mark, rich with its colored marbles and mosaics, and richer still in its historic memories; and the Palace where the Doges reigned, and the church where they are buried, the Westminster Abbey of Venice, where the rulers of many generations lie together in their royal house of death; we have visited the Picture Galleries, and seen the paintings of t.i.tian and the statues of Canova, and then looked on the marble tombs in the church of the Frati, where sleep these two masters of different centuries. Thus we have tried to weave together the artistic, the architectural, and the historical glories of this wonderful city.

There is no city in Europe about which there is so much of romance as Venice, and of _real_ romance (if that be not a contradiction), that is, of romance founded on reality, for indeed the reality is stranger than fiction. Its very aspect dazzles the eye, as the traveller approaches from the east, and sees the morning sun reflected from its domes and towers. And how like an apparition it seems, when he reflects that all that glittering splendor rests on the unsubstantial sea. It is a jewel set in water, or rather it seems to rise, like a gigantic sea-flower, out of the waves, and to spread a kind of tropical bloom over the far-shining expanse around it.

And then its history is as strange and marvellous as any tale of the Arabian Nights. It is the wildest romance turned into reality. Venice is the oldest State in Europe. The proudest modern empires are but of yesterday compared with it. When Britain was a howling wilderness, when London and Paris were insignificant towns, the Queen of the Adriatic was in the height of its glory. Macaulay says the Republic of Venice came next in antiquity to the Church of Rome. Thus he places it before all the kingdoms of Europe, being antedated only by that h.o.a.ry Ecclesiastical Dominion, which (as he writes so eloquently in his celebrated review of Ranke's History of the Popes) began to live before all the nations, and may endure till that famous New Zealander "shall take his stand, in the midst of a vast solitude, on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the nuns of St. Paul's."

And this history, dating so far back, is connected with monuments still standing, which recall it vividly to the modern traveller. The church of St. Mark is a whole volume in itself. It is one of the oldest churches in the world, boasting of having under its altar the very bones of St. Mark, and behind it alabaster columns from the Temple of Solomon, while over its ancient portal the four bronze horses still stand proudly erect, which date at least from the time of Nero, and are perhaps the work of a Grecian sculptor who lived before the birth of Christ. And the Palace of the Doges--is it not a history of centuries written in stone? What grand spectacles it has witnessed in the days of Venetian splendor! What pomp and glory have been gathered within its walls! And what deliberations have been carried on in its council chambers; what deeds of patriotism have been there conceived, and also what conspiracies and what crimes! And the Prison behind it, with the Bridge of Sighs leading to it, does not every stone in that gloomy pile seem to have a history written in blood and tears?

But the part of Venice in European history was not only a leading one for more than a thousand years, but a n.o.ble one; it took the foremost place in European civilization, which it preserved after the barbarians had overrun the Roman Empire. The Middle Ages would have been Dark Ages indeed, but for the light thrown into them by the Italian Republics. It was after the Roman empire had fallen under the battle-axes of the German barbarians that the ancient Veneti took refuge on these low-lying islands, finding a defence in the surrounding waters, and here began to build a city in the sea. Its position at the head of the Adriatic was favorable for commerce, and it soon drew to itself the rich trade of the East. It sent out its ships to all parts of the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And so, century after century, it grew in power and splendor, till it was the greatest maritime city in the world. It was the lord of the waves, and in sign of its supremacy, it was _married to the sea_ with great pomp and magnificence. In the a.r.s.enal is shown the model of the Bucentaur, that gilded barge in which the Doge and the Senate were every year carried down the harbor, and dropping a ring of gold and gems (large as one of those huge doorknockers that in former days gave dignity to the portals of great mansions) into the waves, signified the marriage of Venice to the sea.[3] It was the contrast of this display of power and dominion with the later decline of Venetian commerce, that suggested the melancholy line,

"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord."

But then Venice was as much mistress of the sea as England is to-day.

She sat at the gates of the Orient, and

"The gorgeous East with richest hand Showered upon her barbaric pearl and gold."

Then arose on all her islands and her waters those structures which are to this day the wonder of Europe. The Grand Ca.n.a.l, which is nearly two miles long, is lined with palaces, such as no modern capital can approach in costliness and splendor.

And Venice used her power for a defence to Christendom and to civilization, the former against the Turks, and the latter against Northern barbarians. When Frederick Barbarossa came down with his hordes upon Italy, he found his most stubborn enemy in the Republic of Venice, which kept up the contest for more than twenty years, till the fierce old Emperor acknowledged a power that was invincible, and here in Venice, in the church of St. Mark, knelt before the Pope Alexander III. (who represented, not Rome against Protestantism, but Italian independence against German oppression), and gave his humble submission, and made peace with the States of Italy which, thanks to the heroic resistance of Venice, he could not conquer.

Hardly was this long contest ended before the power of Venice was turned against the Turks in the East. Venetians, aided by French crusaders, and led by a warrior whose courage neither age nor blindness could restrain ("Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!"), captured Constantinople, and Venetian ships sailing up and down the Bosphorus kept the conquerors of Western Asia from crossing into Europe. The Turks finally pa.s.sed the straits and took Constantinople; but the struggle of the Cross and the Crescent, as in Spain between the Spaniard and the Moor, was kept up over a hundred years longer, and was not ended till the battle of Lepanto in 1571. In the a.r.s.enal they still preserve the flag of the Turkish admiral captured on that great day, with its motto in Arabic, "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Mohammed is his prophet." We can hardly realize, now that the danger is so long past, how great a victory, both for Christendom and for civilization, was won on that day when the scattered wrecks of the Turkish Armada sank in the blood-dyed waters of the Gulf of Corinth.

These are glorious memories for Venice, which fully justify the praises of historians, and make the splendid eulogy of Byron as true to history as it is beautiful in poetry. In Venice, as on the Rhine, I have found Childe Harold the best guide-book, as the poet paints a picture in a few immortal lines. Never was Venice painted, even by Ca.n.a.letto, more to the eye than in these few strokes, which bring the whole scene before us:

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand, I saw from out the waves her structures rise, As by the stroke of the enchanter's wand, A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying glory smiles O'er the far times when many a subject land Looked to the winged lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

But poets are apt to look at things _only_ in a poetical light, and to admire and to celebrate, or to mourn, according to their own royal fancies, rather than according to the sober prose of history. The picture of the magnificence of Venice is true to the letter, for indeed no language can surpa.s.s the splendid reality. But when the poet goes farther and laments the loss of its independence, as if it were a loss to liberty and to the world, the honest student of history will differ from him. That he should mourn its subjection, or that of any part of Italy, to a foreign power, whether Austria or France, we can well understand. And this was perhaps his only real sorrow--a manly and patriotic grief--but at times he seems to go farther, and to regret the old gorgeous mediaeval state. Here we cannot follow him.

Poetry is well, and romance is well, but truth is better; and the truth, as history records it, must be confessed, that Venice, though in name a republic, was as great a despotism as any in the Middle Ages. The people had no power whatever. It was all in the hands of the n.o.bles, some five hundred of whom composed the Senate, and elected the famous Council of Ten, by which, with the Senate, was chosen the Council of Three, who were the real masters of Venice. The Doge, who was generally an old man, was a mere puppet in their hands, a venerable figure-head of the State, to hide what was done by younger and more resolute wills. The Council of Three were the real Dictators of the Republic, and the Tribunal of the Inquisition itself was not more mysterious or more terrible. By some secret mode of election the names of those who composed this council were not known even to their a.s.sociates in the Senate or in the Council of Ten. They were a secret and therefore wholly irresponsible tribunal. Their names were concealed, so that they could act in the dark, and at their will strike down the loftiest head. Once indeed their vengeance struck the Doge himself. I have had in my hands the very sword which cut off the head of Marino Faliero more than five hundred years ago. It is a tremendous weapon, and took both hands to lift it, and must have fallen upon that princely neck like an axe upon the block. But commonly their power fell on meaner victims. The whole system of government was one of terror, kept up by a secret espionage which penetrated every man's household, and struck mortal fear into every heart. The government invited accusations. The "lion's mouth"--an aperture in the palace of the Doges--was always open, and if a charge against one was thrown into it, instantly he was arrested and brought before this secret tribunal, by which he might be tried, condemned, sentenced, and executed, without his family knowing what had become of him, with only horrible suspicions to account for his mysterious disappearance.

In going through the Palace of the Doges one is struck with the gorgeousness of the old Venetian State. All that is magnificent in architecture; and all that is splendid in decoration, carving, and gilding, spread with lavish hand over walls and doors and ceiling; with every open s.p.a.ce or panel illumined by paintings by t.i.tian or some other of the old Venetian masters--are combined to render this more than a "royal house," since it is richer than the palaces of kings.

But before any young enthusiast allows his imagination to run away with him, let him explore this Palace of the Doges a little farther.

Let him go into the Hall of the Council of Three, and observe how it connects conveniently by a little stair with the Hall of Torture, where innocent persons could soon be persuaded to accuse themselves of deadly crimes; and how it opens into a narrow pa.s.sage, through which the condemned pa.s.sed to swift execution. Then let him go down into the dungeons, worse than death, where the accused were buried in a living tomb. Byron himself, in a note to Childe Harold, has given the best answer to his own lamentation over the fall of the Republic of Venice.[4]

We shall therefore waste no tears over the fall of the old Republic of Venice, even though it had existed for thirteen hundred years. In its day it had acted a great part in European history, and had often served the cause of progress, when it preserved Christendom from the Turks, and civilization from the Barbarians. But it had accomplished its end, and its time had come to die; and though the poet so musically mourns that

In Venice Ta.s.so's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier,

yet in the changes which have come, we cannot but recognize the pa.s.sing away of an old state of things, to be succeeded by a better.

Even the spirit of Byron would be satisfied, could he open his eyes _now_, and see Venice rid at last of a foreign yoke, and restored to her rightful place, as a part of free and united Italy.

Though Venice is a city which does not change in its external appearance, and looks just as it did when I was here seventeen years ago, I observe _one_ difference; the flag that is flying from all the public buildings is not the same. Then the black eagles of Austria hovered over the Square of St. Mark; and as we sat there in the summer evening, Austrian officers were around us, in front of the cafes, and the music was by an Austrian band. Now there is music still, and on summer nights the old Piazza is thronged as ever; but I hear another language in the groups--the hated foreigner, with his bayonets, is not here. The change is every way for the better. The people breathe freely, and political and national life revives in the air of liberty.

Venice is beginning to have also a return of its commercial prosperity. Of course it can never again be the mistress of the sea, as other great commercial states have sprung up beyond the Mediterranean. The glory of Venice culminated about the year 1500.

Eight years before that date, an Italian sailor--though not a Venetian, but a Genoese--had discovered, lying beyond the western main, a New World. In less than four centuries, the commerce which had flourished on the Adriatic was to pa.s.s to England, and that other English Empire still more remote. Venice can never regain her former supremacy. Civilization has pa.s.sed, and left her standing in the sea.

But though she can never again take the lead of other nations, she may still have a happy and a prosperous future. There is the commerce of the Mediterranean, for which, as before, she holds a commanding position at the head of the Adriatic. For some days has been lying in the Grand Ca.n.a.l, in front of our hotel, a large steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, the Delhi, and on Friday she sailed for Alexandria and Bombay! The transference of these ships to Venice as a point of departure, will help its commerce with the East and with India.

One thing we may be allowed to hope, as a friend of Venice and of Italy--that its policy will be one of peace. In the a.r.s.enal we found models of ironclads and other ships of war, built or building; but I confess I felt rather glad to hear the naval officer who showed them to us confess (though he did it with a tone of regret) that their navy was not large compared with other European navies, and that the Government was not doing _much_ to increase it, though it is building dry docks here in Venice, and occasionally adds a ship to the fleet.

Yet what does Italy want of a great navy? or a great army? They eat up the substance of the country; and it has no money to waste on needless armaments. Besides, Italy has no enemy to fear, for both France and Germany are friendly; to France she owes the deliverance of Lombardy, and to Germany that of Venice. And even Austria is reconciled. Last April the Emperor made a visit to Venice, and was received by Victor Emmanuel, and was rowed up the Grand Ca.n.a.l with a state which recalled the pomp of her ancient days of glory.

The future therefore of Venice and of Italy is not in war, but in peace. Venice has had enough of war in former centuries--enough of conflicts on land and sea. She can now afford to live on this rich inheritance of glory. Let her cherish the memory of the heroic days of old, but let her not tempt fortune by venturing again into the smoke of battle. Let her keep in her a.r.s.enal the captured flags taken from the Turks at Lepanto; let the three tall masts of cedar, erected in the Square of St. Mark three hundred and seventy years ago, to commemorate the conquest of Cyprus, Candia, and Morea, still stand as historical mementoes of the past; but it is no sacrifice of pride that they no longer bear the banners of conquered provinces, since from their lofty and graceful heads now floats a far prouder ensign--the flag of one undivided Italy.

If I were to choose an emblem of what the future of this country should be, I would that the arms of Venice might be henceforth, not the _winged lion_ of St. Mark, but the _doves_ of St. Mark: for these equally belong to Venice, and form not only one of its prettiest sights, but one connected with historical a.s.sociations, that make them fit emblems both of peace and of victory. The story is that at the siege of Candia, in the beginning of the Thirteenth century, Admiral Dandolo had intelligence brought to him by carrier-pigeons which helped him to take the island, and that he used the same swift-winged heralds to send the news to Venice. And so from that day to this they have been protected, and thus they have been the pets of Venice for six hundred years. They seem perfectly at home, and build their nests on the roofs and under the eaves of the houses, even on the Doge's Palace and the Church of St. Mark. Not the swallow, but the dove hath found a nest for herself on the house of the Lord. I see them nestling together on the Bridge of Sighs, thinking not of all the broken hearts that have pa.s.sed along that gloomy arch. A favorite perch at evening is the heavy cross-bars of the prison windows; there they sleep peacefully, where lonely captives have looked up to the dim light, and sighed in vain for liberty. From all these nooks and corners they flock into the great square in the day-time, and walk about quite undisturbed. It has been one of our pleasures to go there with bread in our pockets, to feed them. At the first sign of the scattered crumbs, they come fluttering down from the buildings around, running over each other in their eagerness, coming up to my feet, and eating out of my hand. Let these beautiful creatures--the emblems of peace and the messengers of victory--be wrought as an armorial bearing on the flag of the new Italy--white doves on a blue ground, as if flying over the sea--their outspread wings the fit emblems of those sails of commerce, which, we trust, are again to go forth from Venice and from Genoa, not only to all parts of the Mediterranean, but to the most distant sh.o.r.es!

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Lest any of my saving countrymen should think this a sacrifice of precious jewels, it should be added that the cunning old Venetians, with a prudent economy worthy of a Yankee housekeeper, instead of wasting their treasures on the sea, dropped the glittering bauble into a net carefully spread for the purpose, in which it was fished up, to be used in the ceremonies of successive years.

[4] The note is on the opening lines of the fourth Canto:

"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand,"

--in explanation of which the poet says:

"The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a pa.s.sage and a cell. The State dungeons, called 'pozzi,' or wells, were sunk into the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment or cell upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the pa.s.sage is still open, and is still known as the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the pa.s.sages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductor tells you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years."

CHAPTER XX.

MILAN AND GENOA.--A RIDE OVER THE CORNICHE ROAD.