Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber Part 7

It reminded me of the line where the lowlands of Perthshire join its highlands. Here the cypress tree met me for the first time. The familiar form of the poplar,--now too familiar to give pleasure,--disappeared, and in its room came the less stately but more graceful and beautiful form of the cypress. The cypress is silence personified. It stands wrapt in its own thoughts. One can hardly see it without asking, "What ails thee? Is it for the past you mourn?" Yet, pensive as it looks, its unconscious grace fills the landscape with beauty.

Verona, gilded by the beams of Shakspeare's mighty genius, and by the yet purer glory of the martyrs of the Reformation, was in sight miles before we reached it. It reposes on the long gentle slope of a low hill, with plenty of air and sunlight. The rich plains at its feet, which stretch away to the south, look up to the old town with evident affection and pride, and strive to cheer it by pouring wheat, and wine, and fruits into its markets. Its appearance at a distance is imposing, from its numerous towers, and the long sweep of its forked battlements, which seem to encircle the whole acclivity on which the town stands, leaving as much empty s.p.a.ce within their lines as might contain half-a-dozen Veronas. Its environs are enchanting. Behind it, and partly encircling it on the east, are an innumerable array of low hills, of the true Italian shape and colour. These were all a-gleam with white villas; and as they sparkled in the sunlight, relieved against the deep azure of the mountains, they showed like white sails on the blue sea, or stars in the dark sky. At its gates we were met, of course, by the Austrian gendarmerie. To have the affair of the pa.s.sport finished and over as quickly as possible, I unfolded the sheet, and carelessly hung it over the window of the carriage. The corner of the paper, which bore, in tall, bold characters, the name of her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, caught the eye of a pa.s.senger. "PALMERSTON!" "PALMERSTON!" he shouted aloud. Instantly there was a general rush at the doc.u.ment; and fearing that it should be torn in pieces, which would have been an awkward affair for me, seeing without it it would be impossible to get forward, and nearly as impossible to get back, I surrendered it to the first speaker, that it might be pa.s.sed round, and all might gratify their curiosity or idolatry with the sight of a name which abroad is but a synonym for "England." After making the tour of the _diligence_, the pa.s.sport was handed out to the gendarme, who, feeling no such intense desire as did the pa.s.sengers to see the famous characters, had waited good-naturedly all the while. The man surveyed with grim complacency a name which was then in no pleasant odour with the statesmen and functionaries of Austria. In return he gave me a paper containing "permission to sojourn for a few hours in Verona," with its co-relative "permission to depart." I felt proud of my country, which could as effectually protect me at the gates of Verona as on the sh.o.r.es of the Forth.

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM VERONA TO VENICE.

Interior of Verona--End of World seemingly near in Italy--The Monks and the Cla.s.sics--A Cast-Iron Revolutionist--A Beautiful Glimpse--Railway Carriages--Railway Company--Tyrolese Alps--Dante's Patmos--Vicenza--Padua--The Lagunes--The Omnibus or Gondola--Silence of City--Sail through the Ca.n.a.ls--Charon and his Boat--Piazza of Saint Mark.

The gates of Verona opened, and the enchantment was gone. He who would carry away the idea of a magnificent city, which the exterior of Verona suggests, must go round it, not through it. The first step within its walls is like the stroke of an enchanter's wand. The villa-begemmed city, with its ramparts and its cypress-trees, takes flight, and there rises before the traveller an old ruinous town, with dirty streets and a ragged and lazy population. It reminds one of what he meets in tales of eastern romance, where young and beautiful princesses are all at once transformed by malignant genuises into old and withered hags.

In truth, on entering an Italian town one feels as if the last trumpet were about to sound. The world, and all that is in it, seems old--very old. Man is old, his dwellings are old, his works are old, and the very earth seems old. All seems to betoken that it is the last age, and that the world is winding up its business, preparatory to the final closing of the drama. Commerce, the arts, empire,--all have taken their departure, and have left behind only the vestiges of their former presence. The Italians, living in a land which is but a sort of sepulchre, look as if they had voted that the world cannot outlast the present century, and that it is but a waste of labour to rebuild anything or repair anything. Accordingly, all is allowed to go to decay,--roads, bridges, castles, palaces; and the only thing which is in any degree cared for are their churches. Why make provision for posterity, when there is to be none? Why erect new houses, when those already built will last their time and the world's? Why repair their mouldering dwellings, or renew the falling fences of their fields, or replace their dying olives with young trees, or even patch their own ragged garments? The crack of doom will soon be upon them, and all will perish in the great conflagration. They account it the part of wisdom, then, to pa.s.s the interval in the least fatiguing and most agreeable manner possible. They sip their coffee, and take their stroll, and watch the shadows as they fall eastward from their purple hills. Why should they incur the toil of labouring or thinking in a world that is soon to pa.s.s away, and which is as good as ended already?

Of Verona I can say but little. My stay there, which was not much over the hour, afforded me no opportunity for observation. Its famous Amphitheatre, coeval with the great Coliseum at Rome, and the best preserved Roman Amphitheatre in the world, I had not time to visit. Its numerous churches, with their frescoes and paintings, I less regret not having seen. Its _Biblioteca Capitolare_, which is said to be an unwrought quarry of historic and patristic lore, I should have liked to visit. There, too, the monks of the middle ages were caught tripping.

"Sophocles or Tacitus," in the words of Gibbon, "had been compelled to resign the parchment to missals, homilies, and the golden legend." The "Inst.i.tutes of Caius," which were the foundation of the Inst.i.tutes of Justinian, were discovered in this library palimpsested. A rumour had been spread that the author of the Pandects had reduced the "Inst.i.tutes of Caius" to ashes, that posterity might not discover the source of his own great work. Gibbon ventured to contradict the scandal, and to point to the monks as the probable devastators. His sagacity was justified when Niebuhr discovered in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Verona these very Inst.i.tutes beneath the homilies of St. Jerome. Verona yet retains one grand feature untouched by decay or time,--the river Adige,--which, pa.s.sing underneath the walls, dashes through the city in a magnificent torrent, spanned by several n.o.ble bridges of ancient architecture, and turns in its course several large floating mills, which are anch.o.r.ed across the stream. The market-place, a large square, was profusely covered with the produce of the neighbouring plains. I purchased a roll of bread and a magnificent cl.u.s.ter of grapes, and lunched in fine style.

At Verona the railway resumes, and runs all the way to Venice. What a transition from the _diligence_--the lumbering, snail-paced _diligence_--to the rail. It is like pa.s.sing by a single leap from the dark ages to modern times. Then only do you feel what you owe to Watt.

In my humble opinion, the Pope should have put the steam-engine into the Index Expurgatorius. His priests in France have attended at the opening of railways, and blessed the engines. What! bless the steam-engine!

Sprinkle holy water on the heads of Mazzini and Gavazzi. For what are these engines, but so many cast-iron Mazzinis and Gavazzis. The Pope should have anathematized the steam-engine. He should have cursed it after the approved pontifical fashion, in standing and in running, in watering and in coaling. He should have cursed it in the whole structure of its machinery,--in its funnel, in its boiler, in its piston, in its cranks, and in its stopc.o.c.ks. I can see a hundred things which are sure to be crushed beneath its ponderous wheels. I can see it tearing ruthlessly onwards, and dashing through prejudices, opinions, usages, and time-honoured and venerated inst.i.tutions, and sweeping all away like so many cobwebs. Was the Argus of the Vatican asleep when this wolf broke into the fold? But _in_ he is, and the Pope's bulls will have enough to do to drive him out. But more of this anon.

The station of the railway is on the east of the town, in a spot of enchanting loveliness. It was the first and almost the only spot that realized the Italy of my dreams. It was in a style of beauty such as I had not before seen, and was perfect in its kind. The low lovely hills were ranged in crescent form, and were as faultless as if Grace herself had moulded them on her lathe. Their clothing was a deep rich purple.

White villas, like pearls, sparkled upon them; and they were dotted with the cypress, which stood on their sides in silent, meditative, ethereal grace. The scene possessed not the sublime grandeur of Switzerland, nor the rugged picturesqueness of Scotland: its characteristic was the finished, spiritualized, voluptuous beauty of Italy. But hark! the railway-bell rings out its summons.

The carriages on the Verona and Venice Railway are not those strong-looking, crib-like machines which we have in England, and which seem built, as our jails and bridewells are, in antic.i.p.ation that the inmates will do their best to get out. They are roomy and elegant saloons (though strong in their build), of about forty feet in length, and may contain two hundred pa.s.sengers a-piece. They are fitted up with a tier of cushioned seats running round the carriage, and two sofa-seats running lengthways in the middle. At each end is a door by which the guard enters and departs, and pa.s.ses along the whole train, as if it were a suit of apartments. So far as I could make out, I was the only _Englese_ in the carriage, which was completely filled with the citizens and peasantry of the towns and rural districts which lay on our route,--the mountaineer of the Tyrol, the native of the plain, the inhabitant of the city of Verona, of Vicenza, of Venice. There was a greater amount of talk, and of vehement and eloquent gesture, than would have been seen in the same circ.u.mstances in England. The costume was varied and picturesque, and so too, but in a less degree, the countenance. There were in the carriage tall athletic forms, reared amid the breezes and vines of the Tyrol; and there were n.o.ble faces,--faces with rich complexions, and dark fiery eyes, which could gleam in love or burn in battle, and which bore the still farther appendage of moustache and beard, in which the wearer evidently took no little pride, and on which he bestowed no little pains. The company had somewhat the air of a masquerade. There was the Umbrian cloak, the cone-shaped beaver, the vest with its party-coloured lacings. There were the long loose robe and low-crowned hat of the priest, with its enormous brim, as if to shade the workings of his face beneath. There was the brown cloak of the friar; and there were hats and coats of the ordinary Frank fashion. The Leghorn bonnet is there unknown, as almost all over the Continent, unless among the young girls of Switzerland; and the head-gear of the women mostly was a plain cotton napkin, folded on the brow and pinned below the chin,--a custom positively ugly, which may become a mummy or a shaven head, but not for those who have ringlets to show. Some with better taste had discarded the napkin, and wore a smart cap. On the persons of not a few of the females was displayed a considerable amount of value, in the shape of gold chains, rings, and jewellery. This is an indication, not of wealth, but of poverty and stagnant trade. It was a custom much in use among oriental ladies before banks were established.

The plains eastward of Verona on the right were amazingly rich, and the uplands and heights on the left were crowned with fine castles and beautiful little temples. Yet the beauty and richness of the region could not soothe Dante for his lost Florence. For here was his "Patmos,"

if we may venture on imagery borrowed from the history of a greater seer; and here the visions of the Purgatorio had pa.s.sed before his eye.

After a few hours' riding, the fine hills of the Tyrolese Alps came quite up to us, disclosing, as they filed past, a continuous succession of charming views. When the twilight began to gather, and they stood in their rich drapery of purple shadows, their beauty became a thing indescribable. We saw Vicenza, where, of all the spots in Italy, the Reformation found the largest number of adherents, and where Palladio arose in the sixteenth century, to arrest for a while, by his genius, the decay of the architectural arts in Italy. We saw, too, the gray Padua looking at us through the sombre shadows of its own and the day's decline. We continued our course over the flat but rich country beyond; and as night fell we reached the edge of the Lagunes.

I looked out into the watery waste with the aid of the faint light, but I could see no city, and nothing whereon a city could stand. All was sea; and it seemed idle to seek a city, or any habitation of man, in the midst of these waters. But the engine with its great red eye could see farther into the dark; and it dashed fearlessly forward, and entered on the long bridge which I saw stretching on and away over the flood, till its farther end, like that of the bridge which Mirza saw in vision, was lost in a cloud. I could see, as we rode on, on the bosom of the flood beneath us, twinkling lights, which were probably lighthouses, and black dots, which we took for boats. After a five miles' run through scenery of this novel character, the train stopped, and we found that we had arrived, not in a cloud or in a quicksand, as there seemed some reason to fear, but in a s.p.a.cious and elegant station, brilliantly lighted with gas, and reminding one, from its sudden apparition and its strange site, of the fabled palace of the Sicilian Fairy Queen, only not built, like hers, of sunshine and sea-mist. We were marched in file past, first the tribunal of the searchers, and next the tribunal of the pa.s.sport officials; and then an Austrian gendarme opening to each, as he pa.s.sed this ordeal, the door of the station-house, I stepped out, to have my first sight, as I hoped, of the Queen of the Adriatic.

I found myself in the midst of the sea, standing on a little platform of land, with a cloudy ma.s.s floating before me, resembling, in the uncertain light, the towers and domes of a spectral city. It was now for the first time that I realized the peculiar position of Venice. I had often read of the city whose streets were ca.n.a.ls and whose chariots were gondolas; but I had failed to lay hold of it as a reality, and had unconsciously placed Venice in the region of fable. There was no missing the fact now. I was hemmed in on all sides by the ocean, and could not move a step without the certainty of being drowned. What was I to do? In answer to my inquiries, I was told that I must proceed to my hotel in an omnibus. This sounded of the earth, and I looked eagerly round to see the desired vehicle; but horses, carriage, wheels, I could see none. I could no more conceive of an omnibus that could swim on the sea, than the Venetians could of a gondola that could move on the dry land. I was shown a large gondola, to which the name of omnibus was given, which lay at the bottom of the stairs waiting for pa.s.sengers. I descended into it, and was followed by some thirty more. We were men of various nations and various tongues, and we took our seats in silence. We pushed off, and were soon gliding along on the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Not a word was spoken.

Although we had been a storming party sent to surprise an enemy's fort by night, we could not have conducted our proceedings in profounder quiet. There reigned as unbroken a stillness around us, as if, instead of the midst of a city, we had been in the solitude of the high seas. No foot-fall re-echoed through that strange abode. Sound of chariot-wheel there was none. Nothing was audible but the soft dip of the oar, and the startled shout of an occasional gondolier, who feared, perhaps, that our heavier craft might send his slim skiff to the bottom. In about a quarter of an hour we turned out of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, and began threading our way amid those innumerable narrow channels which traverse Venice in all directions. Then it was that the dismal silence of the city fell upon my heart. The ca.n.a.ls we were now navigating were not over three yards in width. They were long and gloomy; and tall, ma.s.sive palaces, sombre and spectral in the gloom, rose out of the sea on either hand.

There were columns at their entrances, with occasional pieces of statuary, for which time had woven a garland of weeds. Their lower windows were heavily grated; their marble steps were laved by the idle tide; and their warehouse doors, through which had pa.s.sed, in their time, the merchandise of every clime, had long been unopened, and were rotting from age. As we pursued our way, we pa.s.sed under low-browed arches, from which uncouth faces, cut in the stone, looked down upon us, and grinned our welcome. The voice of man, the light of a candle, the sound of a millstone, was not there. It seemed a city of the dead. The inhabitants had lived and died ages ago, and had left their palaces to be tenanted by the mermaids and spirits of the deep, for other occupants I could see none. Spectral fancies began to haunt my imagination. I conceived of the ca.n.a.l we were traversing as the Styx, our gondola as the boat of Charon, and ourselves as a company of ghosts, who had pa.s.sed from earth, and were now on our silent way to the inexorable bar of Rhadamanthus. A more spectral procession we could not have made, with our spectral boat gliding noiselessly through the water, with its spectral steersman, and its crowd of spectral pa.s.sengers, though my fancy, instead of being a fancy, had been a reality. All things around me were sombre, shadowy, silent, as Hades itself.

Suddenly our gondola made a rapid sweep round a tall corner. Then it was that the Queen of the Adriatic, in all her glory, burst upon us,--

"Looking a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers."

We were flung right in front of the great square of St. Mark. It was like the instantaneous raising of the curtain from some glorious vision, or like the sudden parting of the clouds around Mont Blanc; or, if I may use such a simile, like the unfolding of the gates of a better world to the spirit, after pa.s.sing through the shadows of the tomb. The s.p.a.cious piazza, bounded on all sides with n.o.ble structures in every style of architecture, reflected the splendour of a thousand lamps. There was the palace of the Doge, which I knew not as yet; and there, on its lofty column, was the winged lion of St Mark, which it was impossible not to know; and, crowding the piazza, and walking to and fro on its marble floor, was a countless mult.i.tude of men in all the costumes of the world. With the deep hum of voices was softly blended the sound of the Italian lute. A few strokes of the oar brought us to the Hotel dell'

Europa. I made a spring from the gondola, and alighted on the steps of the hotel.

CHAPTER XV.

CITY OF VENICE.

Sabbath Morning--Beauty of Sunrise on the Adriatic--Worship in S.

Mark's--Popish Sabbath-schools--Sale of Indulgences for Living and Dead--An Astrologer--How the Venetians spend their Sabbath Afternoon and Evening--The Martyrs of Venice--A Young Englishman in Trouble--The Doge's Palace--The Stone Lions--The Prisons of Venice--The Venetians Discard their Old G.o.d, and adopt a New--The Gothic Tower--The Academy of Fine Arts--The Moral of Venice--Why do Nations Die?--Common Theory Unsatisfactory--History hitherto a Series of ever-recurring Cycles, ending in Barbarism--Instances--The "Three-score and Ten" of Nations--The Solution to be sought with reference to the False Religions--The Intellect of the Nation outgrows these--Conscience is Dissolved--Virtue is Lost--Slavery and Barbarism ensue--Christianity only can give Immortality to Nations--Decadence of Civilization under Romanism--A Papist foretelling the Doom of Popery.

The deep boom of the Austrian cannon awoke me next morning at day-break.

I remembered that it was Sabbath; and never had I seen the Sabbath dawn amidst a silence so majestic. More tranquil could not have been its first opening in the bowers of Eden. In this city of ocean there was no sound of hurrying feet, no rattle of chariot-wheel, nor any of those mult.i.tudinous noises that distract the cities of earth. There was silence on the domes of Venice, silence on her seas, silence in the air around her. In a little the sun rose, and shed a flood of glory on the Lagunes. It would be difficult to describe the grandeur of the scene, which has nothing elsewhere of the kind to equal it,--the white marble city, serenely seated on the bosom of the Adriatic, with the Lagunes outspread in the morning sun like a mirror of molten gold. But, alas! it was only a glorious vision; for the power and wealth of Venice are departed.

"The long file Of her dead Doges are declined to dust.

Empty halls, Thin streets and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls."

The gun which had awaked me reminds the Queen of the Adriatic every morning that the day of her dominion and glory is over, and that the night has come upon her,--a night, the deep unbroken shadows of which, even the bright morning that was now opening on the Adriatic could not dispel.

After breakfast I hurried to the church of S. Mark. Ma.s.s was proceeding as usual; and a large crowd of worshippers,--spectators I should rather say,--stood densely packed in the chancel. If I except the Madeleine in Paris, I have nowhere seen in a Roman Catholic church an attendance at all approximating even a tolerable congregation, save here. I remarked, too, that these were not the beggars which usually form the larger proportion of the attendance, such as it is, in Roman churches. The people in S. Mark's were well dressed, though it was not easy to conceive where these fine clothes had come from, seeing the sea has now failed Venice, and land she never possessed. This was the first symptom I saw (I met others in the course of the day) that in Venice the Roman religion has a stronger hold upon the people than in the rest of Italy.

It is an advantage in this respect to be some little distance from Rome, and to have an insular position. Besides, I believe that the priests in Venetian Lombardy, and, I presume, in Venice also, are men of more reputable lives than their brethren in other parts of the Peninsula.

Anciently it was not so. Venice was wont to be termed "the paradise of monks." There no pleasure allowable to a man of the world was forbidden to a priest. The Senate, jealous of everything that might abridge its authority, encouraged this relaxation of the Church's discipline, in the hope of lowering the influence of its clergy with the people.

S. Mark's is an ancient, quaint-looking pile, with the dim h.o.a.r light of history around it. On its threshold Pope Alexander III. met the Emperor Frederick in 1177, and, with pride unabated by his enforced flight from Rome in the disguise of a cook, put his foot upon the monarch's neck, repeating the words of the psalm,--"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder." This high temple of the Adriatic is vast and curious, but wanting in effect, owing to the low roof and the gloomy light. The Levant was searched for columns and marbles to decorate it; acres of gold-leaf have been expended in gilding it; and every corner is stuck full of allegorical devices, some of which are so very ingenious, that they have not yet been read. The priests wore a style of dress admirably befitting the finery of the Cathedral; for their vestments were bespangled with gold and curious devices. What a contrast to the simple temple and the plain earnest worshippers with whom I had pa.s.sed my former Sabbath amid the Vaudois hills! But the G.o.d of the Vaudois, unlike the wafer-G.o.d of the priests, "dwelleth not in temples made with hands."

Pa.s.sing along on the narrow paved footpaths which tie back to back the long lofty ranges of the city,--the fronts being filled with the ocean,--I visited several of its one hundred and twenty churches. I found ma.s.s ended, and the congregation, if any such there had been, dismissed; but I saw what was even more indicative of a reviving superst.i.tion: in every church I entered I found cla.s.ses of boys and girls under instruction. The Sabbath-school system was in full operation in Venice, in Rome's behalf. The boys were in charge of the young priests; and the girls, of the nuns and sisters. In some cases, laymen had been pressed into the service, and were occupied in unfolding the mysteries of transubstantiation to the young mind. Seating myself on a bench in presence of a cla.s.s of boys, I watched the course of instruction. Their text-book was the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine,"

which contains the elements of the Roman faith, as fixed by the Council of Trent. The boys were repeating the Catechism to the teacher. No explanations were given, for the process was simply that of fixing dogmas in the memory,--of conveying as much of fact, or what professed to be so, as it was possible to convey into the mind without awakening the understanding. The boys were taught to _believe_, not _reason_; and those who acquitted themselves best had little medals and pictures of St Francis given them as prizes. I remarked that most of the shops were shut: indeed, so little business is done in Venice, that this involved no sacrifice to the traders. As it was, however, the city contrasted favourably with Paris; than the Sabbaths of which, I know of nothing more terrible on earth. I remarked, too, that if the trade of the Adriatic is at an end, and beggars crowd the quays which princes once trod, and gondolas, in funereal black, glide gloomily through those waters which rich argosies ploughed of old, the spiritual traffic of Venice flourishes more than ever. I read on the doors of all the churches, "INDULGENCES SOLD HERE FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, AS IN ROME." What matters it that the Adriatic is no longer the highway of the world's merchandise, and that India is now closed to Venice? Is not the whole of Peter's treasury open to her; and, to facilitate the enriching commerce, have not the priests obligingly opened a direct road to the celestial mine, to spare the Venetians the necessity of the more circuitous path by the Seven Hills? Happy Venice! her children may be starved now, but paradise is their's hereafter.

After noon each betook himself to what pastime he pleased. Not a few opened their shops. Others gathered round an astrologer,--a personage no longer to be seen in the cities of the west,--who had taken his stand on the _Riva degli Schiavoni_, and there, begirt with zone inscribed with cabalistic characters, and holding in his hand his wizard's staff, was setting forth, with stentorian voice, his marvellous power of healing by the combined help of the stars and his drugs. By the way, why should the profession of astrology and the cognate arts be permitted to only one cla.s.s of men? In the middle ages, two cla.s.ses of conjurors competed for the public patronage, but with most unequal success. The one cla.s.s professed to be master of spells that were all-powerful over the elements of the material world,--the air, the earth, the ocean. The other arrogated an equal power over the invisible and spiritual world.

They were skilled in a mysterious rite, which had power to open the gates of purgatory, and dismiss to a happier abode, souls there immured in woe. The pretensions of both were equally well founded: both were jugglers, and merited to have fared alike; but society, while it lavished all its credence and all its patronage upon the one, denounced the other as impostors. One colossal system of necromancy filled Europe; but the age gave the priest a monopoly; and so jealously did it guard his rights, that the conjuror who did not wear a ca.s.sock was banished or burned. We can a.s.sign no reason for the odium under which the one lay, and the repute in which the other was held, save that the art, though one, was termed witchcraft in the one case, and religion in the other.

The one was compelled to shroud his mysteries in the darkness of the night, and seek the solitary cave for the performance of his spells. The arts of the other were performed in magnificent and costly cathedrals, in presence of admiring a.s.semblies. The latter were the licensed dealers in magic; and, enjoying the public patronage, they carried their pretensions to a pitch which their less favoured brethren dared not attempt to rival. They juggled on a gigantic scale, and the more enormous the cheat, the better was it received. They rapidly grew in numbers and wealth. Their chief, the great Roman necromancer, enjoyed the state of a temporal prince, and had a whole kingdom appropriated to his use, that he might suitably support his rank and dignity as arch-conjuror.

But to return to Venice;--the great stream of concourse flowed in the direction of the _Giardini Pubblici_, which are a nook of one of the more southerly islands on which the city stands, fitted up as a miniature landscape, its lilliputian hills and vales being the only ones the Venetians ever see. The intercourse betwixt Venice and the Continent has no doubt become more frequent since the opening of the railway; but formerly it was not uncommon to find persons who had never been on the land, and who had no notion of ploughs, waggons, carts, gardens, and a hundred other things that seem quite inseparable from the existence of a nation. Twilight came, walking with noiseless sandals on the seas. A delicious light mantled the horizon; the domes of the city stood up with silent sublimity into the sky; and over them floated, in the deep azure, a young moon, thin as a single thread, and bright as the polished steel.

"A silver bow, New bent in heaven."

When darkness fell on the Lagunes, the glories of the piazza of San Marco again blazed forth. What with cafes and countless lamps, a flood of light fell upon the marble pavement, on which some ten or twelve thousand people, rich and poor, were a.s.sembled, and were being regaled with occasional airs from a numerous band. The Sabbath closed in the Adriatic not altogether so tranquilly as it had opened.

The Venetians have long been famous for their peculiar skill in combining devotion with pleasure,--more devout than home in the morning, and gayer than Paris in the evening. Such has long been the character of the Queen of the Adriatic. She has been truly, as briefly described by the poet,--

"The revel of the earth, the mask of Italy!"

Once a better destiny appeared to be about to dawn on Venice. In the sixteenth century the Reformation knocked at her gates, and for a moment it seemed as if these gates were to be opened, and the stranger admitted. Had it been so, the chair of her Doge would not now have been empty, nor would Austrian manacles have been pressing upon her limbs.

"The evangelical doctrine had made such progress," writes Dr M'Crie, "in the city of Venice, between the years 1530 and 1542, that its friends, who had hitherto met in private for mutual instruction and religious exercises, held deliberations on the propriety of organizing themselves into regular congregations, and a.s.sembling in public." Several members of the Senate were favourable to it, and hopes were entertained at one time that the authority of that body would be interposed in its behalf.

This hope was strengthened by the fact, that when Ochino ascended the pulpit, "the whole city ran in crowds to hear their favourite preacher."

But, alas! the hope was delusive. It was the Inquisition, not the Reformation, to which Venice opened her gates; and when I surveyed her calm and beautiful Lagunes, my emotions partook at once of grief and exultation,--grief at the remembrance of the many midnight tragedies enacted on them, and exultation at the thought, that in the seas of Venice there sleeps much holy dust awaiting the resurrection of the just. "Drowning was the mode of death to which they doomed the Protestants," says Dr M'Crie, "either because it was less cruel and odious than committing them to the flames, or because it accorded with the customs of Venice. But if the _autos da fe_ of the Queen of the Adriatic were less barbarous than those of Spain, the solitude and silence with which they were accompanied were calculated to excite the deepest horror. At the dead hour of midnight the prisoner was taken from his cell, and put into a gondola or Venetian boat, attended only, besides the sailors, by a single priest, to act as confessor. He was rowed out into the sea, beyond the Two Castles, where another boat was in waiting. A plank was then laid across the two gondolas, upon which the prisoner, having his body chained, and a heavy stone affixed to his feet, was placed; and, on a signal given, the gondolas retiring from one another, he was precipitated into the deep." "We can do nothing against the truth," says the apostle. Venice is rotting in her Lagunes: the Reformation, shaking off the chains with which men attempted to bind it, is starting on a new career of progress.

Next morning, at breakfast in my hotel, formerly the palace of the Giustiniani, I met a young Englishman, who had just come from Rome. He had the misfortune to be of the same name with one on the "suspected list," and for this offence he was arrested on entering the Austrian territory; and, though allowed to come on to Venice, his pa.s.sport was taken from him, and his journey to England, which he meant to make by way of Trieste and Vienna, stopped. The list to which I have referred, which is kept at all the continental police offices, and which the eye of policeman or sbirro only can see, has created a sort of inquisition for Europe. The poor traveller has no means of knowing who has denounced him, or why; and wherever he goes, he finds a vague suspicion surrounding him, which he can neither penetrate nor clear up, and which exposes him to numberless and by no means petty annoyances. I accompanied my friend, after breakfast, to the _Prefecture_, to transact my own pa.s.sport matters, and was glad to find that the authorities were now satisfied that he was not the same man who figured on the black list. Still they had no apology, no reparation, to offer him: on the contrary, he was informed that he must submit to a detention of two or three days more, till his pa.s.sport should be forwarded from the provincial office where it was lying. His misfortune was my advantage, for it gave me an intelligent and obliging companion for the rest of the day; and we immediately set out to visit together all the great objects in Venice. It would be preposterous to dwell on these, for an hundred pens have already described them better; and my object is to advert to one great lesson which this fallen city,--for the sea, which once was the bulwark and throne of Venice, is now her prison,--teaches.

Betaking ourselves to a gondola, we pa.s.sed down the Giudecca, Ca.n.a.l. We much admired--as who would not?--the-n.o.ble palaces which on either hand rose so proudly from the bosom of the deep, yet invested with an air of silent desolation, which made the heart sad, even while their beauty delighted the eye. We disembarked at the stairs of the _piazzetta_ of S.