Pencillings by the Way Part 15

Two windows of close grating looked on either side upon the long ca.n.a.l below, and let in the only light to the covered pa.s.sage. It is a gloomy place within, beautifully as its light arch hangs in the air from without. It was easy to employ the imagination as we stood on the stone where Childe Harold had stood before us, and conjured up in fancy the despair and agony that must have been pressed into the last glance at light and life that had been sent through those barred windows. Across this bridge the condemned were brought to receive their sentence in the Chamber of the _Ten_, or to be confronted with b.l.o.o.d.y inquisitors, and then were led back over it to die. The last light that ever gladdened their eyes came through those close bars, and the gay Giudecca in the distance, with its lively waters covered with boats, must have made that farewell glance to a Venetian bitter indeed. The side next the prison is now ma.s.sively walled up. We stayed, silently musing at the windows, till the old cicerone ventured to remind us that his time was precious.

Ordering the gondola round to the stairs of the piazetta, we strolled for the first time into the church of San Marc. The four famous bronze horses stood with their dilated nostrils and fine action over the porch, bringing back to us Andrea Doria, and his threat; and as I remembered the ruined palace of the old admiral at Genoa, and glanced at the Austrian soldier upon guard, in the very shadow of the winged lion, I could not but feel most impressively the moral of the contrast. The lesson was not attractive enough, however, to keep us in a burning sun, and we put aside the heavy folds of the drapery and entered. How deliciously cool are these churches in Italy! We walked slowly up toward the distant altar. An old man rose from the base of one of the pillars, and put out his hand for charity. It is an incident that meets one at every step, and with half a glance at his face I pa.s.sed on. I was looking at the rich mosaic on the roof, but his features lingered in my mind. They grew upon me still more strongly; and as I became aware of the full expression of misery and pride upon them, I turned about to see what had become of him. My two friends had done each the very same thing, with the same feeling of regret, and were talking of the old man when I came back to them. We went to the door, and looked all about the square, but he was no where to be seen. It is singular that he should have made the same impression upon all of us, of an old Venetian n.o.bleman in poverty.

Slight as my glance was, the n.o.ble expression of sadness about his fine white head and strong features, are still indelible in my memory.

The prophecy which Byron puts into the mouth of the condemned Doge, is still true in every particular:--

----"When the Hebrew's in thy palaces, The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his; When _thy patricians beg their bitter bread_," &c.

The church of San Marc is rich to excess, and its splendid mosaic pavement is sunk into deep pits with age and the yielding foundations on which its heavy pile is built. Its pictures are not so fine as those of the other churches of Venice, but its age and historic a.s.sociations make it by far the most interesting.

LETTER x.x.xII.

VENICE--SCENES BY MOONLIGHT--THE Ca.n.a.lS--THE ARMENIAN ISLAND--THE ISLAND OF THE INSANE--IMPROVEMENTS MADE BY NAPOLEON--SHADED WALKS--PAVILION AND ARTIFICIAL HILL--ANTIDOTES TO SADNESS--PARTIES ON THE Ca.n.a.lS--NARROW STREETS AND SMALL BRIDGES--THE RIALTO--MERCHANTS AND IDLERS--Sh.e.l.l-WORK AND JEWELRY--POETRY AND HISTORY--GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY--THE FRIULI MOUNTAINS--THE Sh.o.r.e OF ITALY--A SILENT PANORAMA--THE ADRIATIC--PROMENADERS AND SITTERS, ETC.

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 ca.n.a.ls 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 Oth.e.l.lo, and Shylock, and, entering a cross ca.n.a.l, 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 Giudecca. This is the ca.n.a.l 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 us 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 pa.s.sing 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 rased 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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, every-day 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 ca.n.a.ls, and crossing the small bridges at every twenty yards. They are dark and cool; and no hoof of any description ever pa.s.sing 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 ca.n.a.ls are sunny.

We spent a half hour on the _Rialto_. This is the only bridge across the grand ca.n.a.l, and connects the two main parts of the city. It is, as you see by engravings, a n.o.ble span of a single arch, built of pure white marble. You pa.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l-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 pa.s.sed 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.

"Shylock and the Moor And Pierre cannot be swept or worn away,"

says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling everywhere in these romantic countries. You cannot 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 dyes of distance, breaking up the else level horizon; the sh.o.r.e 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 Giudecca, 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 Marc's vast square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored marbles with promenaders, its _cafes_ swarmed by the sitters outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of my pleasantest hours in Venice was pa.s.sed here.

LETTER x.x.xIII.

PALACES--PALAZZO GRIMANI--OLD STATUARY--MALE AND FEMALE CHERUBS--THE BATH OF CLEOPATRA--t.i.tIAN'S PALACE--UNFINISHED PICTURE OF THE GREAT MASTER--HIS MAGDALEN AND BUST--HIS DAUGHTER IN THE ARMS OF A SATYR--BEAUTIFUL FEMALE HEADS--THE CHURCHES OF VENICE--BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DOGES--TOMB OF CANOVA--DEPARTURE FOR VERONA, ETC.

We have pa.s.sed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the _Palazzo Grimani_, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the ca.n.a.l.

The court and staircase were ornamented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two _female_ cherubs, the first of that s.e.x I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian n.o.ble, when Venice was in her glory, we pa.s.sed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, _the bath of Cleopatra_. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room.

It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the t.i.tian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost all the private galleries of Venice.

We stopped next at the stairs of the n.o.ble old _Barberigo_ Palace, in which t.i.tian lived and died. We mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We pa.s.sed through halls hung with neglected pictures to an inner room, occupied only with those of t.i.tian. Here he painted, and here is a picture half finished, as he left it when he died. His famous _Magdalen_, hangs on the wall, covered with dirt; and so, indeed, is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy. On a marble table stood a plaster bust of t.i.tian, moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most n.o.ble head, and it is difficult to look at it, and believe he could have painted a picture which hangs just against it--_his own daughter in the arms of a satyr_. There is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs; but instead of a satyr's head, she holds a casket in her hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement upon the original. Here, too, are several slight sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the size of life, which I would rather have than his Magdalen.

I have spent my last day in Venice in visiting churches. Their splendor makes the eye ache and the imagination weary. You would think the surplus wealth of half the empires of the world would scarce suffice to fill them as they are. I can give you no descriptions. The gorgeous tombs of the Doges are interesting, and the plain black monument over Marino Faliero made me linger. Canova's tomb is splendid; and the simple slab under your feet in the church of the Frari, where t.i.tian lies with his brief epitaph, is affecting--but, though I shall remember all these, the simplest as well as the grandest, a description would be wearisome to all who had not seen them. This evening at sunset I start in the post-boat for the mainland, on my way to the place of Juliet's tomb--Verona. My friends, the painters, are so attracted with the galleries here that they remain to copy, and I go back alone. Take a short letter from me this time, and expect to hear from me by the next earliest opportunity, and more at length. Adieu.

LETTER x.x.xIV.

DEPARTURE FROM VENICE--A SUNSET SCENE--PADUA--SPLENDID HOTEL--MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY--VICENZA--MIDNIGHT--LADY RETURNING FROM A PARTY--VERONA--JULIET'S TOMB--THE TOMB OF THE CAPULETS--THE TOMBS OF THE SCALIGERS--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA--A WALKING CHRONICLE--PALACE OF THE CAPULETS--ONLY COOL PLACE IN AN ITALIAN CITY--BANQUETING HALL OF THE CAPULETS--FACTS AND FICTION, ETC.

We pushed from the post-office stairs in a gondola with six oars at sunset. It was melancholy to leave Venice. A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the grand ca.n.a.l, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous than beautiful--a glance at the disappearing Rialto, and we shot out into the Giudecca in a blaze of sunset glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that light--rising behind us from the sea--all her superb towers and palaces, turrets and spires, fused into gold; and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained gla.s.s, without a ripple!

An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to the nearest land. You should go to Venice to know how like a dream a reality may be. You will find it difficult to realize, when you smell once more the fresh earth and gra.s.s and flowers, and walk about and see fields and mountains, that this city upon the sea exists out of the imagination.

You float to it and about it and from it, in their light craft, so aerially, that it seems a vision.

With a drive of two or three hours, half twilight, half moonlight, we entered _Padua_. It was too late to see the portrait of Petrarch, and I had not time to go to his tomb at Arqua, twelve miles distant, so, musing on Livy and Galileo, to both of whom Padua was a home, I inquired for a _cafe_. A new one had lately been built in the centre of the town, quite the largest and most thronged I ever saw. Eight or ten large, high-roofed halls were open, and filled with tables, at which sat more beauty and fashion than I supposed all Padua could have mustered. I walked through one after another, without finding a seat, and was about turning to go out, and seek a place of less pretension, when an elderly lady, who sat with a party of seven, eating ices, rose, with Italian courtesy, and offered me a chair at their table. I accepted it, and made the acquaintance of eight as agreeable and polished people as it has been my fortune to meet. We parted as if we had known each other as many weeks as minutes. I mention it as an instance of the manners of the country.

Three hours more, through spicy fields and on a road lined with the country-houses of the Venetian n.o.bles, brought us to _Vicenza_. It was past midnight, and not a soul stirring in the bright moonlit streets.

I remember it as a kind of city of the dead. As we pa.s.sed out of the opposite gate, we detained for a moment a carriage, with servants in splendid liveries, and a lady inside returning from a party, in full dress. I have rarely seen so beautiful a head. The lamps shone strongly on a broad pearl fillet on her forehead, and lighted up features such as we do not often meet even in Italy. A gentleman leaned back in the corner of the carriage, fast asleep--probably her husband!

I breakfasted at _Verona_ at seven. A humpbacked _cicerone_ there took me to "Juliet's tomb." A very high wall, green with age, surrounds what was once a cemetery, just outside the city. An old woman answered the bell at the dilapidated gate, and, without saying a word, pointed to an empty granite sarcophagus, raised upon a rude pile of stones.

"Questa?" asked I, with a doubtful look. "Questa," said the old woman.

"Questa!" said the hunchback. And here, I was to believe, lay the gentle Juliet! There was a raised place in the sarcophagus, with a hollowed socket for the head, and it was about the measure for a woman! I ran my fingers through the cavity, and tried to imagine the dark curls that covered the hand of Father Lawrence as he laid her down in the trance, and fitted her beautiful head softly to the place.

But where was "the tomb of the Capulets?" The beldame took me through a cabbage-garden, and drove off a donkey who was feeding on an artichoke that grew on the very spot. "Ecco!" said she, pointing to one of the slightly sunken spots on the surface. I deferred my belief, and paying an extra paul for the privilege of chipping off a fragment of the stone coffin, followed the cicerone.

The _tombs of the Scaligers_ were more authentic. They stand in the centre of the town, with a highly ornamental railing about them, and are a perfect mockery of death with their splendor. If the poets and scholars whom these petty princes drew to their court had been buried in these airy tombs beside them, one would look at them with some interest. _Now_, one asks, "who were the Scaligers, that their bodies should be lifted high in air in the midst of a city, and kept for ages, in marble and precious stones?" With less ostentation, however, it were pleasant to be so disposed of after death, lifted thus into the sun, and in sight of moving and living creatures.

I inquired for the old palace of the Capulets. The cicerone knew nothing about it, and I dismissed her and went into a _cafe_. "Two gentlemen of Verona" sat on different sides; one reading, the other asleep, with his chin on his cane--an old, white-headed man, of about seventy. I sat down near the old gentleman, and by the time I had eaten my ice, he awoke. I addressed him in Italian, which I speak indifferently; but, stumbling for a word, he politely helped me out in French, and I went on in that language with my inquiries. He was the very man--a walking chronicle of Verona. He took up his hat and cane to conduct me to _casa Capuletti_, and on the way told me the true history, as I had heard it before, which differs but little, as you know, from Shakspeare's version. The whole story is in the annuals.

After a half hour's walk among the handsomer, and more modern parts of the city, we stopped opposite a house of an antique construction, but newly stuccoed and painted. A wheelwright occupied the lower story, and by the sign, the upper part was used as a tavern. "Impossible!"

said I, as I looked at the fresh front and the staring sign. The old gentleman smiled, and kept his cane pointed at it in silence. "It is well authenticated," said he, after enjoying my astonishment a minute or two, "and the interior still bears marks of a palace." We went in and mounted the dirty staircase to a large hall on the second floor.

The frescoes and cornices had not been touched, and I invited my kind old friend to an early dinner on the spot. He accepted, and we went back to the cathedral, and sat an hour in the only cool place in an Italian city. The best dinner the house could afford was ready when we returned, and a pleasanter one it has never been my fortune to sit down to; though, for the meats, I have eaten better. That I relished an hour in the very hall where the masque must have been held, to which Romeo ventured in the house of his enemy, to see the fair Juliet, you may easily believe. The wine was not so bad, either, that my imagination did not warm all fiction into fact; and another time, perhaps, I may describe my old friend and the dinner more particularly.

LETTER x.x.xV.

ANOTHER SHORT LETTER--DEPARTURE FROM VERONA--MANTUA--FLEAS-- FLEAS--MODENA--Ta.s.sONI'S BUCKET--A MAN GOING TO EXECUTION--THE DUKE OF MODENA--BOLOGNA--AUSTRIAN OFFICERS--THE APPENINES-- MOONLIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS--ENGLISH BRIDAL PARTY--PICTURESQUE SUPPER, ETC.