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VENETIAN LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "A MODERN INSTANCE," “ THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY,” ETC. 
 
 AUTHORIZED EDITION. 
 
 WITH THE PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 1883. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO THE SECOND (AMERICAN) EDITION. 
 
 In correcting this book for a second edition, I have 
 sought to complete it without altering its original plan: 
 I have given a new chapter sketching the history of 
 Venetian Commerce and noticing the present trade 
 and industry of Venice; I have amplified somewhat the 
 chapter on the national holidays, and have affixed an 
 index to the chief historical persons, incidents, and 
 places mentioned. 
 
 Believing that such value as my book may have 
 is in fidelity to what I actually saw and knew of Venice, 
 I have not attempted to follow speculatively the grand 
 and happy events of last summer in their effects upon 
 her life. Indeed, I fancy that in the traits at which I 
 loved most to look, the life of Venice is not so much 
 changed as her fortunes; but at any rate I am content 
 to remain true to what was fact one year ago. 
 
 W. D. H. 
 
 Cambridge, January i, 1867. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Venice in Venice 
 
 
 
 
 
 Page 
 
 9 
 
 - 
 
 II. 
 
 Arrival and first Days in Venice 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 - 
 
 III. 
 
 The Winter in Venice 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 6 
 
 - 
 
 IV. 
 
 Comincia far Caldo 
 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 - 
 
 V. 
 
 Opera and Theatres . 
 
 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 - 
 
 VI. 
 
 Venetian Dinners and Diners . 
 
 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 - 
 
 VII. 
 
 Housekeeping in Venice 
 
 
 
 
 
 83 
 
 - 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Balcony on the Grand Canal 
 
 
 
 
 
 112 
 
 - 
 
 IX. 
 
 A Day-Break Ramble . 
 
 
 
 
 
 124 
 
 - 
 
 X. 
 
 The Mouse. 
 
 
 
 
 
 129 
 
 - 
 
 XI. 
 
 Churches and Pictures 
 
 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 - 
 
 XII. 
 
 Some Islands of the Lagoons 
 
 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 - 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Armenians .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 172 
 
 - 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Ghetto and the Jews of Venice 
 
 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 
 XV. 
 
 Some memorable Places 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 194 
 
 - 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Commerce. 
 
 
 
 
 
 210 
 
 — 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Venetian Holidays . . . 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 229 
 
8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. Christmas Holidays.262 
 
 — XIX. Love-making and Marrying; Baptisms and 
 
 Burials ........ 272 
 
 — XX. Venetian Traits and Characters . . . 292 
 
 — XXI. Society.320 
 
 — XXII. Our Last Year in Venice.356 
 
 INDEX 
 
 3S9 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 One night at the little theatre in Padua, the ticket- 
 seller gave us the stage-box (of which he made a 
 great merit), and so we saw the play and the by-play. 
 The prompter, as noted from our point of view, bore 
 a chief part in the drama (as indeed the prompter 
 always does in the Italian theatre), and the scene- 
 shifters appeared as prominent characters. We could 
 not help seeing the virtuous wife, when hotly pursued 
 by the villain of the piece, pause calmly in the wings, 
 before rushing, all tears and desperation, upon the 
 stage; and we were dismayed to behold the injured 
 husband and his abandoned foe playfully scuffling 
 behind the scenes. All the shabbiness of the theatre 
 was perfectly apparent to us; we saw the grossness of 
 the painting and the unreality of the-properties. And 
 yet I cannot say that the play lost one whit of its 
 charm for me, or that the working of the machinery 
 and its inevitable clumsiness disturbed my enjoyment 
 in the least. There was so much truth and beauty in 
 the playing, that I did not care for the sham of the 
 ropes and gilding, and presently ceased to take any 
 note of them. The illusion which I had thought an 
 
lo VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 essential in the dramatic spectacle, turned out to be a 
 condition of small importance. 
 
 It has sometimes seemed to me as if fortune had 
 given me a stage-box at another and grander spec¬ 
 tacle, and I had been suffered to see this Venice, 
 which is to other cities like the pleasant improbability 
 of the theatre to every-day, commonplace life, to much 
 the same effect as that melodrama in Padua. I could 
 not, indeed, dwell three years in the place without 
 learning to know it differently from those writers who 
 have described it in romances, poems, and hurried 
 books of travel, nor help seeing from my point of ob¬ 
 servation the sham and cheapness with which Venice 
 is usually brought out, if I may so speak, in literature. 
 At the same time, it has never lost for me its claim 
 upon constant surprise and regard, nor the fascination 
 of its excellent beauty, its peerless picturesqueness, its 
 sole and wondrous grandeur. It is true that the streets 
 in Venice are canals; and yet you can walk to any 
 part of the city, and need not take boat whenever you 
 go out of doors, as I once fondly thought you must. 
 But after all, though I find dry land enough in it, I 
 do not find the place less unique, less a mystery, or 
 less a charm. By day, the canals are still the main 
 thoroughfares; and if these avenues are not so full of 
 light and color as some would have us believe, they, 
 at least, do not smell so offensively as others pretend. 
 And by night, they are still as dark and silent as 
 when the secret vengeance of the Republic plunged its 
 victims into the ungossiping depths of the Canalazzo! 
 
 Did the vengeance of the Republic ever do any 
 such thing? 
 
 Possibly. In Venice one learns not quite to question 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 II 
 
 that reputation for vindictive and gloomy cruelty alien 
 historians have given to a government which endured so 
 many centuries in the willing obedience of its subjects; 
 but to think that the careful student of the old Republi¬ 
 can system will condemn it for faults far different from 
 those for which it is chiefly blamed. At all events, I find it 
 hard to understand why, if the Republic was an oligarchy 
 utterly selfish and despotic, it has left to all classes of 
 Venetians so much regret and sorrow for its fall. 
 
 So, if the reader care to follow me to my stage- 
 box, I imagine he will hardly see the curtain rise 
 upon just the Venice of his dreams—the Venice of 
 Byron, of Rogers, and Cooper; or upon the Venice of 
 his prejudices^—the merciless Venice of Daru, and of 
 the historians who follow him. But I still hope that 
 he will be pleased with the Venice he sees; and will 
 think with me that the place loses little in the illusion 
 removed; and—to take leave of our theatrical metaphor 
 —I promise to fatigue him with no affairs of my own, 
 except as allusion to them may go to illustrate Life in 
 Venice; and positively he shall suffer no annoyance 
 from the fleas and bugs which, in Latin countries, so 
 often get from travelers’ beds into their books. 
 
 Let us mention here at the beginning some of the 
 sentimental errors concerning the place, with which 
 we need not trouble ourselves hereafter, but which no 
 doubt form a large part of every one’s associations 
 with the name of Venice. Let us take, for example, 
 that pathetic swindle, the Bridge of Sighs. There are 
 few, I fancy, who will hear it mentioned without 
 connecting its mystery and secrecy with the taciturn 
 justice of the Three, or some other cruel machinery of 
 the Serenest Republic’s policy. When I entered it the 
 
12 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 first time I was at the pains to call about me the sad 
 company of those who had passed its corridors from 
 imprisonment to death; and, I doubt not, many ex¬ 
 cellent tourists have done the same. I was somewhat 
 ashamed to learn afterward that I had, on this occasion, 
 been in very low society, and that the melancholy as¬ 
 semblage which I then conjured up was composed 
 entirely of honest rogues, who might indeed have given 
 as graceful and ingenious excuses for being in mis¬ 
 fortune as the galley-slaves rescued by Don Quixote, 
 —who might even have been very picturesque,—but 
 who were not at all the material with which a well- 
 regulated imagination would deal. The Bridge of 
 Sighs was not built till the end of the sixteenth century, 
 and no romantic episode of political imprisonment 
 and punishment (except that of Antonio Foscarini) 
 occurs in Venetian history later than that period. But 
 the Bridge of Sighs could have nowise a savor of 
 sentiment from any such episode, being, as it was, 
 merely a means of communication between the Criminal 
 Courts sitting in the Ducal Palace, and the Criminal 
 Prison across the little canal. Housebreakers, cut- 
 purse knaves, and murderers do not commonly impart 
 a poetic interest to places which have known them; 
 and yet these are the only sufferers on whose Bridge 
 of Sighs the whole sentimental world has looked with 
 pathetic sensation ever since Byron drew attention to 
 it. The name of the bridge was given by the people 
 from that opulence of compassion which enables the 
 Italians to pity even rascality in difficulties.* 
 
 * The reader will remember that Mr. Ruskin has said in a few 
 words, much better than I have said in many, the same thing of 
 sentimental errors about Venice;— 
 
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VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 13 
 
 Political offenders were not confined in the “prison 
 on each hand” of the poet, but in the famous pozzi^ 
 (literally, wells) or dungeons under the Ducal Palace. 
 And what fables concerning these cells have not been 
 uttered and believed! For my part, I prepared my 
 coldest chills for their exploration, and I am not sure 
 that before I entered their gloom some foolish and 
 lying literature was not shaping itself in my mind, to 
 be afterward written out as my Emotions on looking 
 at them. I do not say now that they are calculated 
 to enamor the unimpounded spectator with prison-life; 
 but they are certainly far from being as bad as I 
 hoped. They are not joyously light nor particularly 
 airy, but their occupants could have suffered no ex¬ 
 treme physical discomfort; and the thick wooden* 
 casing of the interior walls evidences at least the 
 intention of the state to inflict no wanton hardships of 
 cold and damp. 
 
 But on whose account had I to be interested in 
 the pozzi? It was difficult to learn, unless I took the 
 word of sentimental hearsay. I began with Marin 
 Falier, but history would not permit the doge to 
 languish in these dungeons for a moment. He was 
 imprisoned in the apartments of state, and during one 
 
 “The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yester¬ 
 day, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage-dream, which the first 
 ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner whose name 
 is worth remembering, or whose sorrows deserved sympathy, ever 
 crossed that Bridge of Sighs, which is the centre of the Byronic 
 ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto 
 under which the traveler now pauses with breathless interest; the 
 statue which Byron makes Faliero address as one of his great 
 ancestors, was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty 
 years after Faliero’s death .”—Stones of Venice . 
 
H 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 night only. His fellow-conspirators were hanged nearly 
 as fast as taken. 
 
 Failing so signally with Falier, I tried several 
 other political prisoners of sad and famous memory 
 with scarcely better effect. To a man, they struggled 
 to shun the illustrious captivity designed them, and 
 escaped from the pozzi by every artifice of fact and 
 figure. 
 
 The Carraras of Padua were put to death in the 
 city of Venice, and their story is the most pathetic 
 and romantic in Venetian history. But it was not the 
 cells under the Ducal Palace which witnessed their 
 cruel taking-off: they were strangled in the prison 
 formerly existing at the top of the palace, called the 
 Torresella* It is possible, however, that Jacopo 
 Foscari may have been confined in the pozzi at dif¬ 
 ferent times about the middle of the fifteenth century. 
 With his fate alone, then, can the horror of these cells 
 be satisfactorily associated by those who relish the 
 dark romance of Venetian annals; for it is not to be 
 expected that the less tragic fortunes of Carlo Zeno 
 and Vittore Pisani, who may also have been im¬ 
 prisoned in the pozzi , can move the true sentimentalizer. 
 Certainly, there has been anguish enough in the prisons 
 of the Ducal Palace, but we know little of it by name, 
 and cannot confidently relate it to any great historic 
 presence. 
 
 Touching the Giant’s Stairs in the court of the 
 palace, the inexorable dates would not permit me to 
 rest in the delusion that the head of Marin Falier had 
 once bloodily stained them as it rolled to the ground 
 —at the end of Lord Byron’s tragedy. Nor could I 
 * Galliciolli, Memorie Venete. 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 15 
 
 keep unimpaired my vision of the Chief of the Ten 
 brandishing the sword of justice, as he proclaimed the 
 traitor’s death to the people from between the two 
 red columns in the southern gallery of the palace;— 
 that facade was not built till nearly a century later. 
 
 I suppose,—always judging by my own average 
 experience,—that besides these gloomy associations, 
 the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of brilliant 
 and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the 
 brightest picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of 
 antic delight, romantic adventure, and lawless prank. 
 But the carnival, with all the old merry-making life of 
 the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the 
 conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving Venice is 
 become as gross a fiction as if, like that other con¬ 
 ventional Venice of which I have but spoken, it had 
 never existed. There is no greater social dullness 
 and sadness, on land or sea, than in contemporary 
 Venice. 
 
 The causes of this change lie partly in the altered 
 character of the whole world’s civilization, partly in 
 the increasing poverty of the city, doomed four hun¬ 
 dred years ago to commercial decay, and chiefly (the 
 Venetians would be apt to tell you wholly) in the im¬ 
 placable anger, the inconsolable discontent, with which 
 the people regard their present political condition. 
 
 If there be more than one opinion among men 
 elsewhere concerning the means by which Austria ac¬ 
 quired Venetia and the tenure by which she holds 
 the province, there would certainly seem to be no 
 division on the question in Venice. To the stranger 
 first inquiring into public feeling, there is something 
 almost sublime in the unanimity with which the 
 
i6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Venetians appear to believe that these means were 
 iniquitous, and that this tenure is abominable; and 
 though shrewder study and carefuler observation will 
 develop some interested attachment to the present 
 government, and some interested opposition to it; 
 though after-knowledge will discover, in the hatred of 
 Austria, enough meanness, lukewarmness, and selfish 
 ignorance to take off its sublimity, the hatred is still 
 found marvelously unanimous and bitter. I speak 
 advisedly, and with no disposition to discuss the ques¬ 
 tion or exaggerate the fact. Exercising at Venice 
 official functions by permission and trust of the Austrian 
 government, I cannot regard the cessation of those 
 functions as release from obligations both to that 
 government and my own, which render it improper 
 for me, so long as the Austrians remain in Venice, to 
 criticize their rule, or contribute, by comment on exist¬ 
 ing things, to embitter the feeling against them else¬ 
 where. I may, nevertheless, speak dispassionately of 
 facts of the abnormal social and political state of the 
 place; and I can certainly do this, for the present 
 situation is so disagreeable in many ways to the 
 stranger forced to live there,—-the inappeasable hatred 
 of the Austrians by the Italians is so illiberal in ap¬ 
 plication to those in any wise consorting with them, 
 and so stupid and puerile in many respects, that I 
 think the annoyance which it gives the foreigner might 
 well damp any passion with which he was disposed to 
 speak of its cause. 
 
 This hatred of the Austrians dates in its intensity 
 from the defeat of patriotic hopes of union with Italy 
 in 1859, when Napoleon found the Adriatic atPeschiera, 
 and the peace of Villafranca was concluded. But it is 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 17 
 
 not to be supposed that a feeling so general, and so tho¬ 
 roughly interwoven with Venetian character is altogether 
 recent. Consigned to the Austrians by Napoleon I., con¬ 
 firmed in the subjection into which she fell a second 
 time after Napoleon’s ruin, by the treaties of the Holy 
 Alliance, defeated in several attempts to throw off her 
 yoke, and loaded with heavier servitude after the fall 
 of the short-lived Republic of 1849,—Venice has al¬ 
 ways hated her masters with an exasperation deepened 
 by each remove from the hope of independence, and 
 she now detests them with a rancour which no con¬ 
 cession short of absolute relinquishment of dominion 
 would appease. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of finding that public gayety 
 and private hospitality in Venice for which the city 
 was once famous, the stranger finds himself planted 
 between two hostile camps, with merely the choice of 
 sides open to him. Neutrality is solitude and friend¬ 
 ship with neither party; society is exclusive association 
 with the Austrians or with the Italians. The latter do 
 not spare one of their own number if he consorts with 
 their masters, and though a foreigner might expect 
 greater allowance, it is seldom shown to him. To be 
 seen in the company of officers is enmity to Venetian 
 freedom, and in the case of Italians it is treason to 
 country and to race. Of course, in a city where there 
 is a large garrison and a great many officers who have 
 nothing else to do, there is inevitably some interna¬ 
 tional love-making, although the Austrian officers are 
 rigidly excluded from association with the citizens. 
 But the Italian who marries an Austrian severs the 
 dearest ties that bind her to life, and remains an exile 
 in the heart of her country. Her friends mercilessly 
 
 Venetian Life . 
 
 2 
 
i8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 cast her off, as they cast off every body who associates 
 with the dominant race. In rare cases I have known 
 Italians to receive foreigners who had Austrian friends, 
 but this with the explicit understanding that there 
 was to be no sign of recognition if they met them in 
 the company of these detested acquaintance. 
 
 There are all degrees of intensity in Venetian 
 hatred, and after hearing certain persons pour out the 
 gall of bitterness upon the Austrians, you may chance 
 to hear these persons spoken of as tepid in their 
 patriotism by yet more fiery haters. Yet it must not 
 be supposed that the Italians hate the Austrians as in¬ 
 dividuals. On the contrary, they have rather a liking 
 for them—rather a contemptuous liking, for they think 
 them somewhat slow and dull-witted—and individually 
 the Austrians are amiable people, and try not to give 
 offence. The government is also very strict in its con¬ 
 trol of the military. I have never seen the slightest 
 affront offered by a soldier to a citizen; and there is 
 evidently no personal ill-will engendered. The Aus¬ 
 trians are simply hated as the means by which an alien 
 and despotic government is imposed upon a people 
 believing themselves born for freedom and independence. 
 This hatred, then, is a feeling purely political, and 
 there is political machinery by which it is kept in a 
 state of perpetual tension. 
 
 The Comitato Veneto is a body of Venetians re¬ 
 siding within the province and abroad, who have 
 charge of the Italian interests, and who work in every 
 way to promote union with the dominions of Victor 
 Emanuel. They live for the most part in Venice, 
 where they have a secret press for the publication of 
 their addresses and proclamations, and where they re- 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 19 
 
 main unknown to the police, upon whose spies they 
 maintain an espionage. On every occasion of interest, 
 the Committee is sure to make its presence felt; and 
 from time to time persons find themselves in the pos¬ 
 session of its printed circulars, stamped with the Com¬ 
 mittee’s seal; but no one knows how or whence they 
 came. Constant arrests of suspected persons are made, 
 but no member of the Committee has yet been iden¬ 
 tified; and it is said that the mysterious body has its 
 agents in every department of the government, who 
 keep it informed of inimical action. The functions of 
 the Committee are multiplied and various. It takes 
 care that on all patriotic anniversaries (such as that of 
 the establishment of the Republic in 1848, and that of 
 the union of the Italian States under Victor Emanuel 
 in i860) salutes shall be fired in Venice, and a proper 
 number of red, white, and green lights displayed. It 
 inscribes revolutionary sentiments on the walls; and all 
 attempts on the part of the Austrians to revive popular 
 festivities are frustrated by the Committee, which 
 causes petards to be exploded in the Place of St. Mark, 
 and on the different promenades. Even the churches 
 are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was pre¬ 
 sent at the Te Deum performed on the Emperor’s 
 birthday, in St. Mark’s, when the moment of elevating 
 the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in 
 the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of 
 questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, 
 is approved by the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and 
 though possibly the strictness of the patriotic discipline 
 in which the members of the Committee keep their 
 fellow-citizens may gall some of them, yet any public 
 demonstration of content, such as going to the opera, 
 
20 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 or to the Piazza while the Austrian band plays, is 
 promptly discontinued at a warning from the Com¬ 
 mittee. It is, of course, the Committee’s business to 
 keep the world informed of public feeling in Venice, 
 and of each new act of Austrian severity. Its members 
 are inflexible men, whose ability has been as frequently 
 manifested as their patriotism. 
 
 The Venetians . are now, therefore, a nation in 
 mourning, and have, as I said, disused all their former 
 pleasures and merry-makings. Every class, except a 
 small part of the resident titled nobility (a great part 
 of the nobility is in either forced or voluntary exile), 
 seems to be comprehended by this feeling of despon¬ 
 dency and suspense. The poor of the city formerly 
 found their respite and diversion in the numerous holi¬ 
 days which fell in different parts of the year, and which, 
 though religious in their general character, were still 
 inseparably bound up in their origin with ideas of 
 patriotism and national glory. Such of these holidays 
 as related to the victories and pride of the Republic 
 naturally ended with her fall. Many others, however, 
 survived this event in all their splendor, but there is 
 not one celebrated now as in other days. It is true 
 that the churches still parade their pomps in the Piazza 
 on the day of Corpus Christi; it is true that the bridges 
 of boats are still built across the Canalazzo to the 
 church of Our Lady of Salvation, and across the Canal 
 of the Giudecca to the temple of the Redeemer, on 
 the respective festivals of these churches; but the con¬ 
 course is always meagre, and the mirth is forced and 
 ghastly. The Italianissimi have so far imbued the 
 people with their own ideas and feelings, that the re¬ 
 currence of the famous holidays now merely awakens 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 21 
 
 them to lamentations over the past and vague longings 
 for the future. 
 
 As for the carnival, which once lasted six months 
 of the year, charming hither all the idlers of the world 
 by its peculiar splendor and variety of pleasure, it 
 does not, as I said, any longer exist. It is dead, and 
 its shabby, wretched ghost is a party of beggars, hid¬ 
 eously dressed out with masks and horns and women’s 
 habits, who go from shop to shop droning forth a 
 stupid song, and levying tribute upon the shopkeepers. 
 The crowd through which these melancholy jesters pass, 
 regards them with a pensive scorn and goes about its 
 business untempted by the delights of carnival. 
 
 All other social amusements have shared in greater 
 or less degree the fate of the carnivals. At some 
 houses conversazioni are still held, and it is impos¬ 
 sible that balls and parties should not now and then 
 be given. But the greater number of the nobles and 
 the richer of the professional classes lead for the most 
 part a life of listless seclusion, and attempts to lighten 
 the general gloom and heaviness in any way are not 
 looked upon with favor. By no sort of chance are 
 Austrians, or Austriacanti ever invited to participate in 
 the pleasures of Venetian society. 
 
 As the social life of Italy, and especially of Venice, 
 was in great part to be once enjoyed at the theatre, at 
 the caffe, and at the other places of public resort, so 
 is its absence now to be chiefly noted in those places. 
 No lady of perfect standing among her people goes to 
 the opera, and the men never go in the boxes, but if 
 they frequent the theatre at all, they take places in the 
 pit, in order that the house may wear as empty and 
 dispirited a look as possible. Occasionally a bomb is 
 
22 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 exploded in the theatre, as a note of reminder, and as 
 means of keeping away such of the nobles as are not 
 enemies of the government. As it is less easy for the 
 Austrians to participate in the diversion of comedy, it 
 is a less offence to attend the comedy, though even 
 this is not good Italianissimism. In regard to the caffe, 
 there is a perfectly understood system by which the 
 Austrians go to one, and the Italians to another; and 
 Florian’s, in the Piazza, seems to be the only common 
 ground in the city on which the hostile forces con¬ 
 sent to meet. This is because it is thronged with 
 foreigners of all nations, and to go there is not thought 
 a demonstration of any kind. But the other caffe in 
 the Piazza do not enjoy Florian’s cosmopolitan im¬ 
 munity, and nothing would create more wonder in 
 Venice than to see an Austrian officer at the Specchi; 
 unless, indeed, it were the presence of a good Italian 
 at the Quadri. 
 
 It is in the Piazza that the tacit demonstration of 
 hatred and discontent chiefly takes place. Here, thrice 
 a week, in winter and summer, the military band plays 
 that exquisite music for which the Austrians are 
 famous. The selections are usually from Italian operas, 
 and the attraction is the hardest of all others for the 
 music-loving Italian to resist. But he does resist it. 
 There are some noble ladies who have not entered the 
 Piazza while the band was playing there, since the fall 
 of the Republic of 1849; an d none of good standing 
 for patriotism has attended the concerts since the 
 treaty of Villafranca in ’59. Until very lately, the 
 promenaders in the Piazza were exclusively foreigners, 
 or else the families of such government officials as 
 were obliged to show themselves there. Last summer, 
 
VENICE IN VENICE. 
 
 23 
 
 however, before the Franco-Italian convention for the 
 evacuation of Rome revived the drooping hopes of the 
 Venetians, they had begun visibly to falter in their 
 long endurance. But this was, after all, only a slight 
 and transient weakness. As a general thing, now, they 
 pass from the Piazza when the music begins, and walk 
 upon the long quay at the sea-side of the Ducal 
 Palace; or if they remain in the Piazza they pace up 
 and down under the arcades on either side; for Vene¬ 
 tian patriotism makes a delicate distinction between 
 listening to the Austrian band in the Piazza and hear¬ 
 ing it under the Procuratie, forbidding the first and 
 permitting the last. As soon as the music ceases the 
 Austrians disappear, and the Italians return to the Piazza. 
 
 But since the catalogue of demonstrations cannot 
 be made full, it need not be made any longer. The 
 political feeling in Venice affects her prosperity in a 
 far greater degree than may appear to those who do 
 not understand how large an income the city formerly 
 derived from making merry. The poor have to lament 
 not merely the loss of their holidays, but also of the 
 fat employments and bountiful largess which these oc¬ 
 casions threw into their hands. With the exile or the 
 seclusion of the richer families, and the reluctance of 
 foreigners to make a residence of the gloomy and de¬ 
 jected city, the trade of the shopkeepers has fallen off; 
 the larger commerce of the place has also languished 
 and dwindled year by year; while the cost of living 
 has constantly increased, and heavier burdens of taxa¬ 
 tion have been laid upon the impoverished and de¬ 
 spondent people. And in all this, Venice is but a type 
 of the whole province of Venetia. 
 
 The alien life to be found in the city is scarcely 
 
24 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 worth noting. The Austrians have a casino , and they 
 give balls and parties, and now and then make some 
 public manifestation of gayety. But they detest Venice 
 as a place of residence, being naturally averse to living 
 in the midst of a people who shun them like a pesti¬ 
 lence. Other foreigners, as I said, are obliged to take 
 sides for or against the Venetians, and it is amusing 
 enough to find the few English residents divided into 
 Austriacanti and Italianissimi.* Even the consuls of 
 the different nations, who are in every way bound to 
 neutrality and indifference, are popularly reputed to be 
 of one party or the other; and my predecessor, whose 
 unhappy knowledge of German threw him on his ar¬ 
 rival among people of that race, was always regarded 
 as the enemy of Venetian freedom, though I believe 
 his principles were of the most vivid republican tint 
 in the United States. 
 
 The present situation has now endured five years, 
 with only slight modifications by time, and only faint 
 murmurs from some of the more impatient, that bisogna, 
 una volt a o Valtra , romper il chiodo , (sooner or later 
 the nail must be broken.) As the Venetians are a 
 people of indomitable perseverance, long schooled to 
 obstinacy by oppression, I suppose they will hold out 
 till their union with the kingdom of Italy. They can 
 do nothing of themselves, but they seem content to 
 wait forever in their present gloom. How deeply their 
 attitude affects their national character I shall inquire 
 hereafter, when I come to look somewhat more closely 
 at the spirit of their demonstration. 
 
 * Austriacanti are people of Austrian politics, though not of 
 Austrian birth. Italianissimi are those who favor union with Italy 
 at any cost, 
 
ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 25 
 
 For the present, it is certain that the discontent of 
 the people has its peculiar effect upon the city as the 
 stranger sees its life, casting a glamour over it all, 
 making it more and more ghostly and sad, and giving 
 it a pathetic charm which I would fain transfer to my 
 pages; but failing that, would pray the reader to re¬ 
 member as a fact to which I must be faithful in all 
 my descriptions of Venice. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 I think it does not matter just when I first came 
 to Venice. Yesterday and to-day are the same here. 
 I arrived one winter morning about five o’clock, and 
 was not so full of Soul as I might have been in warmer 
 weather. Yet I was resolved not to go to my hotel in 
 the omnibus (the large many-seated boat so called), 
 but to have a gondola solely for myself and my luggage. 
 The porter who seized my valise in the station, in¬ 
 ferred from some very polyglottic Italian of mine the 
 nature of my wish, and ran out and threw that slender 
 piece of luggage into a gondola. I followed, lighted 
 to my seat by a beggar in picturesque and desultory 
 costume. He was one of a class of mendicants whom 
 I came, for my sins, to know better in Venice, and 
 whom I dare say every traveler recollects,—the merci¬ 
 less tribe who hold your gondola to shore, and affect 
 to do you a service and not a displeasure, and pretend 
 not to be abandoned swindlers. The Venetians call 
 them gra?isieri } or crab-catchers; but as yet I did not 
 
l6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 know the name or the purpose of this poverino * at the 
 station, but merely saw that he had the Venetian eye 
 for color: in the distribution and arrangement of his 
 fragments of dress he had produced some miraculous 
 effects of red, and he was altogether as infamous a 
 figure as any friend of brigands would like to meet in 
 a lonely place. He did not offer to stab me and sink 
 my body in the Grand Canal, as, in all Venetian keep¬ 
 ing, I felt that he ought to have done; but he implored 
 an alms, and I hardly know now whether to exult or 
 regret that I did not understand him, and left him 
 empty-handed. I suppose that he withdrew again the 
 blessings which he had advanced me, as we pushed out 
 into the canal; but I heard nothing, for the wonder of 
 the city was already upon me. All my nether-spirit, 
 so to speak, was dulled and jaded by the long, cold, 
 railway journey from Vienna, while every surface-sense 
 was taken and tangled in the bewildering brilliancy 
 and novelty of Venice. For I think there can be no¬ 
 thing else in the world so full of glittering and exqui¬ 
 site surprise, as that first glimpse of Venice which the 
 traveler catches as he issues from the railway station 
 by night, and looks upon her peerless strangeness. 
 There is something in the blessed breath of Italy (how 
 quickly, coming south, you know it, and how bland it 
 is, after the harsh, transalpine air!) which prepares 
 you for your nocturnal advent into the place; and O 
 you! whoever you are, that journey toward this en¬ 
 chanted city for the first time, let me tell you how 
 happy I count you! There lies before you for your 
 
 * Poverino is the compassionate generic for all unhappy persons 
 who work for a living in Venice, as well as many who decline to 
 do so. 
 
ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 27 
 
 pleasure, the spectacle of such singular beauty as no 
 picture can ever show you nor book tell you,—beauty 
 which you shall feel perfectly but once, and regret forever. 
 
 For my own part, as the gondola slipped away 
 from the blaze and bustle of the station down the 
 gloom and silence of the broad canal, I forgot that I 
 had been freezing two days and nights; that I was at 
 that moment very cold and a little homesick. I could 
 at first feel nothing but that beautiful silence, broken 
 only by the star-silvered dip of the oars. Then on 
 either hand I saw stately palaces rise gray and lofty 
 from the dark waters, holding here and there a lamp 
 against their faces, which brought balconies, and co¬ 
 lumns, and carven arches into momentary relief, and 
 threw long streams of crimson into the canal. I could 
 see by that uncertain glimmer how fair was all, but 
 not how sad and old; and so, unhaunted by any pang 
 for the decay that afterward saddened me amid the 
 forlorn beauty of Venice, I glided on. I have no doubt 
 it was a proper time to think all the fantastic things 
 in the world, and I thought them; but they passed 
 vaguely through my mind, without at all interrupting 
 the sensations of sight and sound. Indeed, the past 
 and present mixed there, and the moral and material 
 were blent in the sentiment of utter novelty and sur¬ 
 prise. The quick boat slid through old troubles of 
 mine, and unlooked-for events gave it the impulse that 
 carried it beyond, and safely around sharp corners of 
 life. And all the while I knew that this was a progress 
 through narrow and crooked canals, and past marble 
 angles of palaces. But I did not know then that this 
 fine confusion of sense and spirit was the first faint 
 impression of the charm of life in Venice. 
 
28 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Dark, funeral barges like my own had flitted by, 
 and the gondoliers had warned each other at every 
 turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries; the lines of 
 balconied palaces had never ended;—here and there 
 at their doors larger craft were moored, with dim 
 figures of men moving uncertainly about on them. At 
 last we had passed abruptly out of the Grand Canal 
 into one of the smaller channels, and from comparative 
 light into a darkness only remotely affected by some 
 far-streaming corner lamp. But always the pallid, 
 stately palaces; always the dark heaven with its trem¬ 
 bling stars above, and the dark water with its trembling 
 stars below; but now innumerable bridges, and an 
 utter lonesomeness, and ceaseless sudden turns and 
 windings. One could not resist a vague feeling of 
 anxiety, in these strait and solitary passages, which 
 was part of the strange enjoyment of the time, and 
 which was referable to the novelty, the hush, the dark¬ 
 ness, and the piratical appearance and unaccountable 
 pauses of the gondoliers. Was not this Venice, and is 
 not Venice forever associated with bravoes and unex¬ 
 pected dagger-thrusts? That valise of mine might re¬ 
 present fabulous wealth to the uncultivated imagination. 
 Who, if I made an outcry, could understand the Facts 
 of the Situation—(as we say in the journals)? To move 
 on was relief; to pause was regret for past transgres¬ 
 sions mingled with good resolutions for the future. 
 But I felt the liveliest mixture of all these emotions, 
 when, slipping from the cover of a bridge, the gondola 
 suddenly rested at the foot of a stairway before a 
 closely-barred door. The gondoliers rang and rang 
 again, while their passenger 
 
 ‘‘Divided the swift mind,” 
 
ARRIVAL ANt) FIRST BAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 2Q 
 
 in the wonder whether a door so grimly bolted and 
 austerely barred could possibly open into a hotel, with 
 cheerful overcharges for candles and service. But as 
 soon as the door opened, and he beheld the honest 
 swindling countenance of a hotel portier , he felt secure 
 against every thing but imposture, and all wild ab¬ 
 surdities of doubt and conjecture at once faded from 
 his thought, when the portier suffered the gondoliers 
 to make him pay a florin too much. 
 
 So, I had arrived in Venice, and I had felt the 
 influence of that complex spell which she lays upon 
 the stranger. I had caught the most alluring glimpses 
 of the beauty which cannot wholly perish while any 
 fragment of her sculptured walls nods to its shadow in 
 the canal; I had been penetrated by a deep sense of 
 the mystery of the place, and I had been touched al¬ 
 ready by the anomaly of modern life amid scenes 
 where its presence offers, according to the humor in 
 which it is studied, constant occasion for annoyance or 
 delight, enthusiasm or sadness. 
 
 I fancy that the ignorant impressions of the earlier 
 days after my arrival need scarcely be set down even 
 in this perishable record; but I would not wholly for¬ 
 get how, though isolated from all acquaintance and 
 alien to the place, I yet felt curiously at home in Venice 
 from the first. I believe it was because I had, after 
 my own fashion, loved the beautiful that I here found 
 the beautiful, where it is supreme, full of society and 
 friendship, speaking a language which, even in its un¬ 
 familiar forms, I could partly understand, and at once 
 making me citizen of that Venice from which I shall 
 never be exiled. It was not in the presence of the 
 great and famous monuments of art alone that I felt 
 
30 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 at home—indeed, I could as yet understand their ex¬ 
 cellence and grandeur only very imperfectly—but wher¬ 
 ever I wandered through the quaint and marvelous 
 city, I found the good company of 
 “The fair, the old;” 
 
 and to tell the truth, I think it is the best society in 
 Venice, and I learned to turn to it later from other 
 companionship with a kind of relief. 
 
 My first rambles, moreover, had a peculiar charm 
 which knowledge of locality has since taken away. 
 They began commonly with some purpose or destina¬ 
 tion, and ended by losing me in the intricacies of the 
 narrowest, crookedest, and most inconsequent little 
 streets in the world, or left me cast-away upon the un¬ 
 familiar waters of some canal as far as possible from 
 the point aimed at. Dark and secret little courts lay 
 in wait for my blundering steps, and I was incessantly 
 surprised and brought to surrender by paths that be¬ 
 guiled me up to dead walls, or the sudden brinks of 
 canals. The wide and open squares before the in¬ 
 numerable churches of the city were equally victorious, 
 and continually took me prisoner. But all places had 
 something rare and worthy to be seen: if not loveliness 
 of sculpture or architecture, at least interesting squalor 
 and picturesque wretchedness; and I believe I had less 
 delight in proper Objects of Interest than in the dirty 
 neighborhoods that reeked with unwholesome winter 
 damps below, and peered curiously out with frowzy 
 heads and beautiful eyes from the high, heavy-shut¬ 
 tered casements above. Every court had its carven 
 well to show me, in the noisy keeping of the water- 
 carriers and the slatternly, statuesque gossips of the 
 place. The remote and noisome canals were pathetic 
 
ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 *31 
 
 with empty old palaces peopled by herds of poor, that 
 decorated the sculptured balconies with the tatters of 
 epicene linen, and patched the lofty windows with ob¬ 
 solete hats. 
 
 I found the night as full of beauty as the day, 
 when caprice led me from the brilliancy of St. Mark’s 
 and the glittering streets of shops that branch away 
 from the Piazza, and lost me in the quaint recesses 
 of the courts, or the tangles of the distant alleys, where 
 the dull little oil-lamps vied with the tapers burning 
 before the street-corner shrines of the Virgin,* in mak¬ 
 ing the way obscure, and deepening the shadows about 
 the doorways and under the frequent arches. I re¬ 
 member distinctly among the beautiful nights of that 
 time, the soft night of late winter which first showed 
 me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens 
 at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli 
 Schiavoni. Lounging there upon the southern parapet 
 of the Gardens, I turned from the dim bell-towers of 
 the evanescent islands in the east (a solitary gondola 
 gliding across the calm of the water, and striking its 
 moonlight silver into multitudinous ripples), and glanced 
 athwart the vague shipping in the basin of St. Mark, 
 and saw all the lights from the Piazzetta to the Giu- 
 decca, making a crescent of flame in the air, and 
 casting deep into the water under them a crimson 
 glory that sank also down and down in my own heart, 
 and illumined all its memories of beauty and delight. 
 Behind these lamps rose the shadowy masses of church 
 and palace; the moon stood bright and full in the 
 heavens, the gondola drifted away to the northward; 
 
 * In the early times these tapers were the sole means of street 
 illumination in Venice. 
 
32 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the islands of the lagoons seemed to rise and sink 
 with the light palpitations of the waves like pictures 
 on the undulating fields of banners; the stark rigging 
 of a ship showed black against the sky; the Lido sank 
 from sight upon the east, as if the shore had com¬ 
 posed itself to sleep by the side of its beloved sea to 
 the music of the surge that gently beat its sands; the 
 yet leafless boughs of the trees above me stirred them¬ 
 selves together, and out of one of those trembling 
 towers in the lagoons, one rich, full sob burst from 
 the heart of a bell, too deeply stricken with the glory 
 of the scene, and suffused the languid night with the 
 murmur of luxurious, ineffable sadness. 
 
 But there is a perfect democracy in the realm of 
 the beautiful, and whatsoever pleases is equal to any 
 other thing there, no matter how low its origin or 
 humble its composition; and the magnificence of that 
 moonlight scene gave me no deeper joy than I won 
 from the fine spectacle of an old man whom I saw 
 burning coffee one night in the little court behind my 
 lodgings, and whom I recollect now as one of the 
 most interesting people I saw in my first days at 
 Venice. All day long the air of that neighbourhood 
 had reeked with the odors of the fragrant berry, and 
 all day long this patient old man—sage, let me call 
 him—had turned the sheet-iron cylinder in which it 
 was roasting over an open fire after the picturesque 
 fashion of roasting coffee in Venice. Now that the 
 night had fallen, and the stars shone down upon him, 
 and the red of the flame luridly illumined him, he 
 showed more grand and venerable than ever. Simple, 
 abstract humanity, has its own grandeur in Italy; and 
 it is not hard here for the artist to find the primitive 
 
ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 33 
 
 types with which genius loves best to deal. As for 
 this old man, he had the beard of a saint, and the 
 dignity of a senator, harmonized with the squalor of 
 a beggar, superior to which shone his abstract, un¬ 
 conscious grandeur of humanity. A vast and calm 
 melancholy, which had nothing to do with burning 
 coffee, dwelt in his aspect and attitude; and if he had 
 been some dread supernatural agency, turning the wheel 
 of fortune, and doing men, instead of coffee, brown, 
 he could not have looked more sadly and weirdly im¬ 
 pressive. When, presently, he rose from his seat, and 
 lifted the cylinder from its place, and the clinging 
 flames leaped after it, and he shook it, and a volume 
 of luminous smoke enveloped him and glorified him— 
 then I felt with secret anguish that he was beyond art, 
 and turned sadly from the spectacle of that sublime 
 and hopeless magnificence. 
 
 At other times (but this was in broad daylight) I 
 was troubled by the aesthetic perfection of a certain 
 ruffian boy, who sold cakes of baked Indian-meal to 
 the soldiers in the military station near the Piazza, 
 and whom I often noted from the windows of the 
 little caffe there, where you get an excellent cafft 
 bianco (coffee with milk) for ten soldi and one to the 
 waiter. I have reason to fear that this boy dealt over 
 shrewdly with the Austrians, for a pitiless war raged 
 between him and one of the sergeants. His hair was 
 dark, his cheek was of a bronze better than olive; 
 and he wore a brave cap of red flannel, drawn down 
 to eyes of lustrous black. For the rest, he gave unity 
 and coherence to a jacket and pantaloons of hetero¬ 
 geneous elements, and, such was the elasticity of his 
 spirit, a buoyant grace to feet encased in wooden shoes. 
 
 Venetian Life . 3 
 
34 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE, 
 
 Habitually came a barrel-organist, and ground before 
 the barracks, and 
 
 “Took the soul 
 Of that waste place with joy;” 
 
 and ever, when this organist came to a certain lively 
 waltz, and threw his whole soul, as it were, into the 
 crank of his instrument, my beloved ragamuffin failed 
 not to seize another cake-boy in his arms, and thus 
 embraced, to whirl through a wild inspiration of figures, 
 in which there was something grotesquely rhythmic, 
 something of indescribable barbaric magnificence, spiri¬ 
 tualized into a grace of movement superior to the energy 
 of the North and the extravagant fervor of the East. 
 It was coffee and not wine that I drank, but I fable 
 all the same that I saw reflected in this superb and 
 artistic superation of the difficulties of dancing in that 
 unfriendly foot-gear, something of the same genius 
 that combated and vanquished the elements, to build 
 its home upon sea-washed sands in marble structures 
 of airy and stately splendor, and gave to architecture 
 new glories full of eternal surprise. 
 
 So, I say, I grew early into sympathy and friend¬ 
 ship with Venice, and being newly from a land where 
 every thing, morally and materially, was in good repair, 
 I rioted sentimentally on the picturesque ruin, the 
 pleasant discomfort and hopelessness of every thing 
 about me here. It was not yet the season to behold 
 all the delight of the Lazy, out-door life of the place; 
 but nevertheless I could not help seeing that great 
 part of the people, both rich and poor, seemed to 
 have nothing to do, and that nobody seemed to be 
 driven by any inward or outward impulse. When, 
 however, I ceased (as I must in time) to be merely a 
 
ARRIVAL AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 
 
 35 
 
 spectator of this idleness, and learned that I too must 
 assume my share of the common indolence, I found it 
 a grievous burden. Old habits of work, old habits of 
 hope, made my endless leisure irksome to me, and al¬ 
 most intolerable when I ascertained fairly and finally 
 that in my desire to fulfill long-cherished but, after 
 all, merely general designs of literary study, I had 
 forsaken wholesome struggle in the currents where I 
 felt the motion of the age, only to drift into a lifeless 
 eddy of the world, remote from incentive and sen¬ 
 sation. 
 
 For such is Venice, and the will must be strong 
 and the faith indomitable in him who can long retain, 
 amid the influences of her stagnant quiet, a practical 
 belief in God’s purpose of a great moving, anxious, 
 toiling, aspiring world outside. When you have yielded, 
 as after a while I yielded, to these influences, a gentle 
 incredulity possesses you, and if you consent that such 
 a thing is as earnest and useful life, you cannot help 
 wondering why it need be. The charm of the place 
 sweetens your temper, but corrupts you; and I found 
 it a sad condition of my perception of the beauty of 
 Venice and friendship with it, that I came in some 
 unconscious way to regard her fate as my own; and 
 when I began to write the sketches which go to form 
 this book, it was as hard to speak of any ugliness in 
 her, or of the doom written against her in the hiero¬ 
 glyphic seams and fissures of her crumbling masonry, 
 as if the fault and penalty were mine. I do not so 
 greatly blame, therefore, the writers who have com¬ 
 mitted so many sins of omission concerning her, and 
 made her all light, color, canals, and palaces. One’s 
 conscience, more pr less uncomfortably vigilant else- 
 
 3* 
 
36 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 where, drowses here, and it is difficult to remember 
 that fact is more virtuous than fiction. In other years, 
 when there was life in the city, and this sad ebb of 
 prosperity was full tide in her canals, there might 
 have been some incentive to keep one’s thoughts and 
 words from lapsing into habits of luxurious dishonesty, 
 some reason for telling the whole hard truth of things, 
 some policy to serve, some end to gain. But now, 
 what matter? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 It was winter, as I said, when I first came to 
 Venice, and my experiences of the city were not all 
 purely aesthetic. There was, indeed, an every-day 
 roughness and discomfort in the weather, which tra¬ 
 velers passing their first winter in Italy find it hard 
 to reconcile with the habitual ideas of the season’s 
 clemency in the South. But winter is apt to be very 
 severe in mild climates. People do not acknowledge 
 it, making a wretched pretense that it is summer only 
 a little out of humor. 
 
 The Germans have introduced stoves at Venice, 
 but they are not in much favor with the Italians, who 
 think their heat unwholesome, and endure a degree of 
 cold, in their wish to dispense with fire, which we of 
 the winter-lands know nothing of in our houses. They 
 pay for their absurd prejudice with terrible chilblains; 
 and their hands, which suffer equally with their feet, 
 are, in the case of those most exposed to the cold, 
 objects pitiable and revolting to behold when the 
 itching and the effort to allay it has turned them into 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 37 
 
 bloated masses of sores. It is not a pleasant thing to 
 speak of; and the constant sight of the affliction among 
 people who bring you bread, cut you cheese, and weigh 
 you out sugar, by no means reconciles the Northern 
 stomach to its prevalence. I have observed that priests, 
 and those who have much to do in the frigid churches, 
 are the worst sufferers in this way; and I think no one 
 can help noting in the harsh, raw winter-complexion 
 (for in summer the tone is quite different) of the women 
 of all classes, the protest of systems cruelly starved of 
 the warmth which health demands. 
 
 The houses are, naturally enough in this climate, 
 where there are eight months of summer in the year, 
 all built with a view to coolness in summer, and the 
 rooms which are not upon the ground-floor are very 
 large, lofty, and cold. In the palaces, indeed, there 
 are two suites of apartments—the smaller and cozier 
 suite upon the first floor for the winter, and the grander 
 and airier chambers and saloons above, for defence 
 against the insidious heats of the sirocco. But, for the 
 most part, people must occupy the same room summer 
 and winter, the sole change being in the strip of carpet 
 laid meagrely before the sofa during the latter season. 
 In the comparatively few houses where carpets are the 
 rule and not the exception, they are always removed 
 during the summer—for the triple purpose of sparing 
 them some months’ wear, banishing fleas and other 
 domestic insects, and showing off the beauty of the 
 oiled and shining pavement, which in the meanest 
 houses is tasteful, and in many of the better sort is 
 often in-wrought with figures and designs of mosaic 
 work. All the floors in Venice are of stone, and 
 whether of marble flags, or of that species of composi- 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 38 
 
 tion formed of dark cement, with fragments of colored 
 marble imbedded and smoothed and polished to the 
 most glassy and even surface, and the general effect 
 and complexion of petrified plum-pudding, all the 
 floors are death-cold in winter. People sit with their 
 feet upon cushions, and their bodies muffled in furs 
 and wadded gowns. When one goes out into the sun, 
 one often finds an overcoat too heavy, but it never 
 gives warmth enough in the house, where the Venetian 
 sometimes wears it. Indeed, the sun is recognised by 
 Venetians as the only legitimate source of heat, and 
 they sell his favor at fabulous prices to such foreigners 
 as take the lodgings into which he shines. 
 
 It is those who remain in-doors, therefore, who are 
 exposed to the utmost rigor of the winter, and people 
 spend as much of their time as possible in the open 
 air. The Riva degli Schiavoni catches the warm after¬ 
 noon sun in its whole extent, and is then thronged 
 with promenaders of every class, condition, age, and 
 sex; and whenever the sun shines in the Piazza, 
 shivering fashion eagerly courts its favor. At night 
 men crowd the close little cafffl, where they reciprocate 
 smoke, respiration, and animal heat, and thus temper 
 the inclemency of the weather, and beguile the time 
 with solemn loafing,* and the perusal of dingy little 
 journals, drinking small cups of black coffee, and play¬ 
 ing long games of chess,—an evening that seemed to 
 me as torpid and lifeless as a Lap’s, and intolerable 
 when I remembered the bright, social winter evenings 
 of another and happier land and civilization. 
 
 * I permit myself, throughout this book, the use of the ex¬ 
 pressive American words loaf and loafer , as the only terms adequate 
 to the description of professional idling in Venice. 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 39 
 
 Sometimes you find a heated stove—that is to say, 
 one in which there has been a fire during the day— 
 in a Venetian house; but the stove seems usually to 
 be placed in the room for ornament, or else to be 
 engaged only in diffusing a very acrid smoke,—as if 
 the Venetian preferred to take warmth, as other people 
 do snuff, by inhalation. The stove itself is a curious 
 structure, and built commonly of bricks and plastering, 
 —whitewashed and painted outside. It is a great 
 consumer of fuel, and radiates but little heat. By dint 
 of constant wooding I contrived to warm mine; but 
 my Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when 
 they came to see me, and most amusingly regarded 
 my determination to be comfortable as part of the 
 eccentricity inseparable from the Anglo-Saxon cha¬ 
 racter. 
 
 I daresay they would not trifle with winter thus, 
 if they knew him in his northern moods. But the only 
 voluntary concession they make to his severity is the 
 scaldino , and this is made chiefly by the yielding sex, 
 who are denied the warmth of the caff£. The use of 
 the scaldino is known to all ranks, but it is the women 
 of the poorer orders who are most addicted to it. The 
 scaldino is a small pot of glazed earthen-ware, having 
 an earthen bale: and with this handle passed over the 
 arm, and the pot full of bristling charcoal, the Vene- 
 ziana’s defense against cold is complete. She carries 
 her scaldino with her in the house from room to room, 
 and takes it with her into the street; and it has often 
 been my fortune in the churches to divide my admira¬ 
 tion between the painting over the altar and the poor 
 old crone kneeling before it, who, while she sniffed 
 and whispered a gelid prayer, and warmed her heart 
 
40 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 with religion, baked her dirty palms in the carbonic 
 fumes of the scaldino. In one of the public bath¬ 
 houses in Venice there are four prints upon the walls, 
 intended to convey to the minds of the bathers a 
 poetical idea of the four seasons. There is nothing 
 remarkable in the symbolization of Spring, Summer, 
 and Autumn; but Winter is nationally represented by 
 a fine lady dressed in furred robes, with her feet upon 
 a cushioned foot-stool, and a scaldino in her lap! 
 When we talk of being invaded in the north, we 
 poetize the idea of defense by the figure of defending 
 our hearthstones. Alas! could we fight for our sacred 
 scaldini? 
 
 Happy are the men who bake chestnuts, and sell 
 hot pumpkins and pears, for they can unite pleasure 
 and profit. There are some degrees of poverty below 
 the standard of the scaldino, and the beggars and the 
 wretcheder poor keep themselves warm, I think, by 
 sultry recollections of summer, as Don Quixote pro¬ 
 posed to subsist upon savory remembrances, during 
 one of his periods of fast. One mendicant whom I 
 know, and who always sits upon the steps of a certain 
 bridge, succeeds, I believe, as the season advances, 
 in heating the marble beneath him by firm and un¬ 
 swerving adhesion, and establishes a reciprocity of 
 warmth with it. I have no reason to suppose that he 
 ever deserts his seat for a moment during the whole 
 winter; and indeed, it would be a vicious waste of 
 comfort to do so. 
 
 In the winter, the whole city sniffs, and if the 
 Pipchin theory of the effect of sniffing upon the eternal 
 interests of the soul be true, few people go to heaven 
 from Venice, I sometimes wildly wondered if Desde^ 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 41 
 
 mona, in her time, sniffed, and found little comfort in 
 the reflection that Shylock must have had a cold in 
 his head. There is comparative warmth in the broad 
 squares before the churches, but the narrow streets are 
 bitter thorough-draughts, and fell influenza lies in wait 
 for its prey in all those picturesque, seducing little 
 courts of which I have spoken. 
 
 It is, however, in the churches, whose cool twilight 
 and airy height one finds so grateful in summer, that 
 the sharpest malice of the winter is felt; and having 
 visited a score of them soon after my arrival, I de¬ 
 ferred the remaining seventy-five or eighty, together 
 with the gallery of the Academy, until advancing 
 spring should, in some degree, have mitigated the 
 severity of their temperature. As far as my imagina¬ 
 tion affected me, I thought the Gothic churches much 
 more tolerable than the temples of Renaissance art. 
 The empty bareness of these, with their huge marbles, 
 and their soulless splendors of theatrical sculpture, 
 their frescoed roofs and broken arches, was insuffer¬ 
 able. The arid grace of Palladio’s architecture was 
 especially grievous to the sense in cold weather; and 
 I warn the traveler who goes to see the lovely Ma¬ 
 donnas of Bellini to beware how he trusts himself in 
 winter to the gusty, arctic magnificence of the church 
 of the Redentore. But by all means the coldest church 
 in the city is that of the Jesuits, which those who have 
 seen it will remember for its famous marble drapery. 
 This base, mechanical surprise (for it is a trick and 
 not art) is effected by inlaying the white marble of 
 columns and pulpits and altars with a certain pattern 
 of verdantique. The workmanship is marvelously skill¬ 
 ful, and the material costly, but it only gives the church 
 
42 
 
 Venetian life. 
 
 the effect of being draped in damask linen; and even 
 where the marble is carven in vast and heavy folds 
 over a pulpit to simulate a curtain, or wrought in 
 figures on the steps of the high-altar to represent a 
 carpet, it has no richness of effect, but a poverty, a 
 coldness, a harshness indescribably table-clothy. I 
 think all this has tended to chill the soul of the sa¬ 
 cristan, who is the feeblest and thinnest sacristan con¬ 
 ceivable, with a frost of white hair on his temples 
 quite incapable of thawing. In this dreary sanctuary 
 is one of Titian’s great paintings, The Martyrdom of 
 St. Lawrence, to which (though it is so cunningly dis¬ 
 posed as to light that no one ever yet saw the whole 
 picture at once) you turn involuntarily, envious of the 
 Saint toasting so comfortably on his gridiron amid all 
 that frigidity. 
 
 The Venetians pretend that many of the late win¬ 
 ters have been much severer than those of former 
 years, but I think this pretense has less support in fact 
 than in the custom of mankind everywhere, to claim 
 that such weather as the present, whatever it happens 
 to be, was never seen before. In fine, the winter 
 climate of north Italy is really very harsh, and though 
 the season is not so severe in Venice as in Milan, or 
 even Florence, it is still so sharp as to make foreigners 
 regret the generous fires and warmly-built houses of 
 the north. There was snow but once during my first 
 Venetian winter, 1861-62; the second there was none 
 at all; but the third, which was last winter, it fell re¬ 
 peatedly to considerable depth, and lay unmelted for 
 many weeks in the shade. The lagoons were frozen 
 for miles in every direction; and under our windows 
 on the Grand Canal, great sheets of ice went up and 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 43 
 
 down with the rising and the falling tide for nearly a 
 whole month. The visible misery throughout the fire¬ 
 less city was great; and it was a problem I never 
 could solve, whether people in-doors were greater suf¬ 
 ferers from the cold than those who weathered the 
 cruel winds sweeping the squares and the canals, and 
 whistling through the streets of stone and brine. The 
 boys had an unwonted season of sliding on the frozen 
 lagoons, though a good deal persecuted by the police, 
 who must have looked upon such a tremendous in¬ 
 novation as little better than revolution; and it was 
 said that there were card-parties on the ice; but the 
 only creatures which seemed really to enjoy the weather 
 were the seagulls. These birds, which flock into the 
 city in vast numbers at the first approach of cold, and, 
 sailing up and down the canals between the palaces, 
 bring to the dwellers in the city a full sense of mid¬ 
 ocean forlornness and desolation, now rioted on the 
 savage winds, with harsh cries, and danced upon the 
 waves of the bitter brine, with a clamorous joy that 
 had something eldritch and unearthly in it. 
 
 A place so much given to gossip as Venice did not 
 fail to produce many memorable incidents of the cold; 
 but the most singular adventure -was that of the old 
 man employed at the Armenian Convent to bring 
 milk from the island of San Lazzaro to the city. One 
 night, shortly after the coldest weather set in, he lost 
 his oar as he was returning to the island. The wind, 
 which is particularly furious in that part of the lagoon, 
 blew his boat away into the night, and the good bro¬ 
 thers at the convent naturally gave up their milkman 
 for lost The winds and waters drifted him eight 
 miles from the city into the northern lagoon, and there 
 
44 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 lodged his boat in the marshes, where it froze fast in 
 the stiffening mud. The luckless occupant had nothing 
 to eat or drink in his boat, where he remained five 
 days and nights, exposed to the inclemency of cold 
 many degrees below friendship in severity. He made 
 continual signs of distress, but no boat came near 
 enough to discover him. At last, when the whole 
 marsh was frozen solid, he was taken off by some 
 fishermen, and carried to the convent, where he re¬ 
 mains in perfectly recovered health, and where no 
 doubt he will be preserved alive many years in an 
 atmosphere which renders dying at San Lazzaro a 
 matter of no small difficulty. During the whole time 
 of his imprisonment, he sustained life against hunger 
 and cold by smoking. I suppose no one will be sur¬ 
 prised to learn that he was rescued by the fishermen 
 through the miraculous interposition of the Madonna 
 —as any one might have seen by the votive picture 
 hung up at her shrine on a bridge of the Riva degli 
 Schiavoni, wherein the Virgin was represented break¬ 
 ing through the clouds in one corner of the sky, and 
 unmistakably directing the operations of the fisher¬ 
 men. 
 
 It is said that no such winter as that of 1863-4 
 has been known in Venice since the famous Anno del 
 Ghiaccio (Year of the Ice), which fell about the be¬ 
 ginning of the last century. This year is celebrated 
 in the local literature; the play which commemorates 
 it always draws full houses at the people’s theatre, 
 Malibran; and the often-copied picture, by a painter 
 of the time, representing Lustrissime and Lustrissimi 
 in hoops and bag-wigs on the ice, never fails to block 
 up the street before the shop-window in which it is 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 45 
 
 exposed. The King of Denmark was then the guest 
 of the Republic, and as the unprecedented cold de¬ 
 feated all the plans arranged for his diversion, the 
 pleasure-loving government turned the cold itself to 
 account, and made the ice occasion of novel brilliancy 
 in its festivities. The duties on commerce between 
 the city and the mainland were suspended for as long 
 time as the lagoon should remain frozen, and the ice 
 became a scene of the liveliest traffic, and was every¬ 
 where covered with sledges, bringing the produce of 
 the country to the capital, and carrying away its stuffs 
 in return. The Venetians of every class amused them¬ 
 selves in visiting this free mart, and the gentler and 
 more delicate sex pressed eagerly forward to traverse 
 with their feet a space hitherto passable only in gon¬ 
 dolas* The lagoon remained frozen, and these plea¬ 
 sures lasted eighteen days, a period of cold unequaled 
 till last winter. A popular song now declares that the 
 present generation has known a winter quite as marvel¬ 
 ous as that of the Year of the Ice, and celebrates the 
 wonder of walking on the water:— 
 
 Che bell’ affar! 
 
 Che patetico affar! 
 
 Che immense) affar! 
 
 Sora l’acqua camminar! 
 
 But after all the disagreeable winter, which hardly 
 commences before Christmas, and which ends about 
 the middle of March, is but a small part of the glorious 
 Venetian year; and even this ungracious season has a 
 loveliness, at times, which it can have nowhere but in 
 Venice. What summer-delight of other lands could 
 match the beauty of the first Venetian snow-fall which 
 * Origine delle Feste Veneziane , di Giustina Renier-Michiel, 
 
46 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 I saw? It had snowed overnight, and in the morning 
 when I woke it was still snowing. The flakes fell 
 softly and vertically through the motionless air, and 
 all the senses were full of languor and repose. It was 
 rapture to lie still, and after a faint glimpse of the 
 golden-winged angel on the bell-tower of St. Mark’s, 
 to give indolent eyes solely to the contemplation of 
 the roof opposite, where the snow lay half an inch 
 deep upon the brown tiles. The little scene—a few 
 square yards of roof, a chimney-pot and a dormer- 
 window—was all that the most covetous spirit could 
 demand; and I lazily lorded it over that domain of 
 pleasure, while the lingering mists of a dream of new- 
 world events blent themselves with the luxurious humor 
 of the moment and the calm of the snow-fall, and 
 made my reverie one of the perfectest things in the 
 world. When I was lost the deepest in it, I was in¬ 
 expressibly touched and gratified by the appearance 
 of a black cat at the dormer-window. In Venice, roofs 
 commanding pleasant exposures seem to be chiefly 
 devoted to the cultivation of this animal, and there 
 are many cats in Venice. My black cat looked wonder- 
 ingly upon the snow for a moment, and then ran across 
 the roof. Nothing could have been better. Any crea¬ 
 ture less silent, or in point of movement less soothing 
 to the eye than a cat, would have been torture of the 
 spirit. As it was; this little piece of action contented 
 me so well, that I left every thing else out of my re¬ 
 verie, and could only think how deliciously the cat 
 harmonized with the snow-covered tiles, the chimney¬ 
 pot, and the dormer-window. I began to long for her 
 reappearance, but when she did come forth and repeat 
 her maneuver, I ceased to have the slightest interest 
 
THE WINTER IN VENICE. 
 
 47 
 
 in the matter, and experienced only the disgust of 
 satiety. I had felt ennui —nothing remained but to get 
 up and change my relations with the world. 
 
 In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no 
 rest. It is at once shoveled into the canals by hun¬ 
 dreds of half-naked facchini and now in St. Mark’s 
 Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon 
 my ear; and I saw the shivering legion of poverty 
 as it engaged the elements in a struggle for the pos¬ 
 session of the Piazza. But the snow continued to fall, 
 and through the twilight of the descending flakes all 
 this toil and encounter looked like that weary kind of 
 effort in dreams, when the most determined industry 
 seems only to renew the task. The lofty crest of the 
 bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and 
 I could no longer see the golden angel upon its sum¬ 
 mit. But looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful 
 outline of St. Mark’s Church was perfectly penciled in 
 the air, and the shifting threads of the snow-fall were 
 woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a 
 structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in 
 its fantastic loveliness to be any thing but the creation 
 of magic. The tender snow had compassionated the 
 beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid 
 the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if 
 just from the hand of the builder—or, better said, just 
 from the brain of the architect. There was marvelous 
 freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great 
 arches of the facade, and all that gracious harmony 
 into which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy 
 
 * The term for those idle people in Italian cities who relieve 
 long seasons of repose by occasionally acting as messengers, porters, 
 and day-laborers. 
 
4 8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, 
 was a hundred times etherealized by the purity and 
 whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly 
 on the golden globes that tremble like peacock-crests 
 above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest 
 white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced 
 over all its work, as if exulting in its beauty—beauty 
 which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep 
 such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of 
 my whole life, and with despair to think that even the 
 poor lifeless shadow of it could never be fairly re¬ 
 flected in picture or poem. 
 
 Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore 
 upon one of the granite pillars of the Piazzetta did 
 not show so grim as his wont is, and the winged lion 
 on the other might have been a winged lamb, so 
 mild and gentle he looked by the tender light of the 
 storm.* The towers of the island churches loomed 
 faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the 
 rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like 
 phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in 
 and out of the opaque distance more noiselessly and 
 dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, 
 lay upon the mutest city in the world. 
 
 * St. Theodore was the first patron of Venice, but he was de¬ 
 posed and St. Mark adopted, when the bones of the latter were 
 brought from Alexandria. The Venetians seem to have felt some 
 compunctions for this desertion of an early friend, and they have 
 given St. Theodore a place on one of the granite pillars, while the 
 other is surmounted by the Lion, representing St. Mark. Fra 
 Marco e Todaro , is a Venetian proverb expressing the state of per¬ 
 plexity which we indicate by the figure of an ass between two 
 bundles of hay. 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 The Place of St. Mark is the heart of Venice, and 
 from this beats her life in every direction through an 
 intricate system of streets and canals that bring it 
 back again to the same centre. So, if the slightest 
 uneasiness had attended the frequency with which I 
 lost my way in the city at first, there would always 
 have been this comfort: that the place was very small 
 in actual extent, and that if I continued walking I 
 must reach the Piazza sooner or later. There is a 
 crowd constantly tending to and from it, and you have 
 but to take this tide, and be drifted to St. Mark’s— 
 or to the Rialto Bridge, whence it is directly acces¬ 
 sible. 
 
 Of all the open spaces in the city, that before the 
 Church of St. Mark alone bears the name of Piazza, 
 and the rest are called merely campi , or fields. But 
 if the company of the noblest architecture can give 
 honor, the Piazza San Marco merits its distinction, not 
 in Venice only, but in the whole world; for I fancy 
 that no other place in the world is set in such goodly 
 bounds. Its westward length is terminated by the Im¬ 
 perial Palace; its lateral borders are formed by lines 
 of palace called the New Procuratie on the right, and 
 the Old Procuratie on the left;* and the Church of 
 St. Mark fills up almost its whole width upon the east, 
 leaving space enough, however, for a glimpse of the 
 Gothic perfection of the Ducal Palace. The place 
 
 * In Republican days the palaces of the Procteratori di San 
 Marco. 
 
 Venetian Life . 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 then opens southward with the name of Piazzetta, be¬ 
 tween the eastern fagade of the Ducal Palace and the 
 classic front of the Libreria Vecchia, and expands 
 and ends at last on the mole, where stand the pillars 
 of St. Mark and St. Theodore; and then this mole, 
 passing the southern fagade of the Doge’s Palace, 
 stretches away to the Public Gardens at the eastern 
 extremity of the city, over half a score of bridges, be¬ 
 tween lines of houses and shipping—stone and wooden 
 walls—in the long, crescent-shaped quay called Riva 
 degli Schiavoni. Looking northward up the Piazzetta 
 from the Molo, the vision traverses the eastern breadth 
 of the Piazza, and rests upon the Clock Tower, gleam¬ 
 ing with blue and gold, on which the bronze Giants 
 beat the hours; or it climbs the great mass of the 
 Campanile San Marco, standing apart from the church 
 at the corner of the New Procuratie, and rising four 
 hundred feet toward the sky—the sky where the 
 Venetian might well place his heaven, as the Moors 
 bounded Paradise in the celestial expanse that roofed 
 Granada. 
 
 My first lodging was but a step out of the Piazza, 
 and this vicinity brought me early into familiar ac¬ 
 quaintance with its beauty. But I never, during three 
 years, passed through it in my daily walks, without 
 feeling as freshly as at first the greatness of this beauty. 
 The church, which the mighty bell-tower and the lofty 
 height of the palace-lines make to look low, is in 
 nowise humbled by the contrast, but is like a queen 
 enthroned amid upright reverence. The religious senti¬ 
 ment is deeply appealed to, I think, in the interior of 
 St. Mark’s; but if its interior is heaven’s, its exterior, 
 like a good man’s daily life, is earth’s; and it is this 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 51 
 
 winning loveliness of earth that first attracts you to it, 
 and when you emerge from its portals, you enter upon 
 spaces of such sunny length and breadth, set round 
 with such exquisite architecture, that it makes you glad 
 to be living in this world. Before you expands the 
 great Piazza, peopled with its various life; on your left, 
 between the Pillars of the Piazzetta, swims the blue 
 lagoon, and overhead climb the arches, one above an¬ 
 other, in excesses of fantastic grace. 
 
 Whatever could please, the Venetian seems to have 
 brought hither and made part of his Piazza, that it 
 might remain forever the city’s supreme grace; and so, 
 though there are public gardens and several pleasant 
 walks in the city, the great resort in summer and 
 winter, by day and by night, is the Piazza San Marco. 
 Its ground-level, under the Procuratie, is belted with a 
 glittering line of shops and caffe, the most tasteful and 
 brilliant in the world, and the arcades that pass round 
 three of its sides are filled with loungers and shoppers, 
 even when there is music by the Austrian bands; for, 
 as we have seen, the purest patriot may then walk 
 under the Procuratie, without stain to the principles 
 which would be hopelessly blackened if he set foot in 
 the Piazza. The absence of dust and noisy hoofs and 
 wheels tempts social life out of doors in Venice more 
 than in any other Italian city, though the tendency to 
 this sort of expansion is common throughout Italy. 
 Beginning with the warm days of early May, and con¬ 
 tinuing till the villeggiatura (the period spent at the 
 country seat) interrupts it late in September, all Venice 
 goes by a single impulse of dolce far niente , and sits 
 gossiping at the doors of the innumerable caffe on the 
 Riva degli Schiavotu, in the Piazza San Marco, and in 
 
 4* 
 
52 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the different squares in every part of the city. But, 
 of course, the most brilliant scene of this kind is in 
 St. Mark’s Place, which has a night-time glory in¬ 
 describable, won from the light of uncounted lamps 
 upon its architectural groups. The superb Imperial 
 Palace—the sculptured, arcaded, and pillared Pro- 
 curatie—the Byzantine magic and splendor of the 
 church—will it all be there when you come again to¬ 
 morrow night? The unfathomable heaven above seems 
 part of the place, for I think it is never so tenderly 
 blue over any other spot of earth. And when the sky 
 is blurred with clouds, shall not the Piazza vanish with 
 the azure?—People, I say, come to drink coffee, and 
 eat ices here in the summer evenings, and then, what 
 with the promenades in the arcades and in the Piazza, 
 the music, the sound of feet, and the hum of voices, 
 unbroken by the ruder uproar of cities where there 
 are horses and wheels—the effect is that of a large 
 evening party, and in this aspect the Piazza is like a 
 vast drawing-room. 
 
 I liked well to see that strange life, which even 
 the stout, dead-in-earnest little Bohemian musicians, 
 piping in the centre of the Piazza, could not altogether 
 substantialize, and which constantly took immateriality 
 from the loveliness of its environment. In the winter 
 the scene was the most purely Venetian, and in my 
 first winter, when I had abandoned all thought of 
 churches till spring, I settled down to steady habits of 
 idleness and coffee, and contemplated the life of the 
 Piazza. 
 
 By all odds, the loungers at Florian’s were the 
 most interesting, because they were the most various. 
 People of all shades of politics met in the dainty little 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 53 
 
 saloons, though there were shades of division even 
 there, and they did not mingle. The Italians carefully 
 assorted themselves in a room furnished with green 
 velvet, and the Austrians and the Austriacanti fre¬ 
 quented a red-velvet room. They were curious to 
 look at, those tranquil, indolent, Italian loafers, and I 
 had an uncommon relish for them. They seldom spoke 
 together, and when they did speak, they burst from 
 silence into tumultuous controversy, and then lapsed 
 again into perfect silence. The elder among them sat 
 with their hands carefully folded on the heads of their 
 sticks, gazing upon the ground, or else buried them¬ 
 selves in the perusal of the French journals. The 
 younger stood a good deal about the doorways, and 
 now and then passed a gentle, gentle jest with the 
 elegant waiters in black coats and white cravats, who 
 hurried to and fro with the orders, and called them 
 out in strident tones to the accountant at his little 
 table; or sometimes these young idlers make a journey 
 to the room devoted to ladies and forbidden to smokers, 
 looked long and deliberately in upon its loveliness, and 
 then returned to the bosom of their taciturn companions. 
 By chance I found them playing chess, but very rarely. 
 They were all well-dressed, handsome men, with beards 
 carefully cut, brilliant hats and boots, and conspicuously 
 clean linen. I used to wonder who they were, to what 
 order of society they belonged, and whether they, like 
 my worthless self, had never any thing else but loung¬ 
 ing at Florian’s to do; but I really know none of these 
 things to this day. Some men in Venice spend their 
 noble, useful lives in this way, and it was the proud 
 reply of a Venetian father, when asked of what pro¬ 
 fession his son was, “JE in Piazza /” That was, he 
 
54 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 bore a cane, wore light gloves, and stared from Florian’s 
 windows at the ladies who went by. 
 
 At the Caffe Quadri, immediately across the Piazza, 
 there was a scene of equal hopefulness. But there, all 
 was a glitter of uniforms, and the idling was carried 
 on with a great noise of conversation in Austrian- 
 German. Heaven knows what it was all about, but I 
 presume the talk was upon topics of mutual improve¬ 
 ment, calculated to advance the interests of self- 
 government and mankind. These officers were very 
 comely, intelligent-looking people with the most good- 
 natured faces. They came and went restlessly, sitting 
 down and knocking their steel scabbards against the 
 tables, or rising and straddling off with their long 
 swords kicking against their legs. They are the most 
 stylish soldiers in the world, and one has no notion 
 how ill they can dress when left to themselves, till one 
 sees them in civil clothes. 
 
 Further up toward the Fabbrica Nuova (as the Im¬ 
 perial Palace is called), under the Procuratie Vecchie, 
 is the Caffe Specchi, frequented only by young Italians, 
 of an order less wealthy than those who go to Florian’s. 
 Across from this caffe is that of the Emperor of Austria, 
 resorted to chiefly by non-commissioned officers, and 
 civilian officials of lower grade. You know the latter, 
 at a glance, by their beard, which in Venice is an 
 index to every man’s politics: no Austriacante wears 
 the imperial, no Italianissimo shaves it. Next is the 
 Caffe Suttil, rather Austrian, and frequented by Italian 
 codini, or old fogies, in politics: gray old fellows, who 
 caress their sticks with more constant zeal than even 
 the elders at Florian’s. Quite at the other end of the 
 Procuratie Nuove is the Caffe of the Greeks, a nation 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 55 
 
 which I have commonly seen represented there by two 
 or three Albanians with an Albanian boy, who, being 
 dressed exactly like his father, curiously impressed 
 me, as if he were the young of some Oriental animal 
 —say a boy-elephant, or infant camel. 
 
 I hope that the reader adds to this sketch, even in 
 the winter time, occasional tourists under the Procuratie, 
 at the caffe, and in the shops, where the shop-keepers 
 are devouring them with the keenness of an appetite 
 unsated by the hordes of summer visitors. I hope that 
 the reader also groups me fishermen, gondoliers, beg¬ 
 gars, and loutish boys about the base of St. Mark’s, 
 and at the feet of the three flag-staffs before the 
 church; that he passes me a slatternly woman and a 
 frowzy girl or two through the Piazza occasionally; 
 and that he calls down the flocks of pigeons hovering 
 near. I fancy the latter half ashamed to show them¬ 
 selves, as being aware that they are a great humbug, 
 and unrightfully in the guide-books. 
 
 Meantime, while I sit at Florian’s, sharing and 
 studying the universal worthlessness about me, the 
 brief winter passes, and the spring of the south—so 
 unlike the ardent season of the north, where it burns 
 full summer before the snows are dried upon the fields 
 —descends upon the city and the sea. But except in 
 the little gardens of the palaces, and where here and 
 there a fig-tree lifts its head to peer over a lofty stone 
 wall, the spring finds no response of swelling bud and 
 unfolding leaf, and it is human nature alone which 
 welcomes it. Perhaps it is for this reason that the 
 welcome is more visible in Venice than elsewhere, and 
 that here, where the effect of the season is narrowed 
 and limited to men’s hearts, the joy it brings is all the 
 
56 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 keener and deeper. It is certain at least that the 
 rapture is more demonstrative. The city, at all times 
 voiceful, seems to burst into song with the advent of 
 these golden days and silver nights. Bands of young 
 men go singing through the moonlit streets, and the 
 Grand Canal reechoes the music of the parties of 
 young girls as they drift along in the scarcely moving 
 boats, and sing the glories of the lagoons and the 
 loves of fishermen and gondoliers. In the Public Gar¬ 
 dens they walk and sing; and wandering minstrels 
 come forth before the cafib, and it is hard to get be¬ 
 yond the tinkling of guitars and the scraping of fiddles. 
 It is as if the city had put off its winter humor with 
 its winter dress; and as Venice in winter is the drea¬ 
 riest and gloomiest place in the world, so in spring it 
 is the fullest of joy and light. There is a pleasant 
 bustle in the streets, a ceaseless clatter of feet over 
 the stones of the squares, and a constant movement 
 of boats upon the canals. 
 
 We say, in a cheap and careless way, that the 
 southern peoples have no homes. But this is true only 
 in a restricted sense, for the Italian, and the Venetian 
 especially, makes the whole city his home in pleasant 
 weather. No one remains under a roof who can help 
 it; and now, as I said before, the fascinating out-door 
 life begins. All day long the people sit and drink 
 coffee and eat ices and gossip together before the caff£, 
 and the soft midnight sees the same diligent idlers in 
 their places. The promenade is at all seasons the 
 favorite Italian amusement; it has its rigidly fixed 
 hours, and its limits are also fixed: but now, in spring, 
 even the promenade is a little lawless, and the crowds 
 upon the Riva sometimes walk as far as the Public 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 57 
 
 Gardens, and throng all the wider avenues and the 
 Piazza; while young Venice comes to take the sun at 
 St. Mark’s in the arms of its high-breasted nurses,— 
 mighty country-women, who, in their bright costumes, 
 their dangling chains, and head-dresses of gold and 
 silver baubles, stride through the Piazza with the high, 
 free-stepping movement of blood-horses, and look like 
 the women of some elder race of barbaric vigor and 
 splendor, which, but for them, had passed away from 
 our puny, dull-clad times. 
 
 “fe la stagion die ognuno s’innamora;” 
 and now young girls steal to their balconies, and linger 
 there for hours, subtly conscious of the young men 
 sauntering to and fro, and looking up at them from 
 beneath. Now, in the shady little courts, the Venetian 
 housewives, who must perforce remain indoors, put out 
 their heads and gossip from window to window; while 
 the pretty water-carriers, filling their buckets from the 
 wells below, chatter and laugh at their work. Every 
 street down which you look is likewise vocal with 
 gossip; and if the picturesque projection of balconies, 
 shutters, and chimneys, of which the vista is full, hide 
 the heads of the gossipers, be sure there is a face 
 looking out of every window for all that, and the 
 social, expansive presence of the season is felt there. 
 
 The poor, whose sole luxury the summer is, lavish 
 the spring upon themselves unsparingly. They come 
 forth from their dark dens in crumbling palaces and 
 damp basements, and live in the sunlight and the wel¬ 
 come air. They work, they eat, they sleep out of 
 doors. Mothers of families sit about their doors and 
 spin, or walk volubly up and down with other slatternly 
 matrons, armed with spindle and distaff; while their 
 
5B 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 raven-haired daughters, lounging near the threshold, 
 chase the covert insects that haunt the tangles of the 
 children’s locks. Within doors shines the bare bald 
 head of the grandmother, who never ceases talking 
 for an instant. 
 
 Before the winter passed, I had changed my habi¬ 
 tation from rooms near the Piazza to quarters on the 
 Campo San Bartolomeo, through which the busiest 
 street in Venice passes, from St. Mark’s to the Rialto 
 Bridge. It is one of the smallest squares of the city, 
 and the very noisiest, and here the spring came with 
 intolerable uproar. I had taken my rooms early in 
 March, when the tumult under my windows amounted 
 only to a cheerful stir, and made company for me; 
 but when the winter broke, and the windows were 
 opened, I found that I had too much society. 
 
 Each campo in Venice is a little city, self-contained 
 and independent. Each has its church, of which it 
 was in the earliest times the burial-ground; and each 
 within its limits compasses an apothecary’s shop, a 
 mercer’s and draper’s shop, a blacksmith’s and shoe¬ 
 maker’s shop, a cafffi, more or less brilliant, a green¬ 
 grocer’s and fruiterer’s, a family grocery—nay, there 
 is also a second-hand merchant’s shop where you buy 
 and sell every kind of worn-out thing at the lowest 
 rates. Of course there is a coppersmith’s and a watch¬ 
 maker’s, and pretty certainly a wood-carver’s and 
 gilder’s, while without a barber’s shop no campo could 
 preserve its integrity or inform itself of the social and 
 political news of the day. In addition to all these 
 elements of bustle and disturbance, San Bartolomeo 
 swarmed with the traffic and rang with the bargains 
 of the Rialto market. 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 59 
 
 Here the small dealer makes up in boastful clamor 
 for the absence of quantity and assortment in his 
 wares; and it often happens that an almost imper¬ 
 ceptible boy, with a card of shirt-buttons and a paper 
 of hair-pins, is much worse than the Anvil Chorus with 
 real anvils. Fishermen, with baskets of fish upon their 
 heads; peddlers, with trays of housewife wares; louts 
 who dragged baskets of lemons and oranges back and 
 forth by long cords; men who sold water by the glass; 
 charlatans who advertised cement for mending broken 
 dishes, and drops for the cure of toothache; jugglers 
 who spread their carpets and arranged their temples 
 of magic upon the ground; organists who ground their 
 organs; and poets of the people who brought out new 
 songs, and sang and sold them to the crowd;—these 
 were the children of confusion, whom the pleasant sun 
 and friendly air woke to frantic and interminable up¬ 
 roar in San Bartolomeo. 
 
 Yet there was a charm about all this at first, and 
 I spent much time in the study of the vociferous life 
 under my windows, trying to make out the meaning 
 of the different cries, and to trace them back to their 
 sources. There was one which puzzled me for a long 
 time—a sharp, pealing cry that ended in a wail of 
 angry despair, and, rising high above all other sounds, 
 impressed the spirit like the cry of that bird in the 
 tropic forests which the terrified Spaniards called the 
 alma perdida. After many days of listening and trem¬ 
 bling, I found that it proceeded from a wretched, sun¬ 
 burnt girl, who carried about some dozens of knotty 
 pears, and whose hair hung disheveled round her eyes, 
 bloodshot with the strain of her incessant shrieks. 
 
 In San Bartolomeo, as in other squares, the build- 
 
6o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 ings are palaces above and shops below. The ground- 
 floor is devoted to the small commerce of various kinds 
 already mentioned; the first story above is occupied 
 by tradesmen’s families; and on the third or fourth 
 floor is the appartamento signorile. From the balconies 
 of these stories hung the cages of innumerable finches, 
 canaries, blackbirds, and savage parrots, which sang 
 and screamed with delight in the noise that rose from 
 the crowd. All the human life, therefore, which the 
 spring drew to the casements was perceptible only in 
 dumb show. One of the palaces opposite was used as 
 a hotel, and faces continually appeared at the windows. 
 By all odds the most interesting figure there was that 
 of a stout peasant serving-girl, dressed in a white 
 knitted jacket, a crimson neckerchief, and a bright- 
 colored gown, and wearing long dangling ear-rings of 
 yellowest gold. For hours this idle maiden balanced 
 herself half over the balcony-rail in perusal of the 
 people under her, and I suspect made love at that dis¬ 
 tance, and in that constrained position, to some one in 
 the crowd. On another balcony, a lady sat and knitted 
 with crimson yarn; and at the window of still another 
 house, a damsel now looked out upon the square, and 
 now gave a glance into the room, in the evident direc¬ 
 tion of a mirror. Venetian neighbors have the amiable 
 custom of studying one another’s features through 
 opera-glasses; but I could not persuade myself to use 
 this means of learning the mirror’s response to the 
 damsel’s constant “Fair or not?” being a believer in 
 every woman’s right to look well a little way off. I 
 shunned whatever trifling temptation there was in the 
 case, and turned again to the campo beneath—to the 
 placid dandies about the door of the caffe; to the 
 
COMINCIA FAR CALDO. 
 
 61 
 
 tide of passers from the Merceria; the smooth-shaven 
 Venetians of other days, and the bearded Venetians of 
 these; the dark-eyed, white-faced Venetian girls, hooped 
 in cruel disproportion to the narrow streets, but richly 
 clad, and moving with southern grace; the files of 
 heavily burdened soldiers; the little policemen loiter¬ 
 ing lazily about with their swords at their sides, and 
 in their spotless Austrian uniforms. 
 
 As the spring advances in Venice, and the heat 
 increases, the expansive delight with which the city 
 hails its coming passes into a tranquiler humor, as 
 if the joy of the beautiful season had sunk too deeply 
 into the city’s heart for utterance. I, too, felt this 
 longing for quiet, and as San Bartolomeo continued 
 untouched by it, and all day roared and thundered 
 under my windows, and all night long gave itself 
 up to sleepless youths who there melodiously bayed 
 the moon in chorus, I was obliged to abandon San 
 Bartolomeo, and seek calmer quarters where I might 
 enjoy the last luxurious sensations of the spring-time 
 in peace. 
 
 Now, with the city’s lapse into this tranquiler 
 humor, the promenades cease. The facchino gives all 
 his leisure to sleeping in the sun; and in the mellow 
 afternoons there is scarcely a space of six feet square 
 on the Riva degli Schiavoni which does not bear its 
 brown-cloaked peasant, basking face-downward in the 
 warmth. The broad steps of the bridges are by right 
 the berths of the beggars; the sailors and fishermen 
 slumber in their boats; and the gondoliers, if they do 
 not sleep, are yet placated by the season, and forbear 
 to quarrel, and only break into brief clamors at the 
 sight of inaccessible Inglesi passing near them under 
 
62 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the guard of valets de place. Even the play of the 
 children ceases, except in the Public Gardens, where 
 the children of the poor have indolent games, and 
 sport as noiselessly as the lizards that slide from 
 shadow to shadow and glitter in the sun asleep. 
 This vernal silence of the city possesses you,—the 
 stranger in it,—not with sadness, not with melancholy, 
 but with a deep sense of the sweetness of doing no¬ 
 thing, and an indifference to all purposes and chances. 
 If ever you cared to have your name on men’s 
 tongues, behold! that old yearning for applause is 
 dead. Praise would strike like pain through this deli¬ 
 cious calm. And blame? It is a wild and frantic 
 thing to dare it by any effort. Repose takes you to 
 her inmost heart, and you learn her secrets—arcana 
 unintelligible to you in the new-world life of bustle 
 and struggle. Old lines of lazy rhyme win new color 
 and meaning. The mystical, indolent poems whose 
 music once charmed away all will to understand them, 
 are revealed now without your motion. Nov^ at last, 
 you know why 
 
 44 It was an Abyssinian maid” 
 
 who played upon the dulcimer. And Xanadu? It is 
 the land in which you were born! 
 
 The slumbrous bells murmur to each other in the 
 lagoons; the white sail faints into the white distance; 
 the gondola slides athwart the sheeted silver of the 
 bay; the blind beggar, who seemed sleepless as fate, 
 dozes at his post. 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 With the winter came to an end the amusement 
 which, in spite of the existing political demonstration, 
 I had drawn from the theatres. The Fenice, the 
 great theatre of the city, being the property of private 
 persons, has not been opened since the discontents of 
 the Venetians were intensified in 1859; and it will 
 not be opened, they say, till Victor Emanuel comes 
 to honor the ceremony. Though not large, and cer¬ 
 tainly not so magnificent as the Venetians think, the 
 Fenice is a superb and tasteful theatre. The best 
 opera was formerly given in it, and now that it is 
 closed, the musical drama, of course, suffers. The 
 Italians seldom go to it, and as there is not a suf¬ 
 ficient number of foreign residents to support it in 
 good style, the opera commonly conforms to the cha¬ 
 racter of the theatre San Benedetto, in which it is 
 given, and is second-rate. It is nearly always sub¬ 
 sidized by the city to the amount of several thousand 
 florins; but nobody need fall into the error, on this 
 account, of supposing that it is cheap to the opera- 
 goer, as it is in the little German cities. A box does 
 not cost a great deal; but as the theatre is carried on 
 in Italy by two different managements,—one of which 
 receives the money for the boxes and seats, and the 
 other the fee of admission to the theatre,—there is 
 always the demand of the latter to be satisfied w r ith 
 nearly the same outlay as that for the box, before 
 you can reach your place. The pit is fitted up with 
 seats, of course, but you do not sit down there with- 
 
6 4 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 out paying. So, most Italians (who if they go at all 
 go without ladies) and the poorer sort of government 
 officials stand; the orchestra seats are reserved for 
 the officers of the garrison. The first row of boxes, 
 which is on a level with the heads of people in the 
 pit, is well enough, but rank and fashion take a loftier 
 flight, and sit in the second tier. 
 
 You look about in vain, however, for that old life 
 of the theatre which once formed so great a part of 
 Venetian gayety,—the visits from box to box, the 
 gossiping between the acts, and the half-occult flirta¬ 
 tions. The people in the boxes are few, the dressing 
 not splendid, and the beauty is the blond, unfrequent 
 beauty of the German aliens. Last winter being the 
 fourth season the Italians had defied the temptation 
 of the opera, some of the Venetian ladies yielded to 
 it, but went plainly dressed, and sat far back in boxes 
 of the third tier, and when they issued forth after the 
 opera were veiled beyond recognition. The audience 
 usually takes its enjoyment quietly; hissing now and 
 then for silence in the house, and clapping hands for 
 applause, without calling bravo ,—an Italian custom 
 which I have noted to be chiefly habitual with for¬ 
 eigners: with Germans, for instance who spell it with 
 a p and f 
 
 I fancy that to find good Italian opera you must 
 seek it somewhere out of Italy,—at London, or Paris, 
 or New York,—though possibly it might be chanced 
 upon at La Scala in Milan, or San Carlo in Naples. 
 The cause of the decay of the musical art in Venice 
 must be looked for among the events which seem to 
 have doomed her to decay in every thing; certainly it 
 cannot be discerned in any indifference of the people 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 65 
 
 to music. The dimostrazione keeps the better class of 
 citizens from the opera, but the passion for it still 
 exists in every order; and God’s gift of beautiful voice 
 cannot be smothered in tbe race by any Situation. 
 You hear the airs of opera sung as commonly upon 
 the streets in Venice as our own colored melodies at 
 home; and the street-boy when he sings has an inborn 
 sense of music and a power of execution which put 
 to shame the cultivated tenuity of sound that issues 
 from the northern mouth— 
 
 “That frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole.” 
 
 In the days of the Fenice there was a school for 
 the ballet at that theatre, but this last and least 
 worthy part of dramatic art is now an imported element 
 of the opera in Venice. No novices appear on her 
 stages, and the musical conservatories of the place, 
 which were once so famous, have long ceased to exist. 
 The musical theatre was very popular in Venice as 
 early as the middle of the seventeenth century; and 
 the care of the state for the drama existed from the 
 first. The government, which always piously forbade 
 the representation of Mysteries, and, as the theatre 
 advanced, even prohibited plays containing characters 
 of the Old or New Testament, began about the close 
 of the century to protect and encourage the instruc¬ 
 tion of music in the different foundling hospitals and 
 public refuges in the city. The young girls in these 
 institutions were taught to play on instruments, and 
 to sing,—at first for the alleviation of their own dull 
 and solitary life, and afterward for the delight of the 
 public. In the merry days that passed just before the 
 fall of the Republic, the Latin oratorios which they 
 performed in the churches attached to the hospitals 
 
 Venetian Life. 5 
 
66 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 were among the most fashionable diversions in Venice. 
 The singers were instructed by the best masters oi 
 the time; and at the close of the last century, the 
 conservatories of the Incurables, the Foundlings, and 
 the Mendicants were famous throughout Europe for 
 their dramatic concerts, and for those pupils who 
 found the transition from sacred to profane opera 
 natural and easy. 
 
 With increasing knowledge of the language, I 
 learned to enjoy best the unmusical theatre, and went 
 oftener to the comedy than the opera. It is hardly 
 by any chance that the Italians play ill, and I have 
 seen excellent acting at the Venetian theatres, both 
 in the modern Italian comedy, which is very rich and 
 good, and in the elder plays of Goldoni—composi¬ 
 tions deliciously racy when seen in Venice, where 
 alone their admirable fidelity of drawing and coloring 
 can be perfectly appreciated. The best comedy is 
 usually given to the educated classes at the pretty 
 Teatro Apollo, while a bloodier and louder drama is 
 offered to the populace at Teatro Malibran, where on 
 a Sunday night you may see the plebeian life of the 
 city in one of its most entertaining and characteristic 
 phases. The sparings of the whole week which have 
 not been laid out for chances in the lottery, are spent 
 for this evening’s amusement; and in the vast pit you 
 see, besides the families of comfortable artisans who 
 can evidently afford it, a multitude of the ragged 
 poor, whose presence, even at the low rate of eight or 
 ten soldi* apiece, it is hard to account for. It is 
 very peremptory, this audience, in its likes and dis- 
 
 * The soldo is the hundredth part of the Austrian florin, which 
 is worth about forty-nine cents of American money. 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 67 
 
 likes, and applauds and hisses with great vehemence. 
 It likes best the sanguinary local spectacular drama; 
 it cheers and cheers again every allusion to Venice; 
 and when the curtain rises on some well-known 
 Venetian scene, it has out the scene-painter by name 
 three times—which is all the police permits. The 
 auditors wear their hats in the pit, but deny that 
 privilege to the people in the boxes, and raise stormy 
 and wrathful cries of capello! till these uncover. Be¬ 
 tween acts, they indulge in excesses of water flavored 
 with anise, and even go to the extent of candied nuts 
 and fruits, which are hawked about the theatre, and 
 sold for two soldi the stick,—with the tooth-pick on 
 which they are spitted thrown into the bargain. 
 
 The Malibran Theatre is well attended on Sunday 
 night, but the one entertainment which never fails 
 of drawing and delighting full houses is the theatre 
 of the puppets, or the Marionette, and thither I like 
 best to go. The Marionette prevail with me, for I 
 find in the performances of these puppets, no new 
 condition demanded of the spectator, but rather a 
 frank admission of unreality that makes every shadow 
 of verisimilitude delightful, and gives a marvelous 
 relish to the immemorial effects and traditionary tricks 
 of the stage. 
 
 The little theatre of the puppets is at the corner of 
 a narrow street opening from the Calle del Ridotto, 
 and is of the tiniest dimensions and simplest appoint¬ 
 ments. There are no boxes—the whole theatre is 
 scarcely larger than a stage-box—and you pay ten 
 soldi to go into the pit, where you are much more 
 comfortable than the aristocrats who have paid fifteen 
 for places in the dress-circle above. The stage is 
 
 5 * 
 
68 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 very small, and the scenery a kind of coarse minia¬ 
 ture painting. But it is very complete, and every 
 thing is contrived to give relief to the puppets and 
 to produce an illusion of magnitude in their figures. 
 They are very artlessly introduced, and are maneuvered, 
 according to the exigencies of the scene, by means of 
 cords running from their heads, arms, and legs to 
 the top of the stage. To the management of the 
 cords they owe all the vehemence of their passions 
 and the grace of their oratory, not to mention a certain 
 gliding, ungradual locomotion, altogether spectral. 
 
 The drama of the Marionette is of a more elevated 
 and ambitious tone than that of the Burattini, which 
 exhibit their vulgar loves and coarse assassinations 
 in little punch-shows on the Riva, and in the larger 
 squares; but the standard characters are nearly the 
 same with both, and are all descended from the corn- 
 media a bj-accio * which flourished on the Italian stage 
 before the time of Goldoni. And I am very far from 
 disparaging the Burattini, which have great and peculiar 
 merits, not the least of which is the art of drawing the 
 most delighted, dirty, and picturesque audiences. Like 
 most of the Marionette, they converse vicariously in the 
 Venetian dialect, and have such a rapidity of utterance 
 that it is difficult to follow them. I only remember to 
 have made out one of their comedies,—a play in which 
 an ingenious lover procured his rich and successful 
 rival to be arrested for lunacy, and married the dis¬ 
 puted young person while the other was ranging in the 
 mad-house. This play is performed to enthusiastic 
 audiences; but for the most part the favorite drama of 
 the Burattini appears to be a sardonic farce, in which 
 * Comedy by the yard. 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 69 
 
 the chief character—a puppet ten inches high, with a 
 fixed and staring expression of Mephistophelean good¬ 
 nature and wickedness—deludes other and weak-minded 
 puppets into trusting him, and then beats them with a 
 club upon the back of the head until they die. The 
 murders of this infamous creature, which are always 
 executed in a spirit of jocose sangfroid, and accom¬ 
 panied by humorous remarks, are received with the 
 keenest relish by the spectators; and, indeed, the action 
 is every way worthy of applause. The dramatic spirit 
 of the Italian race seems to communicate itself to the 
 puppets, and they perform their parts with a fidelity to 
 theatrical unnaturalness which is wonderful. I have 
 witnessed death agonies on these little stages which 
 the great American tragedian himself (whoever he may 
 happen to be) could not surpass in degree of energy. 
 And then the Burattini deserve the greater credit be¬ 
 cause they are agitated by the legs from below the 
 scene, and not managed by cords from above, as at 
 the Marionette Theatre. Their audiences, as I said, 
 are always interesting, and comprise: first, boys 
 ragged and dirty in inverse ratio to their size; then 
 weak little girls, supporting immense weight of babies; 
 
 ' then Austrian soldiers, with long coats and short pipes; 
 
 lumbering Dalmat sailors; a transient Greek or Turk; 
 j Venetian loafers, pale-faced, statuesque, with the 
 drapery of their cloaks thrown over their shoulders; 
 young women, with bare heads of thick black hair; 
 old women, all fluff and fangs; wooden-shod peasants, 
 with hooded cloaks of coarse brown; then boys—and 
 boys. They all enjoy the spectacle with approval, and 
 || take the drama au grand serieux , uttering none of the 
 gibes which sometimes attend efforts to please in our 
 
70 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 own country. Even when the hat, or other instrument 
 of extortion, is passed round, and they give nothing, 
 and when the manager, in an excess of fury and dis¬ 
 appointment, calls out, “Ah! sons of dogs! I play no 
 more to you! ” and closes the theatre, they quietly and 
 unresentfully disperse. Though, indeed, fioi de cani 
 means no great reproach in Venetian parlance; and 
 parents of the lower classes caressingly address their 
 children in these terms. Whereas to call one Figure 
 of a Pig, is to wreak upon him the deadliest insult 
 which can be put into words. 
 
 In the commedia a braccio , before mentioned as the 
 inheritance of the Marionette, the dramatist furnished 
 merely the plot, and the outline of the action; the 
 players filled in the character and dialogue. With any 
 people less quick-witted than the Italians, this sort of 
 comedy must have been insufferable, but it formed the 
 delight of that people till the middle of the last cen¬ 
 tury, and even after Goldoni went to Paris he furnished 
 his Italian players with the commedia a braccio. I have 
 heard some very passable gags at the Marionette, but 
 the real commedia a braccio no longer exists, and its 
 familiar and invariable characters perform written 
 plays. 
 
 Facanapa is a modern addition to the old stock of 
 dramatis persona, and he is now without doubt the 
 popular favorite in Venice. He is always, like Pan¬ 
 talon, a Venetian; but whereas the latter is always a 
 merchant, Facanapa is any thing that the exigency 
 of the play demands. He is a dwarf, even among 
 puppets, and his dress invariably consists of black 
 knee-breeches and white stockings, a very long, full- 
 skirted black coat, and a three-cornered hat. His in- 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 71 
 
 dividual traits are displayed in all his characters, and 
 he is ever a coward, a boaster, and a liar; a glutton 
 and avaricious, but withal of an agreeable bonhomie 
 that wins the heart. To tell the truth, I care little for 
 the plays in which he has no part, and I have learned 
 to think a certain trick of his—lifting his leg rigidly 
 to a horizontal line, by way of emphasis, and saying, 
 “Capisse la?” or “Sa la?” (You understand? You 
 know?)—one of the finest things in the world. 
 
 In nearly all of Goldoni’s Venetian comedies, and 
 in many which he wrote in Italian, appear the standard 
 associates of Facanapa,—Arlecchino, ilDottore, Pantalon 
 dei Bisognosi, and Brighella. The reader is at first 
 puzzled by their constant recurrence, but never weary 
 of Goldoni’s witty management of them. They are the 
 chief persons of the obsolete commedia a braccio , and 
 have their nationality and peculiarities marked by im¬ 
 memorial attribution. Pantalon is a Venetian merchant, 
 rich, and commonly the indulgent father of a wilful 
 daughter or dissolute son, figuring also sometimes as 
 the childless uncle of large fortune. The second old 
 man is il Dottore, who is a Bolognese, and a doctor of 
 the University. Brighella and Arlecchino are both of 
 Bergamo. The one is a sharp and roguish servant, 
 busy-body, and rascal; the other is dull and foolish, 
 and always masked and dressed in motley—a gibe at 
 the poverty of the Bergamasks among whom, moreover, 
 the extremes of stupidity and cunning are most usually 
 found, according to the popular notion in Italy. 
 
 The plays of the Marionette are written expressly 
 for them, and are much shorter than the standard 
 drama as it is known to us. They embrace, however, 
 a wide range of subjects, from lofty melodrama to 
 
72 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 broad farce, as you may see by looking at the ad¬ 
 vertisements in the Venetian Gazettes for any week 
 past, where perhaps you shall find the plays performed 
 to have been: The Ninety-nine Misfortunes of Facanapa; 
 Arlecchino, the Sleeping King; Facanapa as Soldier in 
 Catalonia; The Capture of Smyrna, with Facanapa and 
 Arlecchino Slaves in Smyrna (this play being repeated 
 several nights); and, Arlecchino and Facanapa Hunting 
 an Ass. If you can fancy people going night after night 
 to this puppet-drama, and enjoying it with the keenest 
 appetite, you will not only do something toward real¬ 
 izing to yourself the easily-pleased Italian nature, but 
 you will also suppose great excellence in the theatrical 
 management. For my own part, I find few things in 
 life equal to the Marionette. I am never tired of their 
 bewitching absurdity, their inevitable defects, their 
 irresistible touches of verisimilitude. At their theatre 
 I have seen the relenting parent (Pantalon) twitchingly 
 embrace his erring son, while Arlecchino, as the large- 
 hearted cobbler who has paid the house-rent of the 
 erring son when the prodigal was about to be cast into 
 the street, looked on and rubbed his hands with ami¬ 
 able satisfaction and the conventional delight in bene¬ 
 faction which we all know. I have witnessed the base 
 terrors of Facanapa at an apparition, and I have be¬ 
 held the keen spiritual agonies of the Emperor Nicholas 
 on hearing of the fall of Sebastopol. Not many pas¬ 
 sages of real life have affected me as deeply as the 
 atrocious behavior of the brutal baronial brother-in-law, 
 when he responds to the expostulations of his friend 
 the Knight of Malta,—a puppet of shaky and vacillat¬ 
 ing presence, but a soul of steel and rock: 
 
 “Why/ O baron, detain this unhappy lady in thy 
 
OPERA AND THEATRES. 
 
 73 
 
 dungeons? Remember, she is thy brother’s wife. Re¬ 
 member thine own honor. Think on the sacred name 
 of virtue.” (Wrigglingly, and with a set countenance 
 and gesticulations toward the pit.) 
 
 To which the ferocious baron makes answer with 
 a sneering laugh, “Honor?—I know it not! Virtue?— 
 I detest it!” and attempting to pass the knight, in 
 order to inflict fresh indignities upon his sister-in-law, 
 he yields to the natural infirmities of rags and paste¬ 
 board, and topples against him. 
 
 Facanapa, also, in his great scene of the Haunted 
 Poet, is tremendous. You discover him in bed, too 
 much visited by the Muse to sleep, and reading his 
 manuscripts aloud to himself, after the manner of poets 
 when they cannot find other listeners. He is alarmed 
 by various ghostly noises in the house, and is often 
 obliged to get up and examine the dark corners of 
 the room, and to look under the bed. When at last 
 the spectral head appears at the foot-board, Facanapa 
 vanishes with a miserable cry under the bed-clothes, 
 and the scene closes. Intrinsically the scene is not 
 much, but this great actor throws into it a life, a spirit, 
 a drollery wholly irresistible. 
 
 The ballet at the Marionette is a triumph of 
 choreographic art, and is extremely funny. The prima 
 ballerina has all the difficult grace and far-fetched arts 
 of the prima ballerina of flesh and blood; and when 
 the enthusiastic audience calls her back after the scene, 
 she is humanly delighted, and acknowledges the com¬ 
 pliment with lifelike empressement. I have no doubt 
 the corps de ballet have their private jealousies and 
 bickerings, when quietly laid away in boxes, and de¬ 
 prived of all positive power by the removal of the 
 
74 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 cords which agitate their arms and legs. The puppets 
 are great in pirouette and pas seul; but I think the 
 strictly dramatic part of such spectacular ballets, as 
 The Fall of Carthage, is their strong point. 
 
 The people who witness their performances are of 
 all ages and conditions—I remember to have once 
 seen a Russian princess and some German countesses 
 in the pit—but the greater number of spectators are 
 young men of the middle classes, pretty shop-girls, and 
 artisans and their wives and children. The little 
 theatre is a kind of trysting-place for lovers in humble 
 life, and there is a great deal of amusing drama going 
 on between the acts, in which the invariable Beppo 
 and Nina of the Venetian populace take the place of 
 the invariable Arlecchino and Facanapa of the stage. 
 I one day discovered a letter at the bottom of the 
 Canal of the Giudecca, to which watery resting-place 
 some recreant, addressed as “Caro Antonio, : ” had con¬ 
 signed it; and from this letter I came to know certainly 
 of at least one love affair at the Marionette. “Caro 
 Antonio” was humbly besought, “if his heart still felt 
 the force of love,” to meet the writer (who softly re¬ 
 proached him with neglect) at the Marionette the night 
 of date, at six o’clock; and I would not like to believe 
 he could resist so tender a prayer, though perhaps it 
 fell out so. I fished up through the lucent water this 
 despairing little epistle,—it was full of womanly sweet¬ 
 ness and bad spelling,—and dried away its briny tears 
 on the blade of my oar. If ever I thought to keep it, 
 with some vague purpose of offering it to any parti¬ 
 cularly anxious-looking Nina at the Marionette as to 
 the probable writer—its unaccountable loss spared me 
 the delicate office. Still, however, when I go to see 
 
VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS. 75 
 
 the puppets, it is with an interest divided between the 
 drolleries of Facanapa, and the sad presence of ex¬ 
 pectation somewhere among the groups of dark-eyed 
 girls there, who wear such immense hoops under such 
 greasy dresses, who part their hair at one side, and 
 call each other “Cio!” Where art thou, O fickle and 
 cruel, yet ever dear Antonio? All unconscious, I think, 
 —gallantly posed against the wall, thy slouch hat 
 brought forward to the point of thy long cigar, the 
 arms of thy velvet jacket folded on thy breast, and thy 
 ear-rings softly twinkling in the light. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS. 
 
 When I first came to Venice, I accepted the fate 
 appointed to young men on the Continent. I took 
 lodgings, and I began dining drearily at the restaurants. 
 Worse prandial fortunes may befall one, but it is hard 
 to conceive of the continuance of so great unhappiness 
 elsewhere; while the restaurant life is an established 
 and permanent thing in Italy, for every bachelor and 
 for many forlorn families. It is not because the re¬ 
 staurants are very dirty—if you wipe your plate and 
 glass carefully before using them, they need not stomach 
 you; it is not because the rooms are cold—if you sit 
 near the great vase of smoldering embers in the centre 
 of each room you may suffocate in comparative com¬ 
 fort; it is not because the prices are great—they are 
 really very reasonable; it is not for any very tangible 
 fault that I object to life at the restaurants, and yet I 
 cannot think of its hopeless homelessness without re- 
 
76 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 bellion against the whole system it implies, as some¬ 
 thing unnatural and insufferable. 
 
 But before we come to look closely at this aspect 
 of Italian civilization, it is better to look first at a very 
 noticeable trait of Italian character,—temperance in 
 eating and drinking. As to the poorer classes, one 
 observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, 
 and how with a great habit of talking of meat and 
 drink, the verb mangiare remains in fact for the most 
 part inactive with them. But it is only just to say that 
 this virtue of abstinence seems to be not wholly the 
 result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes 
 which could well afford the opposite vice. Meat and 
 drink do not form the substance of conviviality with 
 Venetians, as with the Germans and the English, and 
 in degree with ourselves; and I have often noticed on 
 the Mondays-at-the-Gardens, and other social festivals 
 of the people, how the crowd amused itself with any 
 thing—music, dancing, walking, talking—any thing but 
 the great northern pastime of gluttony. Knowing the 
 life of the place, I make quite sure that Venetian 
 gayety is on few occasions connected with repletion; 
 and I am ashamed to confess that I have not always 
 been able to repress a feeling of stupid scorn for the 
 empty stomachs everywhere, which do not even ask to 
 be filled, or, at least, do not insist upon it. The truth 
 is, the North has a gloomy pride in gastronomic excess, 
 which unfits her children to appreciate the cheerful 
 prudence of the South. 
 
 Venetians eat but one meal a day, which is dinner. 
 They breakfast on a piece of bread with coffee and 
 milk; supper is a little cup of black coffee, or an ice, 
 taken at a caffe. The coffee, however, is repeated fre- 
 
VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS. 
 
 77 
 
 quently throughout the day; and in the summer-time 
 fruit is eaten, but eaten sparingly, like every thing else. 
 As to the nature of the dinner, it of course varies 
 somewhat according to the nature of the diner; but in 
 most families of the middle class a dinner at home 
 consists of a piece of boiled beef, a minestra (a soup 
 thickened with vegetables, tripe, and rice), a vegetable 
 dish of some kind, and the wine of the country. The 
 failings of the repast among all classes lean to the side 
 of simplicity, and the abstemious character of the 
 Venetian finds sufficient comment in his familiar in¬ 
 vitation to dinner: “ Venga a mangiar quatiro risi con 
 me” (Come eat four grains of rice with me.) 
 
 But invitations to dinner have never formed a 
 prime element of hospitality in Venice. Goldoni 
 notices this fact in his memoirs, and speaking of the 
 city in the early half of the last century, he says that 
 the number and excellence of the eating-houses in the 
 city made invitations to dinner at private houses 
 rare, and superfluous among the courtesies offered to 
 j strangers. 
 
 The Venetian does not, like the Spaniard, place 
 his house at your disposition, and, having extended 
 this splendid invitation, consider the duties of hospi¬ 
 tality fulfilled; he does not appear to think you want 
 to make use of his house for social purposes, preferring 
 himself the caffe, and finding home and comfort there, 
 rather than under his own roof. “What caffe do you 
 frequent? Ah! so do I. We shall meet often there.” 
 This is frequently your new acquaintance’s promise of 
 friendship. And one may even learn to like the social 
 footing on which people meet at the caffe, as well as 
 that of the parlor or drawing-room. I could not help 
 
78 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 thinking one evening at Padua, while we sat talking 
 with some pleasant Paduans in one of the magnificent 
 saloons of the Caffe Pedrocchi, that I should like to go 
 there for society, if I could always find it there, much 
 better than to private houses. There is far greater 
 ease and freedom, more elegance and luxury, and not 
 the slightest weight of obligation laid upon you for the 
 gratification your friend’s company has given you. 
 One has not to be a debtor in the sum of a friend’s 
 outlay for house, servants, refreshments, and the like. 
 Nowhere in Europe is the senseless and wasteful 
 American custom of treating known; and nothing could 
 be more especially foreign to the frugal instincts and 
 habits of the Italians. So, when a party of friends at 
 a caffe eat or drink, each one pays for what he takes, 
 and pecuniarily, the enjoyment of the evening is un¬ 
 costly or not, according as each prefers. Of course no 
 one sits down in such a place without calling for some¬ 
 thing; but I have frequently seen people respond to 
 this demand of custom by ordering a glass of water 
 with anise, at the expense of two soldi. A cup of 
 black coffee, for five soldi, secures a chair, a table, 
 and as many journals as you like, for as long time as 
 you like. 
 
 I say, a stranger may learn to like the life of the 
 caffe,—that of the restaurant never; though the habit 
 of frequenting the restaurants, to which Goldoni some¬ 
 what vaingloriously refers, seems to have grown upon 
 the Venetians with the lapse of time. The eating- 
 houses are almost without number, and are of every 
 degree, from the shop of the sausagemaker, who sup¬ 
 plies gondoliers and facchini with bowls of sguassetlo y 
 to the Caffe Florian, They all have names \yhicfi are 
 
VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS. 
 
 79 
 
 
 not strange to European ears, but which are sufficiently 
 amusing to people who come from a land where nearly 
 every public thing is named from some inspiration of 
 patriotism or local pride. In Venice the principal 
 restaurants are called The Steamboat, The Savage, The 
 Little Horse, The Black Hat, and The Pictures; and I 
 do not know that any one of them is more uncomfort¬ 
 able, uncleanly, or noisy than another, or that any one 
 of them suffers from the fact that all are bad. 
 
 You do not get breakfast at the restaurant for the 
 reason, before stated, of the breakfast’s unsubstan¬ 
 tiality. The dining commences about three o’clock 
 in the afternoon, and continues till nine o’clock, most 
 people dining at five or six. As a rule the attend¬ 
 ance is insufficient, and no guest is served until he has 
 made a savage clapping on the tables, or clinking on 
 his glass or plate. Then a hard-pushed waiter ap¬ 
 pears, and calls out, dramatically, ‘‘Behold me!” takes 
 the order, - shrieks it to the cook, and returning with 
 the dinner, cries out again, more dramatically than 
 ever, “Behold it ready!” and arrays it with a great 
 flourish on the table. I have dined in an hotel at 
 Niagara, to the music of a brass band; but I did not 
 find that so utterly bewildering, so destructive of the 
 individual savor of the dishes, and so conducive to 
 absent-minded gluttony, as I at first found the constant 
 rush and clamor of the waiters in the Venetian 
 restaurants. The guests are, for the most part, patient 
 and quiet enough, eating their minestra and boiled 
 beef in such peace as the surrounding uproar permits 
 them, and seldom making acquaintance with each other. 
 It is a mistake, I think, to expect much talk from any 
 
So 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 people at dinner. The ingenious English tourists who 
 visit the United States from time to time, find us silent 
 over our meat, and I have noticed the like trait among 
 people of divers races in Europe. 
 
 As I have said, the greater part of the diners at 
 the restaurants are single, and seem to have no know¬ 
 ledge of each other. Perhaps the gill of the fiendish 
 wine of the country, which they drink at their meals, 
 is rather calculated to chill than warm the heart. But, 
 in any case, a drearier set of my fellow-beings I have 
 never seen,—no, not at evening parties,—and I con¬ 
 ceive that their life in lodgings, at the caffe and the 
 restaurant, remote from the society of women and all 
 the higher privileges of fellowship for which men herd 
 together, is at once the most gross and insipid, the 
 most selfish and comfortless life in the world. Our 
 boarding-house life in America, dull, stupid, and flat 
 as it often is, seems to me infinitely better than the 
 restaurant life of young Italy. It is creditable to Latin 
 Europe that, with all this homelessness and domestic 
 outlawry, its young men still preserve the gentleness of 
 civilization. 
 
 The families that share the exile of the eating- 
 houses sometimes make together a feeble buzz of con¬ 
 versation, but the unfriendly spirit of the place seems 
 soon to silence them. Undoubtedly they frequent the 
 restaurant for economy’s sake. Fuel is costly, and the 
 restaurant is cheap, and its cooking better than they 
 could perhaps otherwise afford to have. Indeed, so 
 cheap is the restaurant that actual experience proved 
 the cost of a dinner there to be little more than the 
 cost of the raw material in the market. From this in- 
 
VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS. 
 
 8 l 
 
 expensiveness comes also the custom, which is common, 
 of sending home to purchasers meals from the eating- 
 houses. 
 
 As one descends in the scale of the restaurants, 
 the difference is not so noticeable in the prices of the 
 same dishes, as in the substitution of cheaper varieties 
 of food. At the best eating-houses, the Gallic tradi¬ 
 tions bear sway more or less, but in the poorer sort 
 the cooking is done entirely by native artists, deriving 
 their inspirations from the unsophisticated tastes of 
 exclusively native diners. It is perhaps needless to 
 say that they grow characteristic and picturesque as 
 they grow dirty and cheap, until at last the cook-shop 
 perfects the descent with a triumph of raciness and 
 local coloring. The cook-shop in Venice opens upon 
 you at almost every turn,—everywhere, in fact, but in 
 the Piazza and the Merceria,—and looking in, you see 
 its vast heaps of frying fish, and its huge caldrons of 
 ever-boiling broth which smell to heaven with garlic 
 and onions. In the seducing windows smoke golden 
 mountains of poletita (a thicker kind of mush or hasty- 
 j pudding, made of Indian meal, and universally eaten 
 in North Italy), platters of crisp minnows, bowls of rice, 
 roast poultry, dishes of snails and liver; and around 
 I the fascinating walls hang huge plates of bronzed 
 I earthenware for a lavish and a hospitable show, and 
 for the representation of those scenes of Venetian story 
 j which are modeled upon them in bass-relief. Here I 
 | like to take my unknown friend—my scoundrel facchino 
 ;! or rascal gondolier—as he comes to buy his dinner, 
 
 \ and bargains eloquently with the cook, who stands 
 | with a huge ladle in his hand capable of skimming 
 mysterious things from vasty depths. I am spell-bound 
 
 Venetian Life , 6 
 
82 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 by the drama which ensues, and in which all the chords 
 of the human heart are touched, from those that 
 tremble at high tragedy, to those that are shaken by 
 broad farce. When the diner has bought his dinner, 
 and issues forth with his polenta in one hand, and his 
 fried minnows or stewed snails in the other, my fancy 
 fondly follows him to his gondola-station, where he 
 eats it, and quarrels volubly with other gondoliers 
 across the Grand Canal. 
 
 A simpler and less ambitious sort of cook-shop 
 abounds in the region of Rialto, where on market 
 mornings I have seen it driving a prodigious business 
 with peasants, gondoliers, and laborers. Its more 
 limited resources consist chiefly of fried eels, fish, 
 polenta, and sguasseito. The latter is a true roba 
 veneziana , and is a loud-flavored broth, made of those 
 desperate scraps of meat which are found impracti¬ 
 cable even by the sausage makers. Another, but more 
 delicate dfsh, peculiar to the place, is the clotted blood 
 of poultry, fried in slices with onions. A great number 
 of the families of the poor breakfast at these shops 
 very abundantly, for three soldi each person. 
 
 In Venice every holiday has its appropriate viand. 
 During carnival all the butter and cheese shop-win¬ 
 dows are whitened with the snow of beaten cream— 
 panamontata. At San Martino the bakers parade troops 
 of gingerbread warriors. Later, for Christmas, comes 
 mandorlato, which is a candy made of honey and en¬ 
 riched with almonds. In its season only can any of 
 these devotional delicacies be had; but there is a species 
 of cruller, fried in oil, which has all seasons for its own. 
 On the occasion of every festa , and of every sagra 
 (which is the holiday of one parish only), stalls are 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 83 
 
 erected in the squares for the cooking and sale of 
 these crullers, between which and the religious senti¬ 
 ment proper to the whole year there seems to be some 
 occult relation. 
 
 In the winter, the whole city appears to abandon 
 herself to cooking for the public, till she threatens to 
 hopelessly disorder the law of demand and supply. 
 There are, to begin with, the caffe and restaurants of 
 every class. Then there are the cook-shops, and the 
 poulterers', and the sausage-makers’. Then, also, every 
 fruit - stall is misty and odorous with roast apples, 
 boiled beans, cabbage, and potatoes. The chestnut- 
 roasters infest every corner, and men, women, and 
 children cry roast pumpkin at every turn—till, at last, 
 hunger seems an absurd and foolish vice, and the ubi¬ 
 quitous beggars, no less than the habitual abstemious¬ 
 ness of every class of the population, become the most 
 perplexing and maddening of anomalies. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 I hope that it is by a not unnatural progress I pass 
 from speaking of dinners and diners to the kindred 
 subject of the present chapter, and I trust the reader 
 ! will not disdain the lowly-minded muse that sings this 
 I mild domestic lay. I was resolved in writing this book 
 to tell what I had found most books of travel very slow 
 to tell,—as much as possible of the everyday life of a 
 i people whose habits are so different from our own; 
 
 ] endeavoring to develop a just notion of their character, 
 
 | not only from the show-traits which strangers are most 
 
 6 * 
 
$4 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 likely to see, but also from experience of such things 
 as strangers are most likely to miss. 
 
 The absolute want of society of my own nation in 
 Venice would have thrown me upon study of the people 
 for my amusement, even if I had cared to learn nothing 
 of them; and the necessity of economical housekeeping 
 would have caused me to live in the frugal Venetian 
 fashion, even if I had been disposed to remain a 
 foreigner in every thing. Of bachelor lodgings I had 
 sufficient experience during my first year; but as most 
 prudent travelers who visit the city for a week take 
 lodgings, I need not describe my own particularly. 
 You can tell the houses in which there are rooms to 
 let, by the squares of white paper fastened to the 
 window - shutters; and a casual glance as you pass 
 through the streets, gives you the idea that the chief 
 income of the place is derived from letting lodgings. 
 Carpetless, dreary barracks the rooms usually are, 
 with an uncompromising squareness of prints upon the 
 wall, an appalling breadth of husk-bed, a niggardness 
 of wash-bowl, and an obduracy of sofa, never, never 
 to be dissociated in their victim’s mind from the idea 
 of the villanous hard bread of Venice on which the 
 gloomy landlady sustains her life with its immutable 
 purposes of plunder. Flabbiness without softness is 
 the tone of these discouraging chambers, which are 
 dear or not according to the season and the situation. 
 On the sunlit Riva during winter, and on the Grand 
 Canal in summer, they are costly enough, but they are 
 to be found on nearly all the squares at reasonable 
 rates. On the narrow streets, where most native 
 bachelors have them, they are absurdly cheap. 
 
 As in nearly all places on the Continent, a house 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 85 
 
 in Venice means a number of rooms, including a 
 whole story in a building, or part of it only, but 
 always completely separated from the story above 
 and below, or from the other rooms on the same floor. 
 Every house has its own entrance from the street, or 
 by a common hall and stairway from the ground- 
 floor, where are the cellars or store-rooms, while each 
 kitchen is usually on a level with the other rooms of 
 the house to which it belongs. The isolation of the 
 different families is secured (as perfectly as where a 
 building is solely appropriated to each), either by the 
 exclusive possession of a street-door,* or by the un¬ 
 social domestic habits of Europe. You bow and give 
 good-day to the people whom you meet in the com¬ 
 mon hall and on the common stairway, but you rarely 
 know more of them than their names, and you cer¬ 
 tainly care nothing about them. The sociability of 
 Europe, and more especially of Southern Europe, is 
 shown abroad; under the domestic roof it dwindles 
 and disappears. And indeed it is no wonder, con¬ 
 sidering how dispiriting and comfortless most of the 
 houses are. The lower windows are heavily barred 
 with iron; the wood-work is rude, even in many 
 palaces in Venice; the rest is stone and stucco; the 
 * Where the street entrance is in common, every floor has its 
 bell, which being sounded, summons a servant to some upper win¬ 
 dow with the demand, most formidable to strangers, “Chi xe?” 
 (Who is it?) But you do not answer with your name. Your reply, 
 “Amici!” (Friends!) on which comforting reassurance, the servant 
 draws the latch of the door by a wire running upward to her hand, 
 and permits you to enter and wander about at your leisure till you 
 reach her secret height. This is, supposing the master or mistress 
 of the house to be at home. If they are not in, she answers your 
 “Amici!” with “No ghe ne xe!” (Nobody here!) and lets down a 
 basket by a string outside the window, and fishes up your card. 
 
86 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 walls are not often papered, though they are some¬ 
 times painted: the most pleasing and inviting feature 
 of the interior is the frescoed ceiling of the better 
 rooms. The windows shut imperfectly, the heavy 
 wooden blinds imperviously (is it worth while to ob¬ 
 serve that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?); 
 the doors lift slantingly from the floor, in which their 
 lower hinges are imbedded; the stoves are of plaster, 
 and consume fuel without just return of heat; the 
 balconies alone are always charming, whether they 
 hang high over the streets, or look out upon the 
 canals, and, with the gayly painted ceilings, go far to 
 make the houses habitable. 
 
 It happens in the case of houses, as with nearly 
 every thing else in Italy, that you pay about the same 
 price for half the comfort that you get in America. 
 
 In Venice, most of the desirable situations are on the 
 Grand Canal; but here the rents are something ab¬ 
 surdly high, when taken in consideration with the fact 
 that the city is not made a place of residence by 
 foreigners like Florence, and that it has no commercial 
 activity to enhance the cost of living. House-hunting, 
 under these circumstances, becomes an office of con¬ 
 stant surprise and disconcertment to the stranger. You 
 look, for example, at a suite of rooms in a tumble- 
 down old palace, where the walls, shamelessly smarted 
 up with coarse paper, crumble at your touch; where 
 the floor rises and falls like the sea, and the door- ] 
 frames and window-cases have long lost all recollection 
 of the plumb. Madama la Baronessa is at present 
 occupying these pleasant apartments, and you only 
 gain admission to them after an embassy to procure 
 her permission. Madama la Baronessa receives you 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 87 
 
 courteously, and you pass through her rooms, which 
 are a little in disorder, the Baronessa being on the 
 point of removal. Madama la Baronessa’s hoop-skirts 
 prevail upon the floors; and at the side of the couch 
 which her form lately pressed in slumber, you observe 
 a French novel and a wasted candle in the society of 
 a half-bottle of the wine of the country. A bedroomy 
 smell pervades the whole suite, and through the open 
 window comes a curious stench explained as the odor 
 of Madama la Baronessa’s guinea-pigs, of which she 
 is so fond that she has had their sty placed im¬ 
 mediately under her window in the garden. It is 
 this garden which has first taken your heart, with a 
 glimpse caught through the great open door of the 
 palace. It is disordered and wild, but so much the 
 better; its firs are very thick and dark, and there are 
 certain statues, fauns and nymphs, which weather 
 stains and mosses have made much decenter than the 
 sculptor intended. You think that for this garden’s 
 sake you could put up with the house, which must be 
 very cheap. What is the price of the rooms? you ask 
 of the smiling landlord. He answers, without winking, 
 “If taken for several years, a thousand florins a year.” 
 At which you suppress the whistle of disdainful sur¬ 
 prise, and say you think it will not suit. He calls 
 your attention to the sun, which comes in at every 
 side, which will roast you in summer, and will not (as 
 he would have you think) warm you in winter. “But 
 there is another apartment,”—through which you drag 
 languidly. It is empty now, being last inhabited by 
 an English Ledi,—and her stove-pipes went out of 
 the windows, and blackened the shabby stucco front 
 of the villanous old palace. 
 
88 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Iii a back court, upon a filthy canal, you chance 
 on a house, the curiously frescoed front of which 
 tempts you within. A building which has a lady and 
 gentleman painted in fresco, and making love from 
 balcony to balcony, on the fa£ade, as well as Arlecchino 
 depicted in the act of leaping from the second to the 
 third story, promises something. Promises something, 
 but does not fulfill the promise. The interior is fresh, 
 clean, and new, and cold and dark as a cellar. This 
 house—that is to say, a floor of the house—you may 
 have for four hundred florins a year; and then fare¬ 
 well the world and the light of the sun! for neither 
 will ever find you in that back court, and you will 
 never see any body but the neighboring laundresses 
 and their children, who cannot enough admire the 
 front of your house. 
 
 E via in seguito! This is of house keeping, not 
 house-hunting. There are pleasant and habitable 
 houses in Venice—but they are not cheap, as many 
 of the uninhabitable houses also are not. Here, dis¬ 
 comfort and ruin have their price, and the tumble- 
 down is patched up and sold at rates astonishing to 
 innocent strangers who come from countries in good 
 repair, where the tumble-down is worth nothing. If I 
 were not ashamed of the idle and foolish old super¬ 
 stitions in which I once believed concerning life in 
 Italy, I would tell how I came gradually to expect 
 very little for a great deal; and how a knowledge of 
 many houses to let, made me more and more con¬ 
 tented with the house we had taken. 
 
 It was in one corner of an old palace on the 
 Grand Canal, and the window of the little parlor 
 looked down upon the water, which had made friends 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 with its painted ceiling, and bestowed tremulous, 
 golden smiles upon it when the sun shone. The 
 dining-room was not so much favored by the water, 
 but it gave upon some green and ever-rustling tree- 
 tops, that rose to it from a tiny garden-ground, no 
 bigger than a pocket handkerchief. Through this 
 window, also, we could see the quaint, picturesque 
 life of the canal; and from another room we could 
 reach a little terrace above the water. We were not 
 in the appartamento signor He *—that was above,—but 
 we were more snugly quartered on the first story from 
 the ground-floor, commonly used as a winter apartment 
 in the old times. But it had been cut up, and suites 
 of rooms had been broken according to the caprice of 
 successive landlords, till it was not at all palatial any 
 more. The upper stories still retained something of 
 former grandeur, and had acquired with time more 
 than former discomfort. We were not envious of 
 them, for they were humbly let at a price less than 
 we paid; though we could not quite repress a covetous 
 yearning for their arched and carven windows, which 
 we saw sometimes from the canal, above the tops of 
 the garden trees. 
 
 The gondoliers used always to point out our palace 
 (which was called Casa Falier) as the house in which 
 Marino Faliero was born; and for a long time we 
 clung to the hope that it might be so. But however 
 pleasant it was, we were forced, on reading up the 
 I subject a little, to relinquish our illusion, and accredit 
 an old palace at Santi Apostoli with the distinction 
 we would fain have claimed for ours. I am rather at 
 
 * The noble floor—as the second or third story of the palace is 
 called. 
 
QO 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 a loss to explain how it made our lives in Casa Falier 
 any pleasanter to think that a beheaded traitor had 
 been born in it, but we relished the superstition 
 amazingly as long as we could possibly believe in it. 
 What went far to confirm us at first in our credulity 
 was the residence, in another part of the palace, of 
 the Canonico Falier, a lineal descendant of the un¬ 
 happy doge. He was a very mild-faced old priest, 
 with a white head, which he carried downcast, and 
 crimson legs, on which he moved but feebly. He 
 owned the rooms in which he lived, and the apartment 
 in the front of the palace just above our own. The 
 rest of the house belonged to another, for in Venice 
 many of the palaces are divided up and sold among 
 different purchasers, floor by floor, and sometimes even 
 room by room. 
 
 But the tenantry of Casa Falier was far more 
 various than its proprietorship. Over our heads dwelt 
 a Dalmatian family; below our feet a Frenchwoman; 
 at our right, upon the same floor, an English gentle¬ 
 man; under him a French family; and over him the 
 family of a marquis in exile from Modena. Except 
 
 with Mr.-, the Englishman, who was at once our 
 
 friend and landlord (impossible as this may appear to 
 those who know any thing of landlords in Italy), we 
 had no acquaintance, beyond that of salutation, with 
 the many nations represented in our house. We could 
 not help holding the French people in some sort 
 responsible for the invasion of Mexico; and, though 
 opportunity offered for cultivating the acquaintance of 
 the Modenese, we did not improve it. 
 
 As for our Dalmatian friends, we met them and 
 bowed to them a great deal, and we heard them 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 91 
 
 overhead in frequent athletic games, involving noise 
 as of the maneuvering of cavalry; and as they stood 
 a good deal on their balcony, and looked down upon 
 us on ours, we sometimes enjoyed seeing them 
 admirably foreshortened like figures in a frescoed 
 ceiling. The father of this family was a little man of 
 a solemn and impressive demeanor, who had no other 
 occupation but to walk up and down the city and 
 view its monuments, for which purpose he one day 
 informed us he had left his native place in Dalmatia, 
 after forty years’ study of Venetian history. He 
 further told us that this was by no means worth the 
 time given it; that whereas the streets of Venice were 
 sepulchres in point of narrowness and obscurity, he 
 had a house in Zara, from the windows of which you 
 might see for miles uninterruptedly! This little gen¬ 
 tleman wore a black hat, in the last livid polish of 
 respectability, and I think fortune was not his friend. 
 The hat was too large for him, as the hats of Italians 
 always are; it came down to his eyes, and he carried 
 a cane. Every evening he marched solemnly at the 
 head of a procession of his handsome young children, 
 who went to hear the military music in St. Mark’s 
 Square. 
 
 The entrance to the house of the Dalmatians—we 
 never knew their names—gave access also to a house 
 in the story above them, which belonged to some 
 mysterious person described on his door-plate as “Co. 
 Prata.” I think we never saw Co. Prata himself, and 
 only by chance some members of his family when they 
 came back from their summer in the country to spend 
 the winter in the city. Prata’s “Co.,” we gradually 
 learnt, meant “Conte,” and the little counts and coun- 
 
92 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 tesses, his children, immediately on their arrival took 
 an active part in the exercises of the Dalmatian 
 cavalry. Later in the fall, certain of the count’s vassals 
 came to the riva * ** in one of the great boats of the Po, 
 with a load of brush and corncobs for fuel—and this 
 is all we ever knew of our neighbors on the fourth 
 floor. As long as he remained “Co.” we yearned to 
 know who and what he was; being interpreted as 
 Conte Prata, he ceased to interest us. 
 
 Such, then, was the house, and such the neighbor¬ 
 hood in which two little people, just married, came to 
 live in Venice. 
 
 They were by nature of the order of shorn lambs, 
 and Providence, tempering the inclemency of the do¬ 
 mestic situation, gave them Giovanna. 
 
 The house was furnished throughout, and Giovanna 
 had been furnished with it. She was at hand to greet 
 the new-comers, and “This is my wife, the new mis¬ 
 tress,” said the young Paron,* % with the bashful pride 
 proper to the time and place. 
 
 Giovanna glowed welcome, and said, with adven¬ 
 turous politeness, she was very glad of it. 
 
 “ Serva sua!” 
 
 The Parona , not knowing Italian, laughed in 
 English. 
 
 So Giovanna took possession of us, and acting upon 
 the great truth that handsome is that handsome does, 
 began at once to make herself a thing of beauty. 
 
 * The gondola landing-stairs which descend to the water before 
 palace-doors and at the ends of streets. 
 
 ** Padrone in Italian. A salutation with Venetian friends, and 
 the title by which Venetian servants always designate their em¬ 
 ployers. 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 93 
 
 As a measure of convenience and of deference to 
 her feelings, we immediately resolved to call her G., 
 merely, when speaking of her in English, instead of 
 Giovanna, which would have troubled her with con¬ 
 jecture concerning what was said of her. And as G. 
 thus became the centre around which our domestic 
 life revolved, she must be somewhat particularly 
 treated of in this account of our housekeeping. I 
 suppose that, given certain temperaments and certain 
 circumstances, this would have been much like keeping 
 play-house anywhere; in Venice it had, but for the 
 unmistakable florins it cost, a curious property of 
 unreality and impermanency. It is sufficiently bad to 
 live in a rented house; in a house which you have 
 hired ready-furnished, it is long till your life takes root, 
 and Home blossoms up in the alien place. For a 
 great while we regarded our house merely as very 
 pleasant lodgings, and we were slow to form any rela¬ 
 tions which could take from our residence its tem¬ 
 porary character. Had we but thought to get in debt 
 to the butcher, the baker, and the grocer, we might 
 have gone far to establish ourselves at once; but we 
 imprudently paid our way, and consequently had no 
 ties to bind us to our fellow-creatures. In Venice pro¬ 
 visions are bought by housekeepers on a scale surpris¬ 
 ingly small to one accustomed to wholesale American 
 ways, and G., having the purse, made our little 
 purchases in cash, never buying more than enough for 
 one meal at a time. Every morning, the fruits and 
 vegetables are distributed from the great market at 
 the Rialto among a hundred greengrocers’ stalls in all 
 parts of the city; bread (which is never made at home) 
 is found fresh at the baker’s; there is a butcher’s stall 
 
94 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 in each campo with fresh meat. These shops are 
 therefore resorted to for family supplies day by day; 
 and the poor lay in provisions there in portions gra¬ 
 duated to a soldo of their ready means. A great 
 Bostonian whom I remember to have heard speculate 
 on the superiority of a state of civilization in which 
 you could buy two cents’ worth of beef to that in 
 which so small a quantity was unpurchasable, would 
 find the system perfected here, where you can buy 
 half a cent’s worth. It is a system friendly to poverty, 
 and the small retail prices approximate very closely 
 the real value of the stuff sold, as we sometimes 
 proved by offering to purchase in quantity. Usually 
 no reduction would be made from the retail rate, and 
 it was sufficiently amusing to have the dealer figure 
 up the cost of the quantity we proposed to buy, and 
 then exhibit an exact multiplication of his retail rate 
 by our twenty or fifty. Say an orange is worth a 
 soldo: you get no more than a hundred for a florin, 
 though the dealer will cheerfully go under that number 
 if he can cheat you in the count. So in most things 
 we found it better to let G. do the marketing in her 
 own small Venetian fashion, and “guard our strange¬ 
 ness.” 
 
 But there were some things which must be brought 
 to the house by the dealers, such as water for drinking 
 and cooking, which is drawn from public cisterns in 
 the squares, and carried by stout young girls to all the 
 houses. These bigolanti all come from the mountains 
 of Friuli; they all have rosy cheeks, white teeth, bright 
 eyes, and no waists whatever (in the fashionable sense), 
 but abundance of back. The cisterns are opened about 
 eight o’clock in the morning, and then their day’s work 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 95 
 
 begins with chatter, and splashing, and drawing up 
 buckets from the wells; and each sturdy little maiden 
 in turn trots off under a burden of two buckets,— 
 one appended from either end of a bow resting upon 
 the right shoulder. The water is very good, for it is 
 the rain which falls on the shelving surface of the 
 campo, and soaks through a bed of sea-sand around 
 the cisterns into the cool depths below. The bigolante 
 comes every morning and empties her brazen buckets 
 into the great picturesque jars of porous earthenware 
 which ornament Venetian kitchens; and the daily 
 supply of water costs a moderate family about a florin 
 a month. 
 
 Fuel is likewise brought to your house, but this 
 arrives in boats. It is cut upon the eastern shore of 
 the Adriatic, and comes to Venice in small coasting 
 vessels, each of which has a plump captain in com¬ 
 mand, whose red face is so cunningly blended with 
 his cap of scarlet flannel that it is hard on a breezy 
 day to tell where the one begins and the other ends. 
 These vessels anchor off the Custom House in the 
 Guidecca Canal in the fall, and lie there all winter 
 (or until their cargo of fuel is sold), a great part of 
 the time under the charge solely of a small yellow 
 dog of the irascible breed common to the boats of the 
 Po. Thither the smaller dealers in fire-wood resort, 
 and carry thence supplies of fuel to all parts of the 
 city, melodiously crying their wares up and down the 
 canals, and penetrating the land on foot with specimen 
 bundles of fagots in their arms. They are not, as a 
 class, imaginative, I think—their fancy seldom rising 
 beyond the invention that their fagots are beautiful 
 and sound and dry. But our particular woodman was, 
 
g6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 in his way, a gifted man. Long before I had dealings 
 with him, I knew him by the superb song, or rather 
 incantation, with which he announced his coming on 
 the Grand Canal. The purport of this was merely 
 that his bark was called the Beautiful Caroline, and 
 that his fagots were fine; but he so dwelt upon the 
 hidden beauties of this idea, and so prolonged their 
 effect upon the mind by artful repetition, and the full, 
 round, and resonant roar with which he closed his 
 triumphal hymn, that the spirit was taken with the 
 charm, and held in breathless admiration. By all 
 odds, this woodman’s cry was the most impressive of 
 all the street cries of Venice. There may have been 
 an exquisite sadness and sweetness in the wail of the 
 chimney-sweep; a winning pathos in the voice of the 
 vender of roast pumpkin; an oriental fancy and 
 splendor in the fruiterers who cried “Melons with 
 hearts of fire!” and “Juicy pears that bathe your 
 beard!”—there may have been something peculiarly 
 effective in the song of the chestnut-man who shouted 
 “Fat chestnuts,” and added, after a lapse in which 
 you got almost beyond hearing, “and well cooked!”— 
 I do not deny that there was a seductive sincerity in 
 the proclamation of one whose peaches could not be 
 called beautiful to look upon, and were consequently 
 advertised as “Ugly, but good!”—I say nothing to 
 detract from the merits of harmonious chair-menders; 
 —to my ears the shout of the melodious fisherman 
 was delectable music, and all the birds of summer 
 sang in the voices of the countrymen who sold finches 
 and larks in cages, and roses and pinks in pots;—but 
 I say, after all, none of these people combined the 
 vocal power, the sonorous movement, the delicate 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 97 
 
 grace, and the vast compass of our woodman. Yet 
 this man, as far as virtue went, was vox et praterea 
 nihil. He was a vagabond of the most abandoned; 
 he was habitually in drink, and I think his sins had 
 gone near to make him mad—at any rate he was of 
 a most lunatical deportment. In other lands, the man 
 of whom you are a regular purchaser, serves you 
 well; in Italy he conceives that his long service gives 
 him the right to plunder you if possible. I felt in 
 every fibre that this woodman invariably cheated me 
 in measurement, and, indeed, he scarcely denied it on 
 accusation. But my single experience of the more 
 magnificent scoundrels of whom he bought the wood 
 originally, contented me with the swindle with which I 
 had become familiarized. On this occasion I took a 
 boat and went to the Custom House, to get my fuel at 
 first hand. The captain of the ship which I boarded 
 wished me to pay more than I gave for fuel delivered 
 at my door, and thereupon ensued the tragic scene of 
 bargaining, as these things are conducted in Italy. We 
 stood up and bargained, we sat down and bargained; 
 the captain turned his back upon me in indignation; I 
 parted from him and took to my boat in scorn; he 
 called me back and displayed the wood—good, sound, 
 dryer than bones; he pointed to the threatening 
 heavens, and declared that it would snow that night, 
 and on the morrow I could not get wood for twice 
 the present price; but I laughed incredulously. Then 
 my captain took another tack, and tried to make the 
 contract in obsolete currencies, in Austrian pounds, in 
 Venetian pounds, but as I inexorably reduced these 
 into familiar money, he paused desperately, and made 
 me an offer which I accepted with mistaken exultation, 
 
 Venetian Life. 7 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 For my captain was shrewder than I, and held arts of 
 measurement in reserve against me. He agreed that 
 the measurement and transportation should not cost 
 me the value of his tooth-pick—quite an old and 
 worthless one—which he showed me. Yet I was sur¬ 
 prised into the payment of a youth whom this man 
 called to assist at the measurement, and I had to give 
 the boatman drink-money at the end. He promised 
 that the measure should be just: yet if I lifted my eye 
 from the work he placed the logs slantingly on the 
 measure, and threw in knotty chunks that crowded 
 wholesome fuel out, and let the daylight through and 
 through the pile. I protested, and he admitted the 
 wrong when I pointed it out: “Ga razon , lu!” (He’s 
 right!) he said to his fellows in infamy, and throwing 
 aside the objectionable pieces, proceeded to evade 
 justice by new artifices. When I had this memorable 
 load of wood housed at home, I found that it had 
 cost just what I paid my woodman, and that I had 
 additionally lost my self-respect in being plundered 
 before my face, and I resolved thereafter to be cheated 
 in quiet dignity behind my back. The woodman ex¬ 
 ulted in his restored sovereignty, and I lost nothing in 
 penalty for my revolt. 
 
 Among other provisioners who come to your house 
 in Venice, are those ancient peasant-women, who bring 
 fresh milk in bottles carefully packed in baskets 
 filled with straw. They set off the whiteness of their 
 wares by the brownness of their sunburnt hands and 
 faces, and bear in their general stoutness and burli¬ 
 ness of presence, a curious resemblance to their Own 
 comfortable bottles. They wear broad straw hats, 
 and dangling ear-rings of yellow gold, and are the 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE, 
 
 99 
 
 pleasantest sight of the morning streets of Venice, to 
 the stoniness of which they bring a sense of the country’s 
 clovery pasturage, in the milk just drawn from the great 
 cream-colored cows. 
 
 Fishermen, also, come down the little calli —with 
 shallow baskets of fish upon their heads and under 
 either arm, and cry their soles and mackerel to the 
 neighborhood, stopping now and then at some door to 
 bargain away the eels which they chop into sections 
 as the thrilling drama proceeds, and hand over as a 
 denouement at the purchaser’s own price. “Beautiful 
 and all alive!” is the engaging cry with which they 
 hawk their fish. * 
 
 Besides these daily purveyors, there are men of 
 divers arts who come to exercise their crafts at your 
 house: not chimney-sweeps merely, but glaziers, and 
 that sort of workmen, and, best of all, chair-menders, 
 -—who bear a mended chair upon their shoulders for 
 a sign, with pieces of white wood for further mending, 
 a drawing-knife, a hammer, and a sheaf of rushes, and 
 who sit down at your door, and plait the rush bottoms 
 of your kitchen-chairs anew, and make heaps of 
 fragrant whittlings with their knives, and gossip with 
 your serving-woman. 
 
 But in the mean time our own serving-woman 
 Giovanna, the great central principle of our house¬ 
 keeping, is waiting to be personally presented to the 
 company. In Italy, there are old crones so haggard, 
 that it is hard not to believe them created just as 
 crooked, and foul, and full of fluff and years as you 
 behold them, and you cannot understand how so much 
 frowziness and so little hair, so great show of fangs 
 
 r 
 
too 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE* 
 
 and so few teeth, are growths from any ordinary 
 human birth. G. is no longer young, but she is not 
 after the likeness of these old women. It is of a 
 middle age, unbeginning, interminable, of which she 
 gives you the impression. She has brown apple-cheeks, 
 just touched with frost; her nose is of a strawberry 
 formation abounding in small dints, and having the 
 slightly shrunken effect observable in tardy perfections 
 of the fruit mentioned. A tough, pleasant, indestructible 
 woman—for use, we thought, not ornament—the mother 
 of a family, a good Catholic, and the flower of serving- 
 women. 
 
 I do not think that Venetian servants are, as a 
 class, given to pilfering; but knowing ourselves subject 
 by nature to pillage, we cannot repress a feeling of 
 gratitude to G. that she does not prey upon us. She 
 strictly accounts for all money given her at the close 
 of each week, and to this end keeps a kind of account- 
 book, which I cannot help regarding as in some sort 
 an inspired volume, being privy to the fact, confirmed 
 by her own confession, that G. is not good for reading 
 and writing. On settling with her I have been per¬ 
 mitted to look into this book, which is all in capital 
 letters,—each the evident result of serious labor,— 
 with figures representing combinations of the pot-hook 
 according to bold and original conceptions. The 
 spelling is also a remarkable effort of creative genius. 
 The only difficulty under which the author labors in 
 regard to the book is the confusion naturally resulting 
 from the effort to get literature right side up when it 
 has got upside down. The writing is a kind of 
 pugilism—the strokes being made straight out from 
 the shoulder. The account-book is always carried 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 IOI 
 
 about with her in a fathomless pocket overflowing with 
 the aggregations of a housekeeper who can throw no¬ 
 thing away, to wit: match-boxes, now appointed to 
 hold buttons and hooks-and-eyes; beeswax in the 
 lump; the door-key (which in Venice takes a formidable 
 size, and impresses you at first sight as ordnance); 
 a patch-bag; a porte-monnaie; many lead-pencils in 
 the stump; scissors, pin-cushions, and the Beata Vergine 
 in a frame. Indeed, this incapability of throwing 
 things away is made to bear rather severely upon us 
 in some things, such as the continual reappearance of 
 familiar dishes at table—particularly veteran bifsteca. 
 But we fancy that the same frugal instinct is exercised 
 to our advantage and comfort in other things, for G. 
 makes a great show and merit of denying our charity 
 to those bold and adventurous children of sorrow, who 
 do not scruple to ring your door-bell, and demand 
 alms. It is true that with G., as with every Italian, 
 almsgiving enters into the theory and practice of 
 Christian life, but she will not suffer misery to abuse 
 its privileges. She has no hesitation, however, in 
 bringing certain objects of compassion to our notice, 
 and she procures small services to be done for us by 
 many lame and halt of her acquaintance. Having 
 bought my boat (I come, in time, to be willing to sell 
 it again for half its cost to me), I require a menial to 
 clean it now and then, and Giovanna first calls me a 
 youthful Gobbo for the work,—a festive hunchback, a 
 bright-hearted whistler of comic opera. Whether this 
 blithe humor is not considered decent, I do not know, 
 but though the Gobbo serves me faithfully, I find him 
 one day replaced by a venerable old man, whom— 
 from his personal resemblance to Time—I should 
 
102 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 think much better occupied with an hour-glass, or 
 engaged with a scythe in mowing me and other 
 mortals down, than in cleaning my boat. But all day 
 long he sits on my riva in the sun, when it shines, 
 gazing fixedly at my boat; and when the day is dark, 
 he lurks about the street, accessible to my slightest 
 boating impulse. He salutes my going out and com¬ 
 ing in with grave reverence, and I think he has no 
 work to do but that which G.’s wise compassion has 
 given him from me. Suddenly, like the Gobbo, 
 the Vecchio also disappears, and I hear vaguely—for 
 in Venice you never know any thing with precision— 
 that he has found a regular employment in Padua, and 
 again that he is dead. While he lasts, G. has a 
 pleasant, even a sportive manner with this poor old 
 man, calculated to cheer his declining years; but, as I 
 say, cases of insolent and aggressive misery fail to 
 touch her. The kind of wretchedness that comes 
 breathing woe and sciampagnin* under our window, 
 and there spends a leisure hour in the rehearsal of 
 distress, establishes no claim either upon her pity or 
 her weakness. She is deaf to the voice of that sorrow, 
 and the monotonous whine of that dolor cannot move 
 her to the purchase of a guilty tranquillity. I imagine, 
 however, that she is afraid to deny charity to the fat 
 Capuchin friar in spectacles and bare feet, who comes 
 twice a month to levy contributions of bread and fuel 
 for his convent, for we hear her declare from the 
 window that the master is not at home, whenever the 
 
 * Little champagne,—the name which the Venetian populace 
 gave to a fierce and deadly kind of brandy drunk during the 
 scarcity of wine. After the introduction of coal-oil this liquor came 
 to be jocosely known as petrolio. 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 103 
 
 i 
 
 ! 
 
 
 i 
 
 good brother rings; and at last, as this excuse gives 
 out, she ceases to respond to his ring at all. 
 
 Sometimes, during the summer weather, comes 
 down our street a certain tremulous old troubadour 
 with an aged cithern, on which he strums feebly with 
 bones which remain to him from former fingers, and 
 in a thin quivering voice pipes worn-out ditties of 
 youth and love. Sadder music I have never heard, 
 but though it has at times drawn from me the sigh of 
 sensibility without referring sympathy to my pocket, I 
 always hear the compassionate soldo of Giovanna clink 
 reproof to me upon the pavement. Perhaps that slender 
 note touches something finer than habitual charity in 
 her middle-aged bosom, for these were songs she says 
 that they used to sing when she was a girl, and Venice 
 was gay and glad, and different from now— veramente , 
 tutt' altro , signori 
 
 It is through Giovanna’s charitable disposition that 
 we make the acquaintance of two weird sisters, who 
 live not far from us in Calle Falier, and whom we 
 know to this day merely as the Creatures —creatura 
 being in the vocabulary of Venetian pity the term for 
 a fellow-being somewhat more pitiable than a poveretta. 
 Our Creatures are both well stricken in years, and one 
 of them has some incurable disorder which frequently 
 confines her to the wretched cellar in which they live 
 with the invalid’s husband, — a mild, pleasant-faced 
 man, a tailor by trade, and of batlike habits, who 
 hovers about their dusky doorway in the summer twi¬ 
 light. These people have but one room, and a little 
 nook of kitchen at the side; and not only does the 
 sun never find his way into their habitation, but even 
 the daylight cannot penetrate it. They pay about four 
 
104 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 florins a month for the place, and I hope their land¬ 
 lord is as happy as his tenants. For though one is 
 sick, and all are wretchedly poor, they are far from 
 being discontented. They are opulent in the posses¬ 
 sion of a small dog, which they have raised from the 
 cradle, as it were, and adopted into the family. They 
 are never tired of playing with their dog,—the poor 
 old children,—and every slight display of intelligence 
 on his part delights them. They think it fine in him 
 to follow us as we go by, but pretend to beat him; 
 and then they excuse him, and call him ill names, 
 and catch him up, and hug him and kiss him. He 
 feeds upon their slehder means and the pickings that 
 G. carefully carries ihim from our kitchen, and gives 
 to him on our doorstep in spite of us, while she gos¬ 
 sips with his mistresses, who chorus our appearance at 
 such times with “I miei rispetti , signori!” We often 
 see them in the street, and at a distance from home, 
 carrying mysterious bundles of clothes; and at last we 
 learn their vocation, which is one not known out of 
 Italian cities, I think. There the State is Uncle to the 
 hard-pressed, and instead of many pawnbroker’s shops 
 there is one large municipal spout, which is called the 
 Monte di Pieta, where the needy pawn their goods. 
 The system is centuries old in Italy, but there are 
 people who to this day cannot summon courage to re¬ 
 pair in person to the Mount of Pity, and, to meet their 
 wants, there has grown up a class of frowzy old women 
 who transact the business for them, and receive a small 
 percentage for their trouble. Our poor old Creatures 
 were of this class, and as there were many persons in 
 impoverished, decaying Venice who had need of the 
 succor they procured, they made out to earn a living 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 105 
 
 when both were well, and to eke out existence by 
 charity when one was ill. They were harmless neigh¬ 
 bors, and I believe they regretted our removal, when 
 this took place, for they used to sit down under an 
 arcade opposite our new house, and spend the duller 
 intervals of trade in the contemplation of our windows. 
 
 The alarming spirit of nepotism which Giovanna 
 developed at a later day was, I fear, a growth from 
 the encouragement we gave her charitable disposition. 
 But for several months it was merely from the fact of 
 a boy who came and whistled at the door until Gio¬ 
 vanna opened it and reproved him in the name of all 
 the saints and powers of darkness, that we knew her 
 to be a mother; and we merely had her word for the 
 existence of a husband, who dealt in poultry. Without 
 seeing Giovanna’s husband, I nevertheless knew him 
 to be a man of downy exterior, wearing a canvas apron, 
 thickly crusted with the gore of fowls, who sat at the 
 door of his shop and plucked chickens forever, as with 
 the tireless hand of Fate. I divined that he lived in 
 an atmosphere of scalded pullet; that three earthen 
 cups of clotted chicken’s blood, placed upon his win¬ 
 dow-shelf, formed his idea of an attractive display, and 
 that he shadowed forth his conceptions of the beauti¬ 
 ful in symmetrical rows of plucked chickens, presenting 
 to the public eye rear views embellished with a single 
 feather erect in the tail of each bird; that he must be, 
 through the ethics of competition, the sworn foe of 
 those illogical peasants who bring dead poultry to town 
 in cages, like singing birds, and equally the friend of 
 those restaurateurs who furnish you a meal of victuals 
 and a feather-bed in the same mezzo-polio arrosto. He 
 turned out on actual appearance to be all I had pre- 
 
1 06 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 figured him, with the additional merit of having a 
 large red nose, a sidelong, fugitive gait, and a hangdog 
 countenance. He furnished us poultry at rates slightly 
 advanced, I think. 
 
 As for the boy, he turned up after a while as a 
 constant guest, and took possession of the kitchen. He 
 came near banishment at one time for catching a large 
 number of sea-crabs in the canal, and confining them 
 in a basket in the kitchen, which they left at the dead 
 hour of night, to wander all over our house,—making a 
 mysterious and alarming sound of snapping, like an 
 army of death-watches, and eluding the cunningest 
 efforts at capture. On another occasion, he fell into 
 the canal before our house, and terrified us by going 
 under twice before the arrival of the old gondolier, 
 who called out to him “ Petta! petta!” (Wait! wait!) as 
 he placidly pushed his boat to the spot. Developing 
 other disagreeable traits, Beppo was finally driven into 
 exile, from which he nevertheless furtively returned on 
 holidays. 
 
 The family of Giovanna thus gradually encroaching 
 upon us, we came also to know her mother,—a dread 
 and loathly old lady, whom we would willingly have 
 seen burned at the stake for a witch. She was com¬ 
 monly encountered at nightfall in our street, where she 
 lay in wait, as it were, to prey upon the fragrance of 
 dinner drifting from the kitchen windows of our neigh¬ 
 bor, the Duchess of Parma. Here was heard the voice 
 of cooks and of scullions, and the ecstasies of helpless 
 voracity in which we sometimes beheld this old lady 
 were fearful to witness. Nor did we find her more 
 comfortable in our own kitchen, where we often saw 
 her. The place itself is weird and terrible—low ceiled, 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 107 
 
 with the stone hearth built far out into the room, and 
 the melodramatic implements of Venetian cookery- 
 dangling tragically from the wall. Here is no every¬ 
 day cheerfulness of cooking-range, but grotesque and¬ 
 irons wading into the bristling embers, and a long 
 crane with villanous pots gibbeted upon it. When 
 Giovanna’s mother, then (of the Italian hags, haggard), 
 rises to do us reverence from the darkest corner of this 
 kitchen, and croaks her good wishes for our long life, 
 continued health, and endless happiness, it has the 
 effect upon our spirits of the darkest malediction. 
 
 Not more pleasing, though altogether lighter and 
 cheerfuler, was Giovanna’s sister-in-law, whom we knew 
 only as the Cognata. Making her appearance first 
 upon the occasion of Giovanna’s sickness, she slowly 
 but surely established herself as an habitual presence, 
 and threatened at one time, as we fancied, to become 
 I our paid servant. But a happy calamity which one 
 night carried oil a carpet and the window curtains of 
 an unoccupied room, cast an evil suspicion upon the 
 Cognata, and she never appeared after the discovery 
 of the theft. We suspected her of having invented 
 some dishes of which we were very fond, and we hated 
 her for oppressing us with a sense of many surrepti¬ 
 tious favors. Objectively, she was a slim, hoopless 
 little woman, with a tendency to be always at the 
 street-door when we opened it. She had a narrow, 
 narrow face, with eyes of terrible slyness, an applausive 
 smile, and a demeanor of slavish patronage. Our 
 kitchen, after her addition to the household, became 
 the banqueting-hall of Giovanna’s family, who dined 
 there every day upon dishes of fish and garlic, that 
 gave the house the general savor of a low cook-shop. 
 
io8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 As for Giovanna herself, she had the natural ten¬ 
 dency of excellent people to place others in subjection. 
 Our servitude at first was not hard, and consisted 
 chiefly in the stimulation of appetite to extraordinary 
 efforts when G. had attempted to please us with some 
 novelty in cooking. She held us to a strict account 
 in this respect; but indeed our applause was for the 
 most part willing enough. Her culinary execution, 
 first revealing itself in a noble rendering of our ideas 
 of roast potatoes,—a delicacy foreign to the Venetian 
 kitchen,—culminated at last in the same style of pol - 
 petti* which furnished forth the table of our neighbor, 
 the Duchess, and was a perpetual triumph with us. 
 
 But G.’s spirit was not wholly that of the serving- 
 woman. We noted in her the liveliness of wit seldom 
 absent from the Italian poor. She was a great babbler, 
 and talked willingly to herself, and to inanimate things, 
 when there was no other chance for talk. She was 
 profuse in maledictions of bad weather, which she held 
 up to scorn as that dog of a weather. The crooked¬ 
 ness of the fuel transported her, and she upbraided 
 the fagots as springing from races of ugly old curs. 
 (The vocabulary of Venetian abuse is inexhaustible, 
 and the Venetians invent and combine terms of op¬ 
 probrium with endless facility, but all abuse begins 
 and ends with the attribution of doggishness.) The 
 conscription was held in the campo near us, and G. 
 declared the place to have become unendurable — 
 “proprio un campo di sospiri!” (Really a field of sighs.) 
 “Staga comodo!” she said to a guest of ours who 
 
 * I confess a tenderness for this dish, which is a delicater kind 
 of hash skillfully flavored and baked in rolls of a mellow com¬ 
 plexion and fascinating appearance. 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. IOQ 
 
 would have moved his chair to let her pass between 
 him and the wall. “Don't move; the way to Paradise 
 is not wider than this." 
 
 We sometimes lamented that Giovanna, who did not 
 sleep in the house, should come to us so late in the 
 morning, but we could not deal harshly with her on 
 that account, met, as we always were, with plentiful 
 and admirable excuses. Who were we, indeed, to place 
 our wishes in the balance against the welfare of the 
 sick neighbor with whom Giovanna passed so many 
 nights of vigil? Should we reproach her with tardi¬ 
 ness when she had not closed the eye all night for a 
 headache properly of the devil? If she came late in 
 the morning, she stayed late at night; and it some¬ 
 times happened that when the Paron and Parona, sup¬ 
 posing her gone, made a stealthy expedition to the 
 kitchen for cold chicken, they found her there at mid¬ 
 night in the fell company of the Cognata, bibbing the 
 wine of the country and holding a mild Italian revel 
 with that vinegar and the stony bread of Venice. 
 
 I have said G. was the flower of serving-women; 
 and so at first she seemed, and it was long till we 
 doubted her perfection. We knew ourselves to be very 
 young, and weak, and unworthy. The Parona had the 
 rare gift of learning to speak less and less Italian 
 every day, and fell inevitably into subjection. The 
 j Paron in a domestic point of view was naturally no¬ 
 thing. It had been strange indeed if Giovanna, be¬ 
 holding the great contrast we presented to herself in 
 many respects, had forborne to abuse her advantage 
 |j over us. But we trusted her implicitly, and I hardly 
 know how or when it was that we began to waver in 
 our confidence. It is certain that with the lapse of 
 
I 10 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 time we came gradually to have breakfast at twelve 
 o’clock, instead of nine, as we had originally appointed 
 it, and that G. grew to consume the greater part of the 
 day in making our small purchases, and to give us our 
 belated dinners at seven o’clock. We protested, and 
 temporary reforms ensued, only to be succeeded by 
 more hopeless lapses; but it was not till all entreaties 
 and threats failed that we began to think seriously it 
 would be well to have done with Giovanna, as an un¬ 
 profitable servant. I give the result, not all the nice 
 causes from which it came. But the question was, 
 How to get rid of a poor woman and a civil, and the 
 mother of a family dependent in great part upon her 
 labor? We solemnly resolve a hundred times to dis¬ 
 miss G., and we shrink a hundred times from inflict¬ 
 ing the blow. At last, somewhat in the spirit of Charles 
 Lamb’s Chinaman who invented roast pig, and dis¬ 
 covered that the sole method of roasting it was to 
 burn down a house in order to consume the adjacent 
 pig-sty, and thus cook the roaster in the flames,—we 
 hit upon an artifice by which we could dispense with 
 Giovanna, and keep an easy conscience. We had long 
 ceased to dine at home, in despair; and now we 
 resolved to take another house, in which there were 
 other servants. But even then, it was a sore struggle 
 to part with the flower of serving-women, who was set 
 over the vacated house to put it in order after our 
 flitting, and with whom the imprudent Paron settled 
 the last account in the familiar little dining-room, sur¬ 
 rounded by the depressing influences of the empty 
 chambers. The place was peopled after all, though 
 we had left it, and I think the tenants who come 
 after us will be haunted by our spectres, crowding 
 
HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 
 
 I I I 
 
 them on the pleasant little balcony, and sitting down 
 with them at table. G. stood there, the genius of the 
 place, and wept six regretful tears, each one of which 
 drew a florin from the purse of the Paron. She had 
 hoped to remain with us always while we lived in 
 Venice; but now that she could no longer look to us 
 for support, the Lord must take care of her. The gush 
 of grief was transient: it relieved her, and she came 
 out sunnily a moment after. The Paron went his way 
 more sorrowfully, taking leave at last with the fine 
 burst of Christian philosophy: “We are none of us 
 masters of ourselves in this world, and cannot do what 
 we wish. Ma! Come si fa? Ci vuol pazienzal ” Yet 
 he was undeniably lightened in heart. He had cut 
 adrift from old moorings, and had crossed the Grand 
 Canal. G. did not follow him, nor any of the long 
 line of pensioners who used to come on certain feast- 
 days to levy tribute of eggs at the old house. (The 
 postman was among these, on Christmas and New 
 Year’s, and as he received eggs at every house, it was 
 a problem with us, unsolved to this hour, how he car¬ 
 ried them all, and what he did with them.) Not the 
 least among the Paron’s causes for self-gratulation was 
 the non-appearance at his new abode of two local 
 newspapers, for which in an evil hour he subscribed, 
 which were delivered with unsparing regularity, and 
 which, being never read, formed the keenest reproach 
 of his imprudent outlay and his idle neglect of their 
 contents. 
 
II 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. 
 
 The history of Venice reads like a romance; the 
 place seems a fantastic vision at the best, from which 
 the world must at last awake some morning, and find 
 that after all it has only been dreaming, and that 
 there never was any such city. There our race seems 
 to be in earnest in nothing. People sometimes work, 
 but as if without any aim; they suffer, and you fancy 
 them playing at wretchedness. The Church of St. 
 Mark, standing so solidly, with a thousand years under 
 the feet of its innumerable pillars, is not in the least 
 gray with time—no grayer than a Greek lyric. 
 
 “All has suffered a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange, ” 
 
 in this fantastic city. The prose of earth has risen 
 poetry from its baptism in the sea. 
 
 And if, living constantly in Venice, you sometimes 
 for a little while forget how marvelous she is, at any 
 moment you may be startled into vivid remembrance. 
 The cunning city beguiles you street by street, and 
 step by step, into some old court, where a flight of 
 marble stairs leads high up to the pillared gallery of 
 an empty palace, with a climbing vine green and purple 
 on its old decay, and one or two gaunt trees stretch¬ 
 ing their heads to look into the lofty windows,—blind 
 long ago to their leafy tenderness,—while at their feet 
 is some sumptuously carven well, with the beauty of 
 the sculptor’s soul wrought forever into the stone. Or 
 Venice lures you in a gondola into one of her remote 
 canals, where you glide through an avenue as secret 
 
THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. 113 
 
 and as still as if sea-deep under our work-day world; 
 where the grim heads carven over the watergates of 
 the palaces stare at you in austere surprise; where the 
 innumerable balconies are full of the Absences of gay 
 cavaliers and gentle dames, gossiping and making love 
 to one another, from their airy perches. Or if the 
 city’s mood is one of bolder charm, she fascinates you 
 in the very places where you think her power is the 
 weakest, and as if impatient of your forgetfulness, dares 
 a wilder beauty, and enthralls with a yet more un¬ 
 earthly and incredible enchantment. It is in the Piazza, 
 and the Austrian band is playing, and the promenaders 
 pace solemnly up and down to the music, and the 
 gentle Italian loafers at Florian’s brood vacantly over 
 their little cups of coffee, and nothing can be more 
 stupid; when suddenly every thing is changed, and a 
 memorable tournament flashes up in many-glittering 
 action upon the scene, and there upon the gallery of 
 the church, before the horses of bronze, sit the Sena¬ 
 tors, bright-robed, and in the midst the bonneted Doge 
 with his guest Petrarch at his side. Or the old Carni¬ 
 val, which had six months of every year to riot in, 
 comes back and throngs the place with motley com¬ 
 pany,— dominoes, harlequins, pantaloni, illustrissimi 
 and illustrissime, and perhaps even the Doge himself, 
 who has the right of incognito when he wears a little 
 mask of wax at his button-hole. Or may be the 
 grander day revisits Venice when Doria has sent word 
 from his fleet of Genoese at Chioggia that he will listen 
 to the Senate when he has bridled the horses of Saint 
 Mark, — and the whole Republic of rich and poor 
 crowds the square, demanding the release of Pisani, whq 
 
 Venetian Life . 8 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 114 
 
 comes forth from his prison to create victory from the 
 dust of the crumbling commonwealth. 
 
 But whatever surprise of memorable or beautiful 
 Venice may prepare for your forgetfulness, be sure it 
 will be complete and resistless. Nay, what potenter 
 magic needs my Venice to revivify her past whenever 
 she will, than the serpent cunning of her Grand Canal? 
 Launched upon this great S have I not seen hardened 
 travelers grow sentimental, and has not this prodigious 
 sybillant, in my hearing, inspired white-haired Puritan 
 ministers of the gospel to attempt to quote out of the 
 guide-book “that line from Byron?” Upon my word, 
 I have sat beside wandering editors in their gondolas, 
 and witnessed the expulsion of the newspaper from 
 their nature, while, lulled by the fascination of the place, 
 they were powerless to take their own journals from 
 their pockets, and instead of politics talked some be¬ 
 wildered nonsense about coming back with their families 
 next summer. For myself, I must count as h#lf-lost 
 the year spent in Venice before I took a house upon 
 the Grand Canal. There alone can existence have the 
 perfect local flavor. But by what witchery touched 
 one’s being suffers the common sea-change, till life at 
 last seems to ebb and flow with the tide in that wonder- 
 avenue of palaces, it would be idle to attempt to tell. 
 I can only take you to our dear little balcony at Casa 
 Falier, and comment not very coherently on the scene 
 upon the water under us. 
 
 And I am sure (since it is either in the spring or 
 the fall) you will not be surprised to see, the first thing, 
 a boat-load of those English, who go by from the sta¬ 
 tion to their hotels, every day, in well-freighted gon¬ 
 dolas. These parties of traveling Englishry are all 
 
THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. I 15 
 
 singularly alike, from the “Pa’ty” traveling alone with 
 his opera-glass and satchel, to the party which fills a 
 gondola with well-cushioned English middle age, ruddy 
 English youth, and substantial English baggage. We 
 have learnt to know them all very well: the father and 
 the mother sit upon the back seat, and their comely 
 girls at the sides and front. These girls all have the 
 honest cabbage-roses of English health upon their cheeks; 
 they all wear little rowdy English hats, and invariable 
 waterfalls of hair tumble upon their broad English 
 backs. They are coming from Switzerland and Germany, 
 and they are going south to Rome and to Naples, and 
 they always pause at Venice a few days. To-morrow 
 we shall see them in the Piazza, and at Florian’s, and 
 St. Mark’s, and the Ducal Palace; and the young ladies 
 will cross the Bridge of Sighs, and will sentimentally 
 feed the vagabond pigeons of St. Mark which loaf 
 about the Piazza and defile the sculptures. But now 
 our travelers are themselves very hungry, and are more 
 anxious than Americans can understand about the table- 
 d’hote of their hotel. It is perfectly certain that if 
 they fall into talk there with any of our nation, the re¬ 
 spectable English father will remark that this war in 
 America is a very sad war, and will ask to know when 
 it will all end. The truth is, Americans do not like, 
 these people, and I believe there is no love lost on the 
 other side. But, in many things, they are travelers to 
 be honored, if not liked: they voyage through all 
 countries, and without awaking fervent affection in any 
 land through which they pass; but their sterling honesty 
 and truth have made the English tongue a draft upon 
 the unlimited confidence of the continental peoples, 
 and French, Germans, and Italians trust and respect 
 
 8 * 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 1 16 
 
 private English faith as cordially as they hate public 
 English perfidy. 
 
 They come to Venice chiefly in the autumn, and 
 October is the month of the Sunsets and the English. 
 The former are best seen from the Public Gardens, 
 whence one looks westward, and beholds them glorious 
 behind the domes and towers of San Giorgio Maggiore 
 and the church of the Redentore. Sometimes, when 
 the sky is clear, your sunset on the lagoon is a fine 
 thing; for then the sun goes down into the water with 
 a broad trail of bloody red behind him, as if, wounded 
 far out at sea, he had dragged himself landward across 
 the crimsoning expanses, and fallen and died as he 
 reached the land. But we (upon whom the idleness 
 of Venice grows daily, and from whom the Gardens, 
 therefore, grow farther and farther) are uncommonly 
 content to take our bit of sunset as we get it from our 
 balcony, through the avenue opened by the narrow 
 canal opposite. We like the earlier afternoon to have 
 been a little rainy, when we have our sunset splendid 
 as the fury of a passionate beauty—all tears and fire. 
 There is a pretty but impertinent little palace on the 
 corner which is formed by this canal as it enters the 
 Canalazzo, and from the palace, high over the smaller 
 channel, hangs an airy balcony. When the sunset sky, 
 under and over the balcony, is of that pathetic and 
 angry red which I have tried to figure, we think our¬ 
 selves rich in the neighborhood of that part of the 
 “Palace of Art,” whereon 
 
 “The light aerial gallery, golden railed, 
 
 Burnt like a fringe of fire. ” 
 
 And so, after all, we do not think we have lost any 
 greater thing in not seeing the sunset from the Gar- 
 
THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. I I 7 
 
 dens, where half a dozen artists are always painting it, 
 or from the quay of the Zattere, where it is splendid 
 over and under the island church of San Giorgio in 
 Alga. 
 
 It is only the English and the other tourist strangers 
 who go by upon the Grand Canal during the day. But 
 in the hours just before the summer twilight the gon¬ 
 dolas of the citizens appear, and then you may see 
 whatever is left of Venetian gayety, and looking down 
 upon the groups in the open gondolas may witness 
 something of the home-life of the Italians, who live 
 out-of-doors. 
 
 The groups do not vary a great deal one from an¬ 
 other: inevitably the pale-faced papa, the fat mamma, 
 the over-dressed handsome young girls. We learned 
 to look for certain gondolas, and grew to feel a fond 
 interest in a very mild young man who took the air 
 in company and contrast with a ferocious bull-dog— 
 boule-dogue he called him, I suppose. He was always 
 smoking languidly, that mild young man, and I fancied 
 I could read in his countenance a gentle, gentle anta¬ 
 gonism to life—the proportionate Byronic misanthropy, 
 which might arise from sugar and water taken instead 
 of gin. But we really knew nothing about him, and 
 our conjecture was conjecture. Officers went by in 
 their brilliant uniforms, and gave the scene an alien 
 splendor. Among these we enjoyed best the spectacle 
 of an old major, or perhaps general, in whom the ar¬ 
 rogance of youth had stiffened into a chill hauteur, 
 and who frowned above his gray overwhelming mous¬ 
 tache upon the passers, like a citadel grim with battle 
 and age. We used to fancy, with a certain luxurious 
 sense of our own safety, that one broadside from those 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 118 
 
 fortressed eyes could blow from the water the slight 
 pleasure-boats in which the young Venetian idlers were 
 innocently disporting. But again this was merely con¬ 
 jecture. The general’s glance may have had no such 
 power. Indeed, the furniture of our apartment sus¬ 
 tained no damage from it, even when concentrated 
 through an opera-glass, by which means the brave of¬ 
 ficer at times perused our humble lodging from the 
 balcony of his own over against us. He may have 
 been no more dangerous in his way than two aged 
 sisters (whom we saw every evening) were in theirs. 
 They represented Beauty in its most implacable and per¬ 
 severing form, and perhaps they had one day been belles 
 and could not forget it. They were very old indeed, 
 but their dresses were new and their paint fresh, and 
 as they glided by in the good-natured twilight, one 
 had no heart to smile at them. We gave our smiles, 
 and now and then our soldi, to the swarthy beggar, 
 who, being short of legs, rowed up and down the canal 
 in a boat, and overhauled Charity in the gondolas. 
 He was a singular compromise, in his vocation and 
 his equipment, between the mendicant and corsair: I 
 fear he would not have hesitated to assume the pirate 
 altogether in lonelier waters; and had I been a heavily 
 laden oyster-boat returning by night through some re¬ 
 mote and dark canal, I would have steered clear of 
 that truculent-looking craft, of which the crew must 
 have fought with a desperation proportioned to the 
 lack of legs and the difficulty of running away, in case 
 of defeat. 
 
 About nightfall came the market boats on their 
 way to the Rialto market, bringing heaped fruit and 
 vegetables from the mainland; and far into the night 
 
THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. I ig 
 
 the soft dip of the oar, and the gurgling progress of 
 the boats was company and gentlest lullaby. By which 
 time, if we looked out again, we found the moon risen, 
 and the ghost of dead Venice shadowily happy in 
 haunting the lonesome palaces, and the sea, which had 
 so loved Venice, kissing and caressing the tide-worn 
 marble steps where her feet seemed to rest. 
 
 At night sometimes we saw from our balcony one 
 of those freschi , which once formed the chief splendor 
 of festive occasions in Venice, and are peculiar to the 
 city, where alone their fine effects are possible. The 
 fresco is a procession of boats with music and lights. 
 Two immense barges, illumined with hundreds of 
 paper lanterns, carry the military bands; the boats of 
 the civil and military dignitaries follow, and then the 
 gondolas of such citizens as choose to take part in the 
 display,—though since 1859 no Italian, unless a govern¬ 
 ment official, has been seen in the procession. No 
 gondola has less than two lanterns, and many have 
 eight or ten, shedding mellow lights of blue, and red, 
 and purple, over uniforms and silken robes. The 
 soldiers of the bands breathe from their instruments 
 music the most perfect and exquisite of its kind in the 
 world; and as the procession takes the width of the 
 Grand Canal in its magnificent course, soft crimson 
 flushes play upon the old, weather-darkened palaces, 
 and die tenderly away, giving to light and then to 
 shadow the opulent sculptures of pillar, and arch, and 
 spandrel, and weirdly illuminating the grim and bearded 
 visages of stone that peer down from doorway and 
 window. It is a sight more gracious and fairy than 
 ever poet dreamed; and I feel that the lights and the 
 music have only got into my description by name, and 
 
120 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 that you would not know them when you saw and 
 heard them, from any thing I say. In other days, 
 people tell you, the fresco was much more impressive 
 than now. At intervals, rockets used to be sent up, 
 and the Bengal lights, burned during the progress of 
 the boats, threw the gondoliers’ spectral shadows, giant- 
 huge, on the palace-walls. But, for my part, I do not 
 care to have the fresco other than I know it: indeed, 
 for my own selfish pleasure, I should be sorry to have 
 Venice in any way less fallen and forlorn than she is. 
 
 Without doubt the most picturesque craft ever seen 
 on the Grand Canal are the great boats of the river 
 Po, which, crossing the lagoons from Chioggia, come 
 up to the city with the swelling sea. They are built 
 with a pointed stern and bow rising with the sweep 
 of a short curve from the water high above the cabin 
 roof, which is always covered with a straw matting. 
 Black is not the color of the gondolas alone, but of all 
 boats in Venetia, and these of the Po are like immense 
 funeral barges, and any one of them might be sent to 
 take King Arthur and bear him to Avilon, whither I 
 think most of them are bound. A path runs along 
 either gunwale, on which the men pace as they pole 
 the boat up the canal,—her great sail folded and lying 
 with the prostrate mast upon the deck. The rudder is 
 a prodigious affair, and the man at the helm is com¬ 
 monly kind enough to wear a red cap with a blue 
 tassel, and to smoke. The other persons on board are 
 not less obliging and picturesque, from the dark-eyed 
 young mother who sits with her child in her arms at 
 the cabin-door, to the bronze boy who figures in play 
 at her feet with a small yellow dog of the race already 
 noticed in charge of the fuel-boats from Dalmatia. The 
 
THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. 
 
 121 
 
 father of the family, whom we take to be the com¬ 
 mander of the vessel, occupies himself gracefully in 
 sitting down and gazing at the babe and its mother. 
 It is an old habit of mine, formed in childhood from 
 looking at rafts upon the Ohio, to attribute, with a 
 kind of heart-ache, supreme earthly happiness to the 
 navigators of lazy river craft; and as we glance down 
 upon these people from our balcony, I choose to think 
 them immensely contented, and try, in a feeble, tacit 
 way, to make friends with so much bliss. But I am 
 always repelled in these advances by the small yellow 
 dog, who is rendered extremely irascible by my con¬ 
 templation of the boat under his care, and who, ruf¬ 
 fling his hair as a hen ruffles her feathers, never fails 
 to bark furious resentment of my longing. 
 
 Far different from the picture presented by this 
 boat’s progress—the peacefulness of which even the 
 bad temper of the small yellow dog could not mar— 
 was another scene which we witnessed upon the Grand 
 Canal, when one morning we were roused from our 
 breakfast by a wild and lamentable outcry. Two large 
 boats, attempting to enter the small canal opposite at 
 the same time, had struck together with a violence 
 that shook the boatmen to their inmost souls. One 
 barge was laden with lime, and belonged to a plasterer 
 of the city; the other was full of fuel, and commanded 
 by a virulent rustic. These rival captains advanced 
 toward the bows of their boats, with murderous looks, 
 
 “Con la test’ alta e con rabbiosa fame, 
 
 Si che parea che l’aer ne temesse, ” 
 
 and there stamped furiously, and beat the wind with 
 hands of deathful challenge, while I looked on with 
 
122 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 that noble interest which the enlightened mind always 
 feels in people about to punch each other’s heads. 
 
 But the storm burst in words. 
 
 “Figure of a pig!” shrieked the Venetian, “you 
 have ruined my boat forever!” 
 
 “Thou best, son of an ugly old dog!” returned 
 the countryman, “and it was my right to enter the 
 canal first.” 
 
 They then, after this exchange of insult, abandoned 
 the main subject of dispute, and took up the quarrel 
 laterally and in detail. Reciprocally questioning the 
 reputation of all their female relatives to the third and 
 fourth cousins, they defied each other as the offspring 
 of assassins and prostitutes. As the peace-making tide 
 gradually drifted their boats asunder, their anger rose, 
 and they danced back and forth and hurled opprobrium 
 with a foamy volubility that quite left my powers of 
 comprehension behind. At last the townsman, execut¬ 
 ing a pas seul of uncommon violence, stooped and 
 picked up a bit of lime, while the countryman, taking 
 shelter at the stern of his boat, there attended the 
 shot. To my infinite disappointment it was not fired. 
 The Venetian seemed to have touched the climax of 
 his passion in the mere demonstration of hostility, and 
 gently gathering up his oar gave the countryman the 
 right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the 
 danger passed, and as far as he could be heard, he 
 continued to exult in the wildest excesses of insult: 
 “Ah-heigh! brutal executioner! Ah, hideous heads¬ 
 man ! ” Da capo. I now know that these people never 
 intended to do more than quarrel, and no doubt they 
 parted as well pleased as if they had actually carried 
 broken heads from the encounter. But at the time I 
 
HTE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL. 
 
 123 
 
 felt affronted and trifled with by the result, for my 
 disappointments arising out of the dramatic manner of 
 the Italians had not yet been frequent enough to teach 
 me to expect nothing from it. 
 
 There was some compensation for me—coming, 
 like all compensation, a long while after the loss—in 
 the spectacle of a funeral procession on the Grand 
 Canal, which had a singular and imposing solemnity 
 only possible to the place. It was the funeral of an 
 Austrian general, whose coffin, mounted on a sable 
 catafalco, was borne upon the middle boat of three 
 that moved abreast. The barges on either side bristled 
 with the bayonets of soldiery, but the dead man was 
 alone in his boat, except for one strange figure that 
 stood at the head of the coffin, and rested its glittering 
 hand upon the black fall of the drapery. This was a 
 man clad cap-a-pie in a perfect suit of gleaming mail, 
 with his visor down, and his shoulders swept by the 
 heavy raven plumes of his helm. As at times he 
 moved from side to side, and glanced upward at the 
 old palaces, sad in the yellow morning light, he put 
 out of sight, for me, every thing else upon the Canal, 
 and seemed the ghost of some crusader come back to 
 Venice, in wonder if this city, lying dead under the 
 hoofs of the Croat, were indeed that same haughty 
 Lady of the Sea who had once sent her blind old 
 Doge to beat down the pride of an empire and dis¬ 
 dain its crown. 
 
124 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A DAY-BREAK RAMBLE. 
 
 One summer morning the mosquitoes played for 
 me with sleep, and won. It was half-past four, and 
 as it had often been my humor to see Venice at that 
 hour, I got up and sallied forth for a stroll through 
 the city. 
 
 This morning walk did not lay the foundation of a 
 habit of early rising in me, but I nevertheless advise 
 people always to get up at half-past four, if they wish 
 to receive the most vivid impressions, and to take the 
 most absorbing interest in every thing in the world. 
 It was with a feeling absolutely novel that I looked 
 about me that morning, and there was a breezy fresh¬ 
 ness and clearness in my perceptions altogether delight¬ 
 ful, and I fraternized so cordially with Nature that I 
 do not think, if I had sat down immediately after to 
 write out the experience, I should have at all patronized 
 her, as I am afraid scribbling people have sometimes 
 the custom to do. I know that my feeling of brother¬ 
 hood in the case of two sparrows, which obliged me 
 by hopping down from a garden wall at the end of 
 Calle Falier and promenading on the pavement, was 
 quite humble and sincere; and that I resented the ill- 
 nature of a cat, 
 
 “Whom love kept wakeful and the muse,” 
 
 and who at that hour was spitefully reviling the morn 
 from a window grating. As I went by the gate of the 
 Canonico’s little garden, the flowers saluted me with a 
 breath of perfume,—I think the white honeysuckle was 
 
A DAY-BREAK RAMBLE. 
 
 12 5 
 
 first to offer me this politeness,—and the dumpy little 
 statues looked far more engaging than usual. 
 
 After passing the bridge, the first thing to do was 
 to drink a cup of coffee at the Caffe Ponte di Ferro, 
 where the eyebrows of the waiter expressed a mild 
 surprise at my early presence. There was no one else 
 in the place but an old gentleman talking thoughtfully 
 to himself on the subject of two florins, while he 
 poured his coffee into a glass of water, before drinking 
 it. As I lingered a moment over my cup, I was rein¬ 
 forced by the appearance of a company of soldiers, march¬ 
 ing to parade in the Campo di Marte. Their officers 
 went at their head, laughing and chatting, and one of 
 the lieutenants smoking a long pipe, gave me a feeling 
 of satisfaction only comparable to that which I ex¬ 
 perienced shortly afterward in beholding a stoutly built 
 small dog on the Ponte di San Mois6. The creature 
 was only a few inches high, and it must have been 
 through some mist of dreams yet hanging about me 
 that he impressed me as having something elephantine 
 in his manner. When I stooped down and patted him 
 on the head, I felt colossal. 
 
 On my way to the Piazza, I stopped in the church 
 of Saint Mary of the Lily, where, in company with one 
 other sinner, I found a relish in the early sacristan’s 
 deliberate manner of lighting the candles on the altar. 
 Saint Mary of the Lily has a facade in the taste of the 
 declining Renaissance. The interior is in perfect keep¬ 
 ing, and all is hideous, abominable, and abandoned. 
 My fellow-sinner was kneeling, and repeating his prayers. 
 He now and then tapped himself absent-mindedly on 
 the breast and forehead, and gave a good deal of his 
 attention to me as I stood at the door, hat in hand, 
 
2 6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 The hour and the place invested him with so much 
 interest, that I parted from him with emotion. My 
 feelings were next involved by an abrupt separation 
 from a young English East-Indian, whom I overheard 
 asking the keeper of a caffe his way to the Campo di 
 Marte. He was a claret-colored young fellow, tall, and 
 wearing folds of white muslin around his hat. In an¬ 
 other world I trust to know how he liked the parade 
 that morning. 
 
 I discovered that Piazza San Marco is every morn¬ 
 ing swept by troops of ragged facchini, who gossip 
 noisily and quarrelsomely together over their work. 
 Boot-blacks, also, were in attendance, and several fol¬ 
 lowed my progress through the square, in the vague 
 hope that I would relent and have my boots blacked. 
 One peerless waiter stood alone amid the desert ele¬ 
 gance of Caffe Florian, which is never shut, day or 
 night, from year to year. At the Caffe of the Greeks, 
 two individuals of the Greek nation were drinking 
 coffee. 
 
 I went upon the Molo, passing between the pillars 
 of the Lion and the Saint, and walked freely back and 
 forth, taking in the glory of that prospect of water and 
 of vague islands breaking the silver of the lagoons, 
 like those scenes cunningly wrought in apparent relief 
 on old Venetian mirrors. I walked there freely, for 
 though there were already many gondoliers at the sta¬ 
 tion, not one took me for a foreigner or offered me a 
 boat. At that hour, I was in myself so improbable, 
 that if they saw me at all, I must have appeared to 
 them as a dream. My sense of security was sweet, 
 but it was false, for on going into the church of St. 
 Mark, the keener eye of the sacristan detected me. He 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 fe»l 
 
A DAY-BREAK RAMBLE. 
 
 127 
 
 instantly offered to show me the Zeno Chapel; but I 
 declined, preferring the church, where I found the 
 space before the high altar filled with market-people 
 come to hear the early mass. As I passed out of the 
 church, I witnessed the partial awaking of a Venetian 
 gentleman who had spent the night in a sitting posture, 
 between the columns of the main entrance. He looked 
 puffy, scornful, and uncomfortable, and at the moment 
 j of falling back to slumber, tried to smoke an unlighted 
 cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found 
 none of the shops open as I passed through the Mer- 
 ceria, and but for myself, and here and there a laborer 
 going to work, the busy thoroughfare seemed deserted. 
 In the mere wantonness of power, and the security of 
 solitude, I indulged myself in snapping several door- 
 latches, which gave me a pleasure as keen as that en¬ 
 joyed in boyhood from passing a stick along the pickets 
 of a fence. I was in nowise abashed to be discovered 
 in this amusement by an old peasant-woman, bearing 
 at either end of a yoke the usual basket with bottles 
 of milk packed in straw. 
 
 Entering Campo San Bartolomeo, I found trade al¬ 
 ready astir in that noisy place; the voice of cheap 
 bargains, which by noonday swells into an intolerable 
 uproar, was beginning to be heard. Having lived in 
 Campo San Bartolomeo, I recognized several familiar 
 faces there, and particularly noted among them that of 
 a certain fruit-vender, who frequently swindled me in 
 my small dealings with him. He now sat before his 
 stand, and for a man of a fat and greasy presence, 
 looked very fresh and brisk, and as if he had passed 
 a pleasant night. 
 
 On the other side of the Rialto Bridge, the market 
 
128 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 was preparing for the purchasers. Butchers were ar¬ 
 ranging their shops; fruit-stands, and stands for the 
 sale of crockery, and—as I must say for want of a 
 better word, if there is any—notions, were in a state 
 of tasteful readiness. The person on the steps of the 
 bridge who had exposed his stock of cheap clothing 
 and coarse felt hats on the parapet, had so far com¬ 
 pleted his preparations as to have leisure to be talking 
 himself hot and hoarse with the neighboring barber. 
 He was in a perfectly good humor, and was merely 
 giving a dramatic flavor to some question of six soldi. 
 
 At the landings of the market-place squadrons of 
 boats loaded with vegetables were arriving and unload¬ 
 ing. Peasants were building cabbages into pyramids; 
 collective squashes and cucumbers were taking a pic¬ 
 turesque shape; wreaths of garlic and garlands of 
 onions graced the scene. All the people were clamor¬ 
 ing at the tops of their voices; and in the midst of the 
 tumult and confusion, resting on heaps of cabbage- 
 leaves and garbage, men lay on their bellies sweetly 
 sleeping. Numbers of eating-houses were sending forth 
 a savory smell, and everywhere were breakfasters with 
 bowls of sguassetto. In one of the shops, somewhat 
 prouder than the rest, a heated brunette was turning 
 sections of eel on a gridiron, and hurriedly coqueting 
 with the purchasers. Singularly calm amid all this 
 bustle was the countenance of the statue called the 
 Gobbo, as I looked at it in the centre of the market¬ 
 place. The Gobbo (who is not a hunchback, either) 
 was patiently supporting his burden, and looking with 
 a quiet, thoughtful frown upon the ground, as if pon¬ 
 dering some dream of change that had come to him 
 ^ince the statutes of the haughty Republic were read 
 
THE MOUSE. 
 
 129 
 
 aloud to the people from the stone tribune on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Indeed, it was a morning for thoughtful meditation; 
 and as I sat at the feet of the four granite kings 
 shortly after, waiting for the gate of the ducal palace 
 to be opened, that I might see the girls drawing the 
 water, I studied the group of the Judgment of Solo¬ 
 mon, on the corner of the palace, and arrived at an 
 entirely new interpretation of that Bible story, which I 
 have now wholly forgotten. 
 
 The gate remained closed too long for my patience, 
 and I turned away from a scene momently losing its 
 interest. The brilliant little shops opened like holly¬ 
 hocks as I went home; the swelling tide of life filled 
 the streets, and brought Venice back to my day-time 
 remembrance, robbing her of that keen, delightful 
 charm with which she greeted my early morning 
 sense. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MOUSE. 
 
 Wishing to tell the story of our Mouse, because I 
 think it illustrates some amusing traits of character in 
 a certain class of Italians, I explain at once that he 
 was not a mouse, but a man so called from his wretched, 
 trembling little manner, his fugitive expression, and 
 peaked visage. 
 
 He first appeared to us on the driver’s seat of that 
 carriage in which we posted so splendidly one spring¬ 
 time from Padua to Ponte Lagoscuro. But though he 
 mounted to his place just outside the city gate, we did 
 not regard him much, nor, indeed, observe what a 
 
 Venetian Li/e, 9 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 130 
 
 mouse he was, until the driver stopped to water his 
 horses near Battaglia, and the Mouse got down to 
 stretch his forlorn little legs. Then I got down too, 
 and bade him good-day, and told him it was a very 
 hot day—for he was a mouse apparently so plunged 
 in wretchedness that I doubted if he knew what kind 
 of day it was. 
 
 When I had spoken, he began to praise (in the 
 wary manner of the Venetians when they find them¬ 
 selves in the company of a foreigner who does not 
 look like an Englishman) the Castle of the Obizzi near 
 by, which is now the country-seat of the ex-Duke of 
 Modena; and he presently said something to imply 
 that he thought me a German. 
 
 “But I am not a German,” said I. 
 
 “As many excuses,” said the Mouse sadly, but with 
 evident relief; and then began to talk more freely, and 
 of the evil times. 
 
 “Are you going all the way with us to Florence?” 
 I asked. 
 
 “No, signor, to Bologna; from there to Ancona.” 
 
 “Have you ever been in Venice? We are just 
 coming from there.” 
 
 “Oh, yes.” 
 
 “It is a beautiful place. Do you like it?” 
 
 “Sufficiently. But one does not enjoy himself very 
 well there.” 
 
 “But I thought Venice interesting.” 
 
 “Sufficiently, signor. Ma!” said the Mouse, shrugging 
 his shoulders, and putting on the air of being luxuriously 
 fastidious in his choice of cities, “the water is so bad 
 in Venice.” 
 
 The Mouse is dressed in a heavy winter overcoat, 
 
THE MOUSE. 
 
 13 1 
 
 and has no garment to form a compromise with his 
 shirt-sleeves, if he should wish to render the weather 
 more endurable by throwing off the surtout. In spite 
 of his momentary assumption of consequence, I suspect 
 that his coat is in the Monte di Pieta. It comes out 
 directly that he is a ship-carpenter who has worked 
 in the Arsenal of Venice, and at the ship-yards in 
 Trieste. 
 
 But there is no work any more. He went to Trieste 
 lately to get a job on the three frigates which the Sul¬ 
 tan had ordered to be built there. Ma! After all, the 
 frigates are to be built in Marseilles instead. There 
 is nothing. And every thing is so dear. In Venetia 
 you spend much and gain little. Perhaps there is 
 work at Ancona. 
 
 By this time the horses are watered; the Mouse 
 regains his seat, and we almost forget him, till he 
 jumps from his place, just before we reach the hotel 
 in Rovigo, and disappears—down the first hole in the 
 side of a house, perhaps. He might have done much 
 worse, and spent the night at the hotel, as we did. 
 
 The next morning at four o’clock, when we start, 
 he is on the box again, nibbling bread and cheese, 
 and glancing furtively back at us to say good morning. 
 He has little twinkling black eyes, just like a mouse, 
 and a sharp moustache, and sharp tuft on his chin—as 
 like Victor Emanuel’s as a mouse’s tuft can be. 
 
 The cold morning air seems to shrivel him, and he 
 crouches into a little gelid ball on the seat beside the 
 driver, while we wind along the Po on the smooth gray 
 road; while the twilight lifts slowly from the distances 
 of field and vineyard; while the black boats of the Po, 
 with their gaunt white sails, show spectrally through 
 
 9 * 
 
132 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the mists; while the trees and the bushes break into 
 innumerable voice, and the birds are glad of another 
 day in Italy; while the peasant drives his mellow-eyed, 
 dun oxen afield; while his wife comes in her scarlet 
 bodice to the door, and the children’s faces peer out 
 from behind her skirts; while the air freshens, the east 
 flushes, and the great miracle is wrought anew. 
 
 Once again, before we reach the ferry of the Po, 
 the Mouse leaps down and disappears as mysteriously 
 as at Rovigo. We see him no more till we meet in 
 the station on the other side of the river, where we 
 hear him bargaining long and earnestly with the ticket- 
 seller for a third-class passage to Bologna. He fails 
 to get it, I think, at less than the usual rate, for he 
 retires from the contest more shrunken and forlorn 
 than ever, and walks up and down the station, startled 
 at a word, shocked at any sudden noise. 
 
 For curiosity, I ask how much he paid for cross¬ 
 ing the river, mentioning the fabulous sum it had 
 cost us. 
 
 It appears that he paid sixteen soldi only. “What 
 could they do when a man was in misery? I had no¬ 
 thing else.” 
 
 Even while thus betraying his poverty, the Mouse 
 did not beg, and we began to respect his poverty. In 
 a little while we pitied it, witnessing the manner in 
 which he sat down on the edge of a chair, with a 
 smile of meek desperation. 
 
 It is a more serious case when an artisan is out of 
 work in the Old World than one can understand in 
 the New. There the struggle for bread is so fierce 
 and the competition so great; and, then, a man bred 
 to one trade cannot turn his hand to another as in 
 
THE MOUSE. 
 
 *33 
 
 America. Even the rudest and least skilled labor 
 has more to do it than are wanted. The Italians 
 are very good to the poor, but the tradesman out 
 of work must become a beggar before charity can 
 help him. 
 
 We, who are poor enough to be wise, consult 
 foolishly together concerning the Mouse. It blesses 
 him that gives, and him that takes—this business of 
 charity. And then, there is something irresistibly 
 relishing and splendid in the consciousness of being 
 the instrument of a special providence! Have I all 
 my life admired those beneficent characters in novels 
 and comedies who rescue innocence, succor distress, 
 and go about pressing gold into the palm of poverty, 
 and telling it to take it and be happy; and now shall 
 I reject an occasion, made to my hand, for emulating 
 them in real life? 
 
 “I think I will give the Mouse five francs,” I say. 
 
 “Yes, certainly.” 
 
 “But I will be prudent,” I continue. “I will not 
 give him this money. I will tell him it is a loan which 
 he may pay me back again whenever he can. In this 
 way I shall relieve him now, and furnish him an in¬ 
 centive to economy.” 
 
 I call to the Mouse, and he runs tremulously to¬ 
 ward me. 
 
 “Have you friends in Ancona?” 
 
 “No, signor.” 
 
 “How much money have you’left?” 
 
 He shows me three soldi. “Enough for a coffee.” 
 
 “And then?” 
 
 “God knows.” 
 
 So I give him the five francs, and explain my little 
 
134 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 scheme of making it a loan, and not a gift; and then 
 I give him my address. 
 
 He does not appear to understand the scheme of 
 the loan; but he takes the money, and is quite 
 stunned by his good fortune. He thanks me ab¬ 
 sently, and goes and shows the piece to the guards, 
 with a smile that illumines and transfigures his whole 
 person. At Bologna, he has come to his senses; 
 he loads me with blessings, he is ready to weep; he 
 reverences me, he wishes me a good voyage, endless 
 prosperity, and innumerable days; and takes the train 
 for Ancona. 
 
 “Ah, ah!” I congratulate myself,—“is it not a 
 fine thing to be the instrument of a special provi¬ 
 dence?” 
 
 It is pleasant to think of the Mouse during all that 
 journey, and if we are never so tired, it rests us to 
 say, “I wonder where the Mouse is by this time?” 
 When we get home, and coldly count up our ex¬ 
 penses, we rejoice in the five francs lent to the Mouse. 
 “And I know he will pay it back if ever he can,” I 
 say. “That was a Mouse of integrity.” 
 
 Two weeks later comes a comely young woman, 
 with a young child—a child strong on its legs, a 
 child which tries to open every thing in the room, 
 which wants to pull the cloth off the table, to throw 
 itself out of the open window—a child of which I 
 have never seen the peer for restlessness and curiosity. 
 This young woman has been directed to call on me as 
 a person likely to pay her way to Ferrara. 
 
 “But who sent you? But, in fine, why should I 
 pay your way to Ferrara? I have never seen you 
 before.” 
 
THE MOUSE. 
 
 135 
 
 “My husband, whom you benefited on his way to 
 Ancona, sent me. Here is his letter and the card you 
 gave him.” 
 
 I call out to my fellow-victim,—“My dear, here is 
 news of the Mouse!” 
 
 “Don’t tell me he’s sent you that money already!” 
 
 “Not at all. He has sent me his wife and child, 
 that I may forward them to him at Ferrara, out of 
 my goodness, and the boundless prosperity which has 
 followed his good wishes—I, who am a great signor 
 in his eyes, and an insatiable giver of five-franc pieces 
 —the instrument of a perpetual special providence. 
 The Mouse has found work at Ferrara, and his wife 
 comes here from Trieste. As for the rest, I am to 
 send her to him, as I said.” 
 
 “You are deceived,” I say solemnly to the Mouse’s 
 wife. “I am not a rich man. I lent your husband 
 five francs because he had nothing. I am sorry: but 
 I cannot spare twenty florins to send you to Ferrara. 
 If one will help you?” 
 
 “Thanks the same,” said the young woman, who 
 was well dressed enough; and blessed me, and gathered 
 up her child, and went her way. 
 
 But her blessing did not lighten my heart, de¬ 
 pressed and troubled by so strange an end to my 
 little scheme of a beneficent loan. After all, per¬ 
 haps the Mouse may have been as keenly disap¬ 
 pointed as myself. With the ineradicable idea of the 
 Italians, that persons who speak English are wealthy 
 by nature, and tutti original !, it was not such an ab¬ 
 surd conception of the case to suppose that if I had 
 lent him five francs once, I should like to do it con¬ 
 tinually. Perhaps he may yet pay back the loan 
 
136 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 with usury. But I doubt it. In the mean time, I 
 am far from blaming the Mouse. I merely feel that 
 there is a misunderstanding, which I can pardon if 
 he can. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 One day in the gallery of the Venetian Academy 
 a family party of the English, whom we had often 
 seen from our balcony in their gondolas, were kind 
 enough to pause before Titian’s John the Baptist. 
 It was attention that the picture could scarcely de¬ 
 mand in strict justice, for it hangs at the end of a 
 suite of smaller rooms through which visitors usually 
 return from the great halls, spent with looking at 
 much larger paintings. As these people stood gazing 
 at the sublime figure of the Baptist,—one of the most 
 impressive, if not the most religious, that the master 
 has painted,—and the wild and singular beauty of 
 the landscape made itself felt through the infinite 
 depths of their respectability, the father of the family 
 and the head of the group uttered approval of the 
 painter’s conception: “Quite my idea of the party’s 
 character,” he said; and then silently and awfully led 
 his domestic train away. 
 
 I am so far from deriding the criticism of this 
 honest gentleman that I would wish to have equal 
 sincerity and boldness in saying what I thought—if 
 I really thought any thing at all—concerning the art 
 which I spent so great a share of my time at Venice 
 in looking at. But I fear I should fall short of the 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 137 
 
 terseness as well as the candor I applaud, and should 
 presently find myself tediously rehearsing criticisms 
 which I neither respect for their honesty, nor regard 
 for their justice. It is the sad fortune of him who 
 desires to arrive at full perception of the true and 
 beautiful in art, to find that critics have no agree¬ 
 ment except upon a few loose general principles; 
 and that among the artists, to whom he turns in his 
 despair, no two think alike concerning the same 
 master, while his own little learning has made him 
 distrust his natural likings and mislikings. Ruskin 
 is undoubtedly the best guide you can have in your 
 study of the Venetian painters; and after reading 
 him, and suffering confusion and ignominy from his 
 theories and egotisms, the exercises by which you 
 are chastised into admission that he has taught you 
 any thing cannot fail to end in a humility very favor¬ 
 able to your future as a Christian. But even in 
 this subdued state you must distrust the methods by 
 which he pretends to relate the aesthetic truths you 
 perceive to certain civil and religious conditions: you 
 scarcely understand how Tintoretto, who genteelly dis¬ 
 dains (on one page) to paint well any person baser 
 than a saint or senator, and with whom “exactly 
 in proportion to the dignity of the character is the 
 beauty of the painting,”—comes (on the next page) 
 to paint a very “weak, mean, and painful” figure 
 of Christ; and knowing a little the loose lives of the 
 great Venetian painters, you must reject, with several 
 other humorous postulates, the idea that good colorists 
 are better men than bad colorists. Without any guide, 
 I think, these painters may be studied and under¬ 
 stood, up to a certain point, by one who lives in the 
 
138 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 atmosphere of their art at Venice, and who, insensibly 
 breathing in its influence, acquires a feeling for it 
 which all the critics in the world could not impart 
 where the works themselves are not to be seen. I am 
 sure that no one strange to the profession of artist 
 ever received a just notion of any picture by reading 
 the most accurate and faithful description of it: stated 
 dimensions fail to convey ideas of size; adjectives 
 are not adequate to the ideas of movement; and the 
 names of the colors, however artfully and vividly in¬ 
 troduced and repeated, cannot tell the reader of a 
 painter’s coloring. I should be glad to hear what 
 Titian’s “Assumption” is like from some one who 
 knew it by descriptions. Can any one who has seen 
 it tell its likeness, or forget it? Can any cunning 
 critic describe intelligibly the difference between the 
 styles of Titian, of Tintoretto, and of Paolo Veronese, 
 -—that difference which no one with the slightest feel¬ 
 ing for art can fail to discern after looking thrice at 
 their works? It results from all this that I must be¬ 
 lieve special criticisms on art to have their small use 
 only in the presence of the works they discuss. This 
 is my sincere belief, and I could not, in any honesty, 
 lumber my pages with descriptions or speculations 
 which would be idle to most readers, even if I were a 
 far wiser judge of art than I affect to be. As it is, 
 doubting if I be gifted in that way at all, I think I 
 may better devote myself to discussion of such things 
 in Venice as can be understood by comparison with 
 things elsewhere, and so rest happy in the thought 
 that I have thrown no additional darkness on any of 
 the pictures half obscured now by the religious dim¬ 
 ness of the Venetian churches. 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 139 
 
 Doubt, analogous to that expressed, has already- 
 made me hesitate to spend the reader’s patience upon 
 many well-known wonders of Venice; and, looking 
 back over the preceding chapters, I find that some of 
 the principal edifices of the city have scarcely got 
 into my book even by name. It is possible that the 
 reader, after all, loses nothing by this; but I should 
 regret it, if it seemed ingratitude to that expression 
 of the beautiful which beguiled many dull hours for 
 me, and kept me company in many lonesome ones. 
 For kindnesses of this sort, indeed, I am under obliga¬ 
 tions to edifices in every part of the city; and there 
 is hardly a bit of sculptured stone in the Ducal Palace 
 to which I do not owe some pleasant thought or harm¬ 
 less fancy. Yet I am shy of endeavoring in my grati¬ 
 tude to transmute the substance of the Ducal Palace 
 into some substance that shall be sensible to the eyes 
 that look on this print; and I forgive myself the re¬ 
 luctance the more readily when I remember how, just 
 after reading Mr. Ruskin’s description of St. Mark’s 
 Church, I, who had seen it every day for three years, 
 began to have dreadful doubts of its existence. 
 
 To be sure, this was only for a moment, and I do 
 not think all the descriptive talent in the world could 
 make me again doubt St. Mark’s, which I remember 
 with no less love than veneration. This church indeed 
 has a beauty which touches and wins all hearts, while 
 it appeals profoundly to the religious sentiment. It is 
 as if there were a sheltering friendliness in its low- 
 hovering domes and arches, which lures and caresses 
 while it awes; as if here, where the meekest soul feels 
 welcome and protection, the spirit oppressed with the 
 heaviest load of sin might creep nearest to forgive- 
 
140 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 ness, hiding the anguish of its repentance in the temple’s 
 dim cavernous recesses, faintly starred with mosaic, 
 and twilighted by twinkling altar-lamps. 
 
 Though the temple is enriched with incalculable 
 value of stone and sculpture, I cannot remember at 
 any time to have been struck by its mere opulence. 
 Preciousness of material has been sanctified to the 
 highest uses, and there is such unity and justness in 
 the solemn splendor, that wonder is scarcely appealed 
 to. Even the priceless and rarely seen treasures of 
 the church—such as the famous golden altar-piece, 
 whose costly blaze of gems and gold was lighted in 
 Constantinople six hundred years ago—failed to im¬ 
 press me with their pecuniary worth, though I 
 
 “Value the giddy pleasure of the eyes,” 
 
 and like to marvel at precious things. The jewels of 
 other churches are conspicuous and silly heaps of 
 treasure; but St. Mark’s, where every line of space 
 shows delicate labor in rich material, subdues the 
 jewels to their place of subordinate adornment. So, 
 too, the magnificence of the Romish service seems less 
 vainly ostentatious there. In other churches the cere¬ 
 monies may sometimes impress you with a sense of 
 their grandeur, and even spirituality, but they all need 
 the effect of twilight upon them. You want a fore¬ 
 ground of kneeling figures, and faces half visible 
 through heavy bars of shadow; little lamps must tremble 
 before the shrines; and in the background must rise 
 the high altar, all ablaze with candles from vault to 
 pavement, while a hidden choir pours music from be¬ 
 hind, and the organ shakes the heart with its heavy 
 tones. But with the daylight on its splendors even 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. I 4 I 
 
 the grand function of the Te Deum fails to awe, and 
 wearies by. its length, except in St. Mark’s alone, 
 which is given grace to spititualize what elsewhere 
 would be mere theatric pomp * The basilica, however, 
 is not in every thing the edifice best adapted to the 
 Romish worship; for the incense, which is a main 
 element of the function, is gathered and held there in 
 choking clouds under the low wagon-roofs of the cross- 
 - naves.—Yet I do not know if I would banish incense 
 from the formula of worship even in St. Mark’s. There 
 is certainly a poetic if not a religious grace in the 
 swinging censer and its curling fumes; and I think the 
 perfume, as it steals mitigated to your nostrils, out of 
 the open church door, is the reverendest smell in the 
 world. 
 
 The music in Venetian churches is not commonly 
 very good: the best is to be heard at St. Mark’s, though 
 the director of the choir always contrives to make so 
 odious a slapping with his bdton as nearly to spoil 
 your enjoyment. The great musical event of the year 
 is the performance (immediately after the Festa del 
 Redentore ) of the Soldini Masses. These are offered 
 for the repose of one Giuseppe Soldini of Verona, 
 who, dying possessed of about a million francs, be- 
 
 * The cardinal-patriarch officiates in the Basilica San Marco 
 j with some ceremonies which I believe are peculiar to the patri¬ 
 archate of Venice, and which consist of an unusual number of robings 
 and disrobings, and putting on and off of shoes. All this is per¬ 
 formed with great gravity, and has, I suppose, some peculiar spiri¬ 
 tual significance. The shoes are brought by a priest to the foot of 
 ! the patriarchal throne, when a canon removes the profane, out-of- 
 door chaussure, and places the sacred shoes on the patriarch’s feet. 
 A like ceremony replaces the patriarch’s every-day gaiters, and the 
 pious rite ends. 
 
142 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 queathed a part (some six thousand francs) annually 
 to the church of St. Mark, on conditions named in his 
 will. The terms are, that during three successive days, 
 every year, there shall be said for the peace of his 
 soul a certain number of masses,—all to be done in 
 the richest and costliest manner. In case of delin¬ 
 quency, the bequest passes to the Philharmonic Society 
 of Milan; but the priesthood of the basilica so strictly 
 regard the wishes of the deceased that they never say 
 less than four masses over and above the prescribed 
 number.* 
 
 * After hearing these masses, curiosity led me to visit the Casa 
 di Ricovero , in order to look at Soldini’s will, and there I had the 
 pleasure of recognizing the constantly recurring fact, that beneficent 
 humanity is of all countries and religions. The Casa di Ricovero 
 is an immense edifice dedicated to the shelter and support of the 
 decrepit and helpless of either sex, who are collected there to the 
 number of five hundred. The more modern quarter was erected 
 from a bequest by Soldini; and eternal provision is also made by 
 his will for ninety of the inmates. The Secretary of the Casa went 
 through all the wards and infirmaries with me, and everywhere I 
 saw cleanliness and comfort (and such content as is possible to sick¬ 
 ness and old age, without surprise; for I had before seen the Civil 
 Hospital of Venice, and knew something of the perfection of Vene¬ 
 tian charities. 
 
 At last we came to the wardrobe, where the clothes of the pen¬ 
 sioners are made and kept. Here we were attended by a little, 
 slender, pallid young nun, who exhibited the dresses with a simple 
 pride altogether pathetic. She was a woman still, poor thing, 
 though a nun, and she could not help loving new clothes. They 
 called her Madre, who would never be it except in name and 
 motherly tenderness. When we had seen all, she stood a moment 
 before us, and as one of the coarse woolen lappets of her cape had 
 hidden it, she drew out a heavy crucifix of gold, and placed it in 
 sight, with a heavenly little ostentation, over her heart. Sweet and 
 beautiful vanity! An angel could have done it without harm, but 
 she blushed repentance, and glided away with downcast eyes. Poor 
 little mother! 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 143 
 
 As there is so little in St. Mark’s of the paltry or 
 revolting character of modern Romanism, one would 
 form too exalted an idea of the dignity of Catholic 
 worship if he judged it there. The truth is, the 
 sincerity and nobility of a spirit well-nigh unknown to 
 the Romish faith of these times, are the ruling in¬ 
 fluences in that temple: the past lays its spell upon 
 the present, transfiguring it, and the sublimity of the 
 early faith honors the superstition which has succeeded 
 it. To see this superstition in all its proper grossness 
 and deformity you must go into some of the Renaissance 
 churches,—fit tabernacles for that droning and mum¬ 
 ming spirit which has deprived all young and generous 
 men in Italy of religion; which has made the priests a 
 bitter jest and by-word; which has rendered the popu¬ 
 lation ignorant, vicious, and hopeless; which gives its 
 friendship to tyranny and its hatred to freedom; which 
 destroys the life of the Church that it may sustain the 
 power of the Pope. The idols of this supersition are 
 the foolish and hideous dolls which people bow to in 
 most of the Venetian temples, and of which the most 
 abominable is in the church of the Carmelites. It 
 represents the Madonna with the Child, elevated 
 breast-high to the worshipers. She is crowned with 
 tinsel and garlanded with paper flowers; she has a 
 blue ribbon about her tightly corseted waist; and she 
 wears an immense spreading hoop. On her painted, 
 silly face of wood, with its staring eyes shadowed by 
 a wig, is figured a pert smile; and people come con¬ 
 stantly and kiss the cross that hangs by a chain from 
 her girdle, and utter their prayers to her; while the 
 column near which she sits is hung over with pictures 
 celebrating the miracles she has performed. 
 
*44 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 These votive pictures, indeed, are to be seen on 
 most altars of the Virgin, and are no less interesting 
 as works of art than as expressions of hopeless 
 superstition. That Virgin who, in all her portaits, is 
 dressed in a churn-shaped gown and who holds a 
 Child similarly habited, is the Madonna most effica¬ 
 cious in cases of dreadful accident and hopeless sick¬ 
 ness, if we may trust the pictures which represent her 
 interference. You behold a carriage overturned and 
 dragged along the ground by frantic horses, and the 
 fashionably dressed lady and gentleman in the car¬ 
 riage about to be dashed into millions of pieces, when 
 the havoc is instantly arrested by this Madonna, who 
 breaks the clouds, leaving them with jagged and shat¬ 
 tered edges, like broken panes of glass, and visibly 
 holds back the fashionable lady and gentleman from 
 destruction. It is the fashionable lady and gentleman 
 who have thus recorded their obligation; and it is the 
 mother, doubtless, of the little boy miraculously pre¬ 
 served from death in his fall from the second-floor 
 balcony, who has gratefully caused the miracle to be 
 painted and hung at the Madonna’s shrine. Now and 
 then you also find offerings of corn and fruits before 
 her altar, in acknowledgment of good crops which the 
 Madonna has made to grow; and again you find rows 
 of silver hearts, typical of the sinful hearts which her 
 intercession has caused to be purged. The greatest 
 number of these, at any one shrine, is to be seen in 
 the church of San Nicolo dei Tolentini, where I should 
 think there were three hundred. 
 
 Whatever may be the popularity of the Madonna 
 della Salute in pestilent times, I do not take it to be 
 very great when the health of the city is good, if I 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 145 
 
 may judge from the spareness of the worshipers in 
 the church of her name: it is true that on the annual 
 holiday commemorative of her interposition to save 
 Venice from the plague, there is an immense concourse 
 of people there; but at other times I found the masses 
 and vespers slenderly attended, and I did not observe 
 a great number of votive offerings in the temple,— 
 though the great silver lamp placed there by the city, 
 in memory of the Madonna’s goodness during the visi¬ 
 tation of the cholera in 1849, may be counted, perhaps, 
 as representative of much collective gratitude. It is a 
 cold, superb church, lording it over the noblest breadth 
 of the Grand Canal; and I do not know what it is 
 saves it from being as hateful to the eye as other 
 temples of the Renaissance architecture. But it has 
 certainly a fine effect, with its twin bell-towers and 
 single massive dome, its majestic breadth of steps 
 rising from the water’s edge, and the many-statued 
 sculpture of its fagade. Strangers go there to see the 
 splendor of its high altar (where the melodramatic 
 Madonna, as the centre of a marble group, responds 
 to the prayer of the operatic Venezia, and drives away 
 the haggard, theatrical Pest), and the excellent Titians 
 and the grand Tintoretto in the sacristy. 
 
 The Salute is one of the great show-churches, like 
 that of San Giovanni e Paolo, which the common 
 poverty of imagination has decided to call the Vene¬ 
 tian Westminster Abbey, because it contains many 
 famous tombs and monuments. But there is only one 
 Westminster Abbey; and I am so far a believer in the 
 perfectibility of our species as to suppose that vergers 
 are nowhere possible but in England. There would 
 be nothing to say, after Mr. Ruskin, in praise or blame 
 
 Venetian Life , 10 
 
I46 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 of the great monuments in San Giovanni e Paolo, even 
 if I cared to discuss them; I only wonder that, in 
 speaking of the bad art which produced the tomb of 
 the Venieri, he failed to mention the successful ap¬ 
 proach to its depraved feeling, made by the single 
 figure sitting on the base of a slender shaft, at the 
 side of the first altar, on the right of the main entrance. 
 I suppose this figure typifies Grief, but it really re¬ 
 presents a drunken woman, whose drapery has fallen, 
 as if in some vile debauch, to her waist, and who 
 broods, with a horrible, heavy stupor and chop fallen 
 vacancy, on something which she supports with her 
 left hand upon her knee. It is a round of marble, 
 and if you have the daring to peer under the arm of 
 the debauchee, and look at it as she does, you find 
 that it contains the bass-relief of a skull in bronze. 
 Nothing more ghastly and abominable than the whole 
 thing can be conceived, and it seemed to me the fit 
 type of the abandoned Venice which produced it; for 
 one even less Ruskinian than I might have fancied 
 that in the sculptured countenance could be seen the 
 dismay of the pleasure-wasted harlot of the sea when, 
 from time to time, death confronted her amid her 
 revels. 
 
 People go into the Chapel of the Rosary here to 
 see the painting of Titian, representing The Death of 
 Peter Martyr. Behind it stands a painting of equal 
 size by John Bellini,—the Madonna, Child, and Saints, 
 of course,—and it is curious to study in the two pic¬ 
 tures those points in which Titian excelled and fell 
 short of his master. The treatment of the sky in the 
 landscape is singularly alike in both, but where the 
 greater painter has gained in breadth and freedom, 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 147 
 
 he has lost in that indefinable charm which belonged 
 chiefly to Bellini, and only to that brief age of transit 
 tion, of which his genius was the fairest flower and 
 ripest fruit. I have looked again and again at nearly 
 every painting of note in Venice, having a foolish 
 shame to miss a single one, and having also a better 
 wish to learn something of the beautiful from them; 
 but at last I must say, that, while I wondered at the 
 greatness of some, and tried to wonder at the great¬ 
 ness of others, the only paintings which gave me 
 genuine and hearty pleasure were those of Bellini, 
 Carpaccio, and a few others of that school and time. 
 
 Every day we used to pass through the court of 
 the old Augustinian convent adjoining the church of 
 San Stefano. It is a long time since the monks were 
 driven out of their snug hold; and the convent is now 
 the head-quarters of the Austrian engineer corps, and 
 the colonnade surrounding the court is become a public 
 thoroughfare. On one wall of this court are remains 
 —very shadowy remains indeed—of frescos painted 
 by Pordenone at the period of his fiercest rivalry with 
 Titian; and it is said that Pordenone, while he wrought 
 upon the scenes of scriptural story here represented, 
 wore his sword and buckler, in readiness to repel an 
 attack which he feared from his competitor. The story 
 is very vague, and I hunted it down in divers authorities 
 only to find it grow more and more intangible and un¬ 
 certain. But it gave a singular relish to our daily walk 
 through the old cloister, and I added, for my own 
 pleasure (and chiefly out of my own fancy, I am afraid, 
 for I can nowhere localize the fable on which I built), 
 that the rivalry between the painters, was partly a love- 
 jealousy, and that the disputed object of their passion 
 
 10 
 
148 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 
 was that fair Violante, daughter of the elder Palma, 
 who is to be seen in so many pictures painted by her 
 father, and by her lover, Titian. No doubt there are 
 readers will care less for this idleness of mine than 
 for the fact that the hard-headed German monk, Martin 
 Luther, once said mass in ihe adjoining church of San 
 Stefano, and lodged in the convent, on his way to 
 Rome. The unhappy Francesco Carrara, last Lord of 
 Padua, is buried in this church; but Venetians are 
 chiefly interested there now by the homilies of those 
 fervent preacher-monks, who deliver powerful sermons 
 during Lent. The monks are gifted men, with a most 
 earnest and graceful eloquence, and they attract im¬ 
 mense audiences, like popular and eccentric ministers 
 among ourselves. It is a fashion to hear them, and 
 although the atmosphere of the churches in the season 
 of Lent is raw, damp, and most uncomfortable, the 
 Venetians then throng the churches where they preach. 
 After Lent the sermons and church-going cease, and 
 the sanctuaries are once more abandoned to the pos¬ 
 session of the priests, droning from the altars to the 
 scattered kneelers on the floor,—the foul old women 
 and the young girls of the poor, the old-fashioned old 
 gentlemen and devout ladies of the better class, and 
 that singular race of poverty-stricken old men proper 
 to Italian churches, who, having dabbled themselves 
 with holy water, wander forlornly and aimlessly about, 
 and seem to consort with the foreigners looking at the 
 objects of interest. Lounging young fellows of low 
 degree appear with their caps in their hands, long 
 enough to tap themselves upon the breast and nod re¬ 
 cognition to the high-altar; and lounging young fellows 
 of high degree step in to glance at the faces of the 
 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 149 
 
 pretty girls, and then vanish. The droning ends, pre¬ 
 sently, and the devotees disappear, the last to go being 
 that thin old woman, kneeling before a shrine, with a 
 grease-gray shawl falling from her head to the ground. 
 The sacristan, in his perennial enthusiasm about the 
 great picture of the church, almost treads upon her 
 as he brings the strangers to see it, and she gets 
 meekly up and begs of them in a whispering whim¬ 
 per. The sacristan gradually expels her with the 
 visitors, and at one o’clock locks the door and goes 
 home. 
 
 By chance I have got a fine effect in churches at 
 the five o’clock mass in the morning, when the wor¬ 
 shipers are nearly all peasants who have come to 
 market, and who are pretty sure, each one, to have 
 a bundle or basket. At this hour the sacristan is 
 heavy with sleep; he dodges uncertainly at the tapers 
 as he lights and extinguishes them; and his manner 
 to the congregation, as he passes through it to the 
 altar, is altogether rasped and nervous. I think it is 
 best to be one’s self a little sleepy,—when the bare¬ 
 footed friar at the altar (if it is in the church of the 
 Scalzi, say) has a habit of getting several centuries 
 back from you, and of saying mass to the patrician 
 ghosts from the tombs under your feet; and there is 
 nothing at all impossible in the Renaissance angels 
 and cherubs in marble, floating and fatly tumbling 
 about on the broken arches of the altars. 
 
 I have sometimes been puzzled in Venice to know 
 why churches should keep cats, church-mice being 
 proverbially so poor, and so little capable of sustain¬ 
 ing a cat in good condition; yet I have repeatedly 
 found sleek and portly cats in the churches, where 
 
i5o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 they seem to be on terms of perfect understanding 
 with the priests, and to have no quarrel even with the 
 little boys who assist at mass. There is, for instance, 
 a cat in the sacristy of the Frari, which I have often 
 seen in familiar association with the ecclesiastics there, 
 when they came into his room to robe or disrobe, or 
 warm their hands, numb with supplication, at the great 
 brazier in the middle of the floor. I do not think this 
 cat has the slightest interest in the lovely Madonna of 
 Bellini which hangs in the sacristy; but I suspect him 
 of dreadful knowledge concerning the tombs in the 
 church. I have no doubt he has passed through the 
 open door of Canova’s monument, and that he sees 
 some coherence and meaning in Titian’s; he has been 
 all over the great mausoleum of the Doge Pesaro, and 
 he knows whether the griffins descend from their 
 perches at the midnight hour to bite the naked knees 
 of the ragged black caryatides. This profound and 
 awful animal I take to be a blood relation of the cat 
 in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, who sleeps 
 like a Christian during divine service, and loves a cer¬ 
 tain glorious bed on the top of a bench, where the 
 sun strikes upon him through the great painted window, 
 and dapples his tawny coat with lovely purples and 
 crimsons. 
 
 The church cats are apparently the friends of the 
 sacristans, with whom their amity is maintained pro¬ 
 bably by entire cession of the spoils of visitors. In 
 these, therefore, they seldom take any interest, merely 
 opening a lazy eye now and then to wink at the 
 sacristans as they drag the deluded strangers from 
 altar to altar, with intense enjoyment of the absurdity, 
 and a wicked satisfaction in the incredible stories re- 
 
 
CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 
 
 151 
 
 hearsed. I fancy, being Italian cats, they feel some¬ 
 thing like a national antipathy toward those troops of 
 German tourists, who always seek the Sehenswiirdig- 
 keiten in-companies of ten or twenty,—the men wear¬ 
 ing their beards, and the women their hoops and hats, 
 to look as much like English people as possible; while 
 their valet marshals them forward with a stream of 
 guttural information, unbroken by a single punctuation 
 .point. These wise cats know the real English by their 
 “Murrays;” and I think they make a shrewd guess at 
 the nationality of us Americans by the speed with 
 which we pass from one thing to another, and by our 
 national ignorance of all languages but English. They 
 must also hear us vaunt the superiority of our own 
 land in unpleasant comparisons, and I do not think 
 they believe us, or like us, for our boastings. I am 
 sure they would say to us, if they could, “Quando 
 finird, mai quella guerra? Che sangue! che orrore!”* 
 The French tourist they distinguish by his evident 
 skepticism concerning his own wisdom in quitting Paris 
 for the present purpose; and the traveling Italian, by 
 his attention to his badly dressed, handsome wife, with 
 whom he is now making his wedding trip. 
 
 I have found churches undergoing repairs (as most 
 of them always are in Venice) rather interesting. Under 
 these circumstances, the sacristan is obliged to take 
 you into all sorts of secret places and odd corners, to 
 show you the objects of interest; and you may often 
 get glimpses of pictures which, if not removed from 
 their proper places, it would be impossible to see. The 
 
 * “When will this war ever be ended? what blood! what 
 horror!” I have often heard the question and the comment from 
 many Italians who were not cats 
 
152 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 carpenters and masons work most deliberately, as if in 
 a place so set against progress that speedy workman¬ 
 ship would be a kind of impiety. Besides the 
 mechanics, there are always idle priests standing about, 
 and vagabond boys clambering over the scaffolding. 
 In San Giovanni e Paolo I remember we one day saw 
 a small boy appear through an opening in the roof, 
 and descend by means of some hundred feet of dang¬ 
 ling rope. The spectacle, which made us ache with 
 fear, delighted his companions so much that their 
 applause was scarcely subdued by the sacred cha¬ 
 racter of the place. As soon as he reached the ground 
 in safety, a gentle, good-natured looking priest took 
 him by the arm and cuffed his ears. It was a scene 
 for a painter. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 
 
 Nothing can be fairer to the eye than these 
 “summer isles of Eden” lying all about Venice, far 
 and near. The water forever trembles and changes, 
 with etery change of light, from one rainbow glory to 
 another, as with the restless hues of an opal; and even 
 when the splendid tides recede, and go down with the 
 sea, they leave a heritage of beauty to the empurpled 
 mud of the shallows, all strewn with green, disheveled 
 sea-weed. The lagoons have almost as wide a bound 
 as your vision. On the east and west you can see 
 their borders of sea-shore and main-land; but looking 
 north and south, there seems no end to the charm of 
 their vast, smooth, all-but melancholy expanses. Beyond 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS, 
 
 153 
 
 their southern limit rise the blue Euganean Hills, where 
 Petrarch died; on the north loom the Alps, white with 
 snow. Dotting the stretches of lagoon in every direc¬ 
 tion lie the islands—now piles of airy architecture 
 that the water seems to float under and bear upon its 
 breast, now 
 
 “Sunny spots of greenery,” 
 
 with the bell-towers of demolished cloisters shadowily 
 showing above their trees;—for in the days of the 
 Republic nearly every one of the islands had its 
 monastery and its church. At present the greater 
 number have been fortified by the Austrians, whose 
 sentinel paces the once-peaceful shores, and challenges 
 all passers with his sharp “Halt! Wer da!” and warns 
 them not to approach too closely. Other islands have 
 been devoted to different utilitarian purposes, and few 
 are able to keep their distant promises of loveliness. 
 One of the more faithful is the island of San Clemente, 
 on which the old convent church is yet standing, empty 
 and forlorn within, but without all draped in glossy 
 ivy. After I had learned to row in the gondolier 
 fashion, I voyaged much in the lagoon with my boat, 
 and often stopped at this church. It has a curious 
 feature in the chapel of the Madonna di Loreto, which 
 is built in the middle of the nave, faced with marble, 
 roofed, and isolated from the walls of the main edifice 
 on all sides. On the back of this there is a bass- 
 relief in bronze, representing the Nativity—a work 
 much in the spirit of the bass-reliefs in San Giovanni 
 e Paolo; and one of the chapels has an exquisite little 
 altar, with gleaming columns of porphyry. There has 
 been no service in the church for many years; and 
 this altar had a strangely pathetic effect, won from the 
 
154 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 black four-cornered cap of a priest that lay before it, 
 like an offering. I wondered who the priest was that 
 wore it, and why he had left it there, as if he had fled 
 away in haste. I might have thought it looked like 
 the signal of the abdication of a system; the gondolier 
 who was with me took it up and reviled it as repre¬ 
 sentative of birbanti matricolati , who fed upon the poor, 
 and in whose expulsion from that island he rejoiced. 
 But he had little reason to do so, since the last use of 
 the place was for the imprisonment of refractory 
 ecclesiastics. Some of the tombs of the Morosini are 
 in San Clemente—villanous monuments, with bronze 
 Deaths popping out of apertures, and holding marble 
 scrolls inscribed with undying deeds. Indeed, nearly 
 all the decorations of the poor old church are horrible, 
 and there is one statue in it meant for an angel, with 
 absolutely the most lascivious face I ever saw in 
 marble. 
 
 The islands near Venice are all small, except the 
 Giudecca (which is properly a part of the city), the 
 Lido, and Murano. The Giudecca, from being anciently 
 the bounds in which certain factious nobles were con¬ 
 fined, was later laid out in pleasure-gardens, and built 
 up with summer-palaces. The gardens still remain to 
 some extent; but they are now chiefly turned to prac¬ 
 tical account in raising vegetables and fruits for the 
 Venetian market, and the palaces have been converted 
 into warehouses and factories. This island produces 
 a variety of beggar, the most truculent and tenacious 
 in all Venice, and it has a convent of lazy Capuchin 
 friars, who are likewise beggars. To them belongs the 
 church of the Redent ore, which only the Madonnas of 
 Bellini in the sacristy make worthy to be seen,—though 
 

SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 
 
 155 
 
 the island is hardly less famed for this church than 
 for the difficult etymology of its name. 
 
 At the eastern extremity of the Giudecca lies the 
 Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with Palladio’s church 
 of that name. There are some great Tintorettos in the 
 church, and I like the beautiful wood-carvings in the 
 choir. The island has a sad interest from the political 
 prison into which part of the old convent has been 
 perverted; and the next island eastward is the scarcely 
 sadder abode of the mad. Then comes the fair and 
 happy seat of Armenian learning and piety, San Lazzaro, 
 and then the Lido. 
 
 The Lido is the sea-shore, and thither in more 
 cheerful days the Venetians used to resort in great 
 numbers on certain holidays, called the Mondays of 
 the Lido, to enjoy the sea-breeze and the country 
 scenery, and to lunch upon the flat tombs of the 
 Hebrews, buried there in exile from the consecrated 
 Christian ground. On a summer’s day there the sun 
 j glares down upon the sand and flat gravestones, and 
 
 j it seems the most desolate place where one’s bones 
 
 might be laid. The Protestants were once also in- 
 |j terred on the Lido, but now they rest (apart from the 
 1 Catholics, however) in the cemetery of San Michele. 
 
 The island is long and narrow: it stretches be¬ 
 tween the lagoons and the sea, with a village at either 
 end, and with bath-houses on the beach, which is 
 everywhere faced with forts. There are some poor 
 little trees there, and grass,—things which we were 
 thrice a week grateful for, "when we went thither to 
 bathe. I do not know whether it will give the place 
 further interest to say, that it was among the tombs 
 of the Hebrews Cooper’s ingenious Bravo had the 
 
I56 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 incredible good luck to hide himself from the slirri 
 of the Republic; or to relate that it was the habit of 
 Lord Byron to gallop up and down the Lido in search 
 of that conspicuous solitude of which the sincere bard, 
 was fond. 
 
 One day of the first summer I spent in Venice 
 (three years of Venetian life afterward removed it back 
 into times of the remotest antiquity), a friend and I 
 had the now-incredible enterprise to walk from one 
 end of the Lido to the other,—from the port of San 
 Nicolo (through which the Bucintoro passed when the 
 Doges went’ to espouse the Adriatic) to the port of 
 Malamocco, at the southern extremity. 
 
 We began with that delicious bath which you may 
 have in the Adriatic, where the light surf breaks with 
 a pensive cadence on the soft sand, all strewn with 
 brilliant shells. The Adriatic is the bluest water I 
 have ever seen; and it is an ineffable, lazy delight to 
 lie and watch the fishing sails of purple and yellow 
 dotting its surface, and the greater ships dipping down 
 its utmost rim. It was particularly good to do this 
 after coming out of the water; but our American blood 
 could not brook much repose, and we got up presently, 
 and started on our walk to the little village of Mala¬ 
 mocco, some three miles away. The double-headed 
 eagle keeps watch and ward from a continuous line of 
 forts along the shore, and the white-coated sentinels 
 never cease to pace the bastions, night or day. Their 
 vision of the sea must not be interrupted by even so 
 much as the form of a stray passer; and as we went 
 by the forts, we had to descend from the sea-wall, 
 and walk under it, until we got beyond the sentry’s 
 beat. The crimson poppies grow everywhere on this 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 15 7 
 
 sandy little isle, and they fringe the edges of the 
 bastions with their bloom, as if the “blood-red blos¬ 
 soms of war” had there sprung from the seeds of 
 battle sown in old forgotten fights. But otherwise the 
 forts were not very engaging in appearance. A sentry- 
 box of yellow and black, a sentry, a row of seaward 
 frowning cannon—there was not much in all this to 
 interest us; and so we Walked idly along, and looked 
 either to the city rising from the lagoons on one hand, 
 or the ships going down the sea on the other. In the 
 fields, along the road, were vines and Indian corn; but 
 instead of those effigies of humanity, doubly fearful 
 from their wide unlikeness to any thing human, which 
 we contrive to scare away the birds, the devout peasant- 
 folks had here displayed on poles the instruments of 
 the Passion of the Lord—the hammer, the cords, the 
 nails—which at once protected and blessed the fields. 
 But I doubt if even these would save them from the 
 New-World pigs, and certainly the fences here would 
 not turn pork, for they are made of a matting of reeds, 
 woven together, and feebly secured to tremulous posts. 
 The fields were well cultivated, and the vines and 
 garden vegetables looked flourishing; but the corn was 
 spindling, and had, I thought, a homesick look, as if 
 it dreamed vainly of wide ancestral bottom-lands, on 
 the mighty streams that run through the heart of the 
 Great West. The Italians call our corn gran turco; 
 but I knew that it was for the West that it yearned, 
 and not for the East. 
 
 No doubt there were once finer dwellings than the 
 peasants’ houses which are now the only habitations 
 on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel villa must 
 formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we 
 
158 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 found surmounted by broken statues of Venus and 
 Diana. The poor goddesses were both headless, and 
 some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and 
 they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering at¬ 
 titudes of the absurd period of art to which they be¬ 
 longed: they extended their mutilated arms toward 
 the sea for pity, but it regarded them not; and we 
 passed before them scoffing at their bad taste, for we 
 were hungry, and it was yet some distance to Mala- 
 mocco. 
 
 This dirty little village was the capital of the 
 Venetian islands before King Pepin and his Franks 
 burned it, and the shifting sands of empire gathered 
 solidly about the Rialto in Venice. It is a thousand 
 years since that time, and Malamocco has long been 
 given over to fishermen’s families and the soldiers of 
 the forts. We found the latter lounging about the un¬ 
 wholesome streets; and the former seated at their 
 thresholds, engaged in those pursuits of the chase 
 which the use of a fine-tooth comb would undignify to 
 mere slaughter. 
 
 There is a church at Malamocco, but it was closed, 
 and we could not find the sacristan; so we went to 
 the little restaurant, as the next best place, and de¬ 
 manded something to eat. What had the padrone? 
 He answered pretty much to the same effect as the 
 innkeeper in “Don Quixote,” who told his guests that 
 they could have any thing that walked on the earth, 
 or swam in the sea, or flew in the air. We would 
 take, then, some fish, or a bit of veal, or some mutton 
 chops. The padrone sweetly shrugged the shoulders 
 of apology. There was nothing of all this, but what 
 would we say to some liver or gizzards of chickens, 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 59 
 
 fried upon the instant and ready the next breath? No, 
 we did not want them; so we compromised on some 
 ham fried in a batter of eggs, and reeking with its 
 own fatness. The truth is, it was a very bad little 
 lunch we made, and nothing redeemed it but the 
 amiability of the smiling padrone and the bustling 
 padrona, who served us as kings and princes. It was 
 a clean hostelry, though, and that was a merit in 
 Malamocco, of which the chief modern virtue is that 
 it cannot hold you long. No doubt it was more in¬ 
 teresting in other times. In the days when the Vene¬ 
 tians chose it for their capital, it was a walled town, 
 and fortified with towers. It has been more than once 
 inundated by the sea, and it might again be washed 
 out with advantage. 
 
 In the spring, two years after my visit to Mala¬ 
 mocco, we people in Casa Falier made a long-intended 
 expedition to the island of Torcello, which is perhaps 
 the most interesting of the islands of the lagoons. We 
 had talked of it all winter, and had acquired enough 
 property there to put up some light Spanish castles 
 on the desolate site of the ancient city, that, so many 
 years ago, sickened of the swamp air and died. A 
 Count from Torcello is the title which Venetian persi¬ 
 flage gives to improbable noblemen; and thus even 
 the pride of the dead Republic of Torcello has passed 
 into matter of scornful jest, as that of the dead Re¬ 
 public of Venice may likewise in its day. 
 
 When we leave the riva of Casa Falier, we pass 
 down the Grand Canal, cross the Basin of St. Mark, 
 and enter one of the narrow canals that intersect the 
 Riva degli Schiavoni, whence we wind and deviate 
 southwestward till we emerge near the church of San 
 
i6q 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Giovanni e Paolo, on the Fondamenta Nuove. On our 
 way we notice that a tree, hanging over the water 
 from a little garden, is in full leaf, and at Murano we 
 see the tender bloom of peaches and the drifted blos¬ 
 som of cherry-trees. 
 
 As we go by the Cemetery of San Michele, Piero 
 the gondolier and Giovanna improve us with a little 
 solemn pleasantry. 
 
 “It is a small place , 57 says Piero, “but there is 
 room enough for all Venice in it . 55 
 
 “It is true , 55 assents Giovanna, “and here we poor 
 folks become landholders at last . 55 
 
 At Murano we stop a moment to look at the old 
 Duomo, and to enjoy its quaint mosaics within, and 
 the fine and graceful spirit of the apsis without. It is 
 very old, this architecture; but the eternal youth of 
 the beautiful belongs to it, and there is scarce a stone 
 fallen from it that I would replace. 
 
 The manufacture of glass at Murano, of which the 
 origin is so remote, may be said to form the only 
 branch of industry which still flourishes in the lagoons. 
 Muranese beads are exported to all quarters in vast 
 quantities, and the process of making them is one of 
 the things that strangers feel they must see when visit¬ 
 ing Venice. The famous mirrors are no longer made, 
 and the glass has deteriorated in quality, as well as in 
 the beauty of the thousand curious forms it took. The 
 test of the old glass, which is now imitated a great 
 deal, is its extreme lightness. I suppose the charming 
 notion that glass was once wrought at Murano of such 
 fineness that it burst into fragments if poison were 
 poured into it, must be fabulous. And yet it would 
 have been an excellent thing in the good old toxico- 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 6 1 
 
 logical days of Italy; and people of noble family would 
 have found a sensitive goblet of this sort as sovereign 
 against the arts of venomers as an exclusive diet of 
 boiled eggs. 
 
 The city of Murano has dwindled from thirty to 
 five thousand in population. It is intersected by a 
 system of canals like Venice, and has a Grand Canal 
 of its own, of as stately breadth as that of the capital. 
 The finer houses are built on this canal; but the beauti¬ 
 ful palaces, once occupied in villeggiatura by the noble 
 Venetians, are now inhabited by herds of poor, or 
 converted into glass-works. The famous Cardinal Bembo 
 and other literati made the island their retreat, and 
 beautified it with gardens and fountains. Casa Priuli 
 in that day was, according to Venetian ideas, “a ter¬ 
 restrial Paradise,” and a proper haunt of “nymphs and 
 demi-gods.” But the wealth, the learning, and the 
 elegance of former times, which planted “groves of 
 Academe” at Murano, have passed away, and the fair 
 pleasure-gardens are now weed-grown wastes, or turned 
 into honest cabbage and potato patches. It is a poor, 
 dreary little town, with an inexplicable charm in its 
 decay. The city arms are still displayed upon the 
 public buildings (for Murano was ruled, independently 
 of Venice, by its own council); and the heraldic cock, 
 with a snake in its beak, has yet a lusty and haughty 
 air amid the ruin of the place. 
 
 The way in which the spring made itself felt upon 
 the lagoon was full of curious delight. It was not so 
 early in the season that we should know the spring 
 by the first raw warmth in the air, and there was as 
 yet no assurance of her presence in the growth—later 
 so luxuriant—of the coarse grasses of the shallows, 
 
 Venetian Life . II 
 
l6 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 But somehow the spring was there, giving us new life 
 with every breath. There were fewer gulls than usual, 
 and those we saw sailed far overhead, debating de¬ 
 parture. There was deeper languor in the laziness of 
 the soldiers of finance, as they lounged and slept upon 
 their floating custom houses in every channel of the 
 lagoons; and the hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling 
 to each other as their wont is, had an uncommon 
 tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the 
 heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise of 
 that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half 
 the year, and which makes every other climate seem 
 niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have 
 beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous 
 splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable 
 longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, 
 week after week, month after month, that 
 
 “Blue, unclouded weather,” 
 
 which, at Venice, contents all your senses, and makes 
 you exult to be alive with the inarticulate gladness of 
 children, or of the swallows that there all day wheel 
 and dart through the air, and shriek out a delight too 
 intense and precipitate for song. 
 
 The island of Torcello is some five miles away 
 from Venice, in the northern lagoon. The city was 
 founded far back in the troubled morning of Christian 
 civilization, by refugees from barbarian invasion, and 
 built with stones quarried from the ruins of old Alti- 
 num, over which Attila had passed desolating. During 
 the first ages of its existence Torcello enjoyed the 
 doubtful advantage of protection from the Greek em¬ 
 perors, but fell afterward under the domination of 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 63 
 
 Venice. In the thirteenth century the dibris of the 
 river that emptied into the lagoon there began to 
 choke up the wholesome salt canals, and to poison the 
 air with swampy malaria; and in the seventeenth cen¬ 
 tury the city had so dwindled that the Venetian podestd 
 removed his residence from the depopulated island to 
 Burano,—though the bishopric established immediately 
 after the settlement of the refugees at Torcello con¬ 
 tinued there till 1814, to the satisfaction, no doubt, of 
 the frogs and mosquitoes that had long inherited the 
 former citizens. 
 
 I confess that I know little more of the history of 
 Torcello than I found in my guide-book. There I read 
 that the city had once stately civic and religious edi¬ 
 fices, and that in the tenth century the Emperor Por- 
 phorygenitus called it “magnum emporium Torcellano - 
 rumP The much-restored cathedral of the seventh 
 century, a little church, a building supposed to have 
 been the public palace, and other edifices so ruinous 
 and so old that their exact use in other days is not 
 now known, are all that remain of the magnum empo¬ 
 rium, except some lines of moldering wall that wander 
 along the canals, and through pastures and vineyards, 
 in the last imbecile stages of dilapidation and decay. 
 There is a lofty bell-tower, also, from which, no doubt, 
 the Torcellani used to descry afar off the devouring 
 hordes of the barbarians on the main-land, and pre¬ 
 pare for defense. As their city was never actually in¬ 
 vaded, I am at a loss to account for the so-called 
 Throne of Attila, which stands in the grass-grown 
 piazza before the cathedral; and I fear that it may 
 really have been after all only the seat which the 
 ancient Tribunes of Torcello occupied on public occa- 
 

 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 sions. It is a stone arm-chair, of a rude stateliness, 
 and though I questioned its authenticity, I went and 
 sat down in it a little while, to give myself the benefit 
 of a doubt in case Attila had really pressed the same 
 seat. 
 
 As soon as our gondola touched the grassy shores 
 at Torcello, Giovanna’s children, Beppi and Nina, 
 whom we had brought with us to give a first expe¬ 
 rience of trees and flowers and mother earth, leaped 
 from the boat and took possession of land and water. 
 By a curious fatality the little girl, who was bred 
 safely amid the hundred canals of Venice, signalized 
 her absence from their perils by presently falling into 
 the only canal in Torcello, whence she was taken drip¬ 
 ping, to be confined at a farm-house during the rest 
 of our stay. The children were wild with pleasure, 
 being absolutely new to the country, and ran over the 
 island, plucking bouquets of weeds and flowers by 
 armsful. A rake, borne afield upon the shoulder of 
 a peasant, afterwhile fascinated the Venetian Beppi, 
 and drew him away to study its strange and wonder¬ 
 ful uses. 
 
 The simple inhabitants of Torcello came forth with 
 gifts, or rather bargains, of flowers, to meet their dis¬ 
 coverers, and, in a little while, exhausted our soldi. 
 They also attended us in full force when we sat down 
 to lunch,—the old, the young men and maidens, and 
 the little children, all alike sallow, tattered, and dirty. 
 Under these circumstances, a sense of the idyllic and 
 the patriarchal gave zest to our collation, and moved 
 us to bestow, in a splendid manner, fragments of the 
 feast among the poor Torcellani. Knowing the ab¬ 
 stemiousness of Italians everywhere, and seeing the 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 65 
 
 hungry fashion in which the islanders clutched our 
 gifts and devoured them, it was our doubt whether any 
 one of them had ever experienced perfect repletion. I 
 incline to think that a chronic famine gnawed their 
 entrails, and that they never filled their bellies but 
 with draughts of the east wind disdained of Job. The 
 smaller among them even scrambled with the dog for 
 the bones, until a little girl was bitten, when a terrific 
 tumult arose, and the dog was driven home by the 
 whole multitude. The children presently returned. 
 They all had that gift of beauty which Nature seldom 
 denies to the children of their race; but being, as I 
 said, so dirty, their beauty shone forth chiefly from 
 their large soft eyes. They had a very graceful, bash¬ 
 ful archness of manner, and they insinuated beggary 
 so winningly, that it would have been impossible for 
 hungry people to deny them. As for us, having 
 lunched, we gave them every thing that remained, and 
 went off to feast our enthusiasm for art and antiquity 
 in the cathedral. 
 
 Of course, I have not the least intention of de¬ 
 scribing it. I remember best among its wonders the 
 bearing of certain impenitents in one of the mosaics 
 on the walls, whom the earnest artist early had meant 
 to represent as suffering in the flames of torment. I 
 think, however, I have never seen complacence equal 
 to that of these sinners, unless it was in the counten¬ 
 ances of the seven fat kine, which, as represented in 
 the vestibule of St. Mark’s, wear an air of the sleepiest 
 and laziest enjoyment, while the seven lean kine, hav¬ 
 ing just come up from the river, devour steaks from 
 their bleeding haunches. There are other mosaics in 
 the Torcello cathedral, especially those in the apsis and 
 
i66 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 in one of the side chapels, which are in a beautiful 
 spirit of art, and form the widest possible contrast to 
 the eighteenth-century high altar, with its insane and 
 ribald angels flying off at the sides, and poising them¬ 
 selves in the rope-dancing attitudes favored by statues 
 of heavenly persons in the decline of the Renaissance. 
 The choir is peculiarly built, in the form of a half- 
 circle, with seats rising one above another, as in an 
 amphitheatre, and a flight of steps ascending to the 
 bishop’s seat above all,—after the manner of the 
 earliest Christian churches. The partition parapet be¬ 
 fore the high altar is of almost transparent marble, 
 delicately and quaintly sculptured with peacocks and 
 lions, as the Byzantines loved to carve them; and the 
 capitals of the columns dividing the naves are of in¬ 
 finite richness. Part of the marble pulpit has a curious 
 bass-relief, said to be representative of the worship of 
 Mercury; and indeed the Torcellani owe much of the 
 beauty of their Duomo to unrequited antiquity. (They 
 came to be robbed in their turn: for the opulence of 
 their churches was so great that in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries the severest penalties had to be 
 enacted against those who stole from them. No one 
 will be surprised to learn that the clergy themselves 
 participated in these spoliations; but I believe no 
 ecclesiastic was ever lashed in the piazza, or deprived 
 of an eye or a hand for his offense.) The Duomo has 
 the peculiar Catholic interest, and the horrible fascina¬ 
 tion, of a dead saint’s mortal part in a glass case. 
 
 An arcade runs along the fagade of the cathedral, 
 and around the side and front of the adjoining church of 
 Santa Fosca, which is likewise very old. But we found 
 nothing in it but a dusty, cadaverous stench, and so 
 
SOME ISLANDS OE THE LAGOONS. 1 67 
 
 we came away and ascended the campanile. From 
 the top of this you have a view of the lagoon, in all 
 its iridescent hues, and of the heaven-blue sea. Here, 
 looking toward the main-land, I would have been glad 
 to experience the feelings of the Torcellani of old, as 
 they descried the smoking advance of Huns or Vandals. 
 But the finer emotions are like gifted children, and are 
 seldom equal to occasions. I am ashamed to say that 
 mine got no further than Castle Bluebeard, with Lady 
 Bluebeard’s sister looking out for her brothers, and 
 tearfully responding to Lady B.’s repeated and agonized 
 entreaty, “O sister, do you see them yet?” 
 
 The old woman who had opened the door of the 
 campanile was surprised into hospitality by the sum 
 of money we gave her, and took us through her house 
 (which was certainly very neat and clean) into her 
 garden, where she explained the nature of many 
 familiar trees and shrubs to us poor Venetians. 
 
 We went back home over the twilight lagoon, and 
 Giovanna expressed the general feeling when she 
 said: “ Torsello xe beo—no si pol negar—la campagna 
 xe bea; ma benedetta la mia Venezia!” (The country is 
 beautiful—it can’t be denied—Torcello is beautiful; 
 but blessed be my Venice!) 
 
 The panorama of the southern lagoon is best seen 
 in a voyage to Chioggia, or Ciozza, the quaint and 
 historic little city that lies twenty miles away from 
 Venice, at one of the ports of the harbor. The Giant 
 Sea-wall, built there by the Republic in her decline, is 
 a work of Roman grandeur, which impresses you more 
 deeply than any other monument of the past with a 
 sense of her former industrial and commercial great¬ 
 ness. Strips of village border the narrow Littorale all 
 
168 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the way to Chioggia, and on the right lie the islands of 
 the lagoon. Chioggia itself is hardly more than a vil¬ 
 lage,—a Venice in miniature, like Murano, with canals 
 and boats and bridges. But here the character of life 
 is more amphibious than in brine-bound Venice; and 
 though there is no horse to be seen in. the central 
 streets of Chioggia, peasants’ teams penetrate her 
 borders by means of a long bridge from the main-land. 
 
 Of course Chioggia has passed through the cus¬ 
 tomary vicissitudes of Italian towns, and has been de¬ 
 populated at divers times by pestilence, famine, and 
 war. It suffered cruelly in the war with the Genoese 
 in 1380, when it was taken by those enemies of St. 
 Mark; and its people were so wasted by the struggle 
 that the Venetians, on regaining it, were obliged to in¬ 
 vite immigration to repopulate its emptiness. I do not 
 know how great comfort the Chiozzotti of that unhappy 
 day took in the fact that some of the earliest experi¬ 
 ments with cannon were made in the contest that de¬ 
 stroyed them, but I can hardly offer them less tribute 
 than to mention it here. At present the place is peopled 
 almost entirely by sailors and fishermen, whose wives 
 are more famous for their beauty than their amiability. 
 Goldoni’s “Barufife Chiozzotte” is an amusing and vivid 
 picture of the daily battles which the high-spirited 
 ladies of the city fought in the dramatist’s* time, and 
 which are said to be of frequent occurrence at this day. 
 The Chiozzotte are the only women of this part of Italy 
 who still preserve a semblance of national costume; 
 and this remnant of more picturesque times consists 
 
 * Goldoni’s family went from Venice to Chioggia when the 
 dramatist was very young. The descriptions of his life there form 
 some of the most interesting chapters of his Memoirs, 
 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS, 169 
 
 merely of a skirt of white, which, being open in front, 
 is drawn from the waist over the head and gathered 
 in the hand under the chin, giving to the flashing 
 black eyes and swarthy features of the youthful wearer 
 a look of very dangerous slyness and cunning. The 
 dialect of the Chiozzotti is said to be that of the early 
 Venetians, with an admixture of Greek, and it is in¬ 
 finitely more sweet and musical than the dialect now 
 spoken in Venice. “Whether derived,” says the author 
 of the “Fiore di Venezia,” alluding to the speech of 
 these peculiar people, “from those who first settled 
 these shores, or resulting from other physical and moral 
 causes, it is certain that the tone of the voice is here 
 more varied and powerful: the mouth is thrown wide 
 open in speaking; a passion, a lament mingles with 
 laughter itself, and there is a continual ritornello of 
 words previously spoken. But this speech is full of 
 energy; whoever would study brief and strong modes 
 of expression should come here.” 
 
 Chioggia was once the residence of noble and dis¬ 
 tinguished persons, among whom was the painter 
 Rosalba Carrera, famed throughout Europe for her 
 crayon miniatures; and the place produced in the 
 sixteenth century the great maestro Giuseppe Zarlino, 
 “who passes,” says Cantu, “for the restorer of modern 
 music,” and “whose ‘Orfeo’ heralded the invention of 
 the musical drama ” This composer claimed for his 
 birthplace the doubtful honor of the institution of the 
 order of the Capuchins, which he declared to have 
 been founded by Fra Paolo (Giovanni Sambi) of 
 Chioggia. There is not much now to see in poor little 
 Chioggia except its common people, who, after a few 
 minutes’ contemplation, can hardly interest any one 
 
170 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 but the artist. There are no dwellings in the town 
 which approach palatial grandeur, and nothing in the 
 Renaissance churches to claim attention, unless it be 
 an attributive Bellini in one of them. Yet if you have 
 the courage to climb the bell-tower of the cathedral, 
 you get from its summit the loveliest imaginable view 
 of many-purpled lagoon and silver-flashing sea; and if 
 you are sufficiently acquainted with Italy and Italians 
 to observe a curious fact, and care to study the sub¬ 
 ject, you may note the great difference between the in¬ 
 habitants of Chioggia and those of Palestrina,—an 
 island divided from Chioggia by a half mile of lagoon, 
 and by quite different costume, type of face, and accent. 
 
 Just between Chioggia and the sea lies the lazy 
 town of Sottomarina, and I should say that the popula¬ 
 tion of Sottomarina chiefly spent its time in lounging 
 up and down the Sea-wall; while that of Chioggia, 
 when not professionally engaged with the net, gave its 
 leisure to playing mora* in the shade, or pitilessly 
 pursuing strangers, and offering them boats. For my 
 own part, I refused the subtlest advances of this kind 
 which were made me in Chiozzotto, but fell a helpless 
 prey to a boatman who addressed me in some words 
 of wonderful English, and then rowed me to the Sea¬ 
 wall at about thrice the usual fare. 
 
 These primitive people are bent, in their out-of-the- 
 world, remote way, upon fleecing the passing stranger 
 
 * Mora is the game which the Italians play with their fingers, 
 one throwing out two, three, or four fingers, as the case may be, 
 and calling the number at the same instant. If (so I understood 
 the game) the player mistakes the number of fingers he throws out, 
 he loses; if he hits the number with both voice and fingers, he wins. 
 It is played with tempestuous interest, and is altogether fiendish in 
 appearance. 
 
SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 
 
 171 
 
 quite as earnestly as other Italians, and they naively 
 improve every occasion for plunder. As we passed up 
 the shady side of their wide street, we came upon a 
 plump little blond boy, lying asleep on the stones, with 
 his head upon his arm; and as no one was near, the 
 artist of out party stopped to sketch the sleeper. At¬ 
 mospheric knowledge of the fact spread rapidly, and 
 in a few minutes we were the centre of a general as¬ 
 sembly of the people of Chioggia, who discussed us, 
 and the artist’s treatment of her subject, in open con- * 
 gress. They handed round the airy chaff as usual, but 
 were very orderly and respectful, nevertheless,—one 
 father of the place quelling every tendency to tumult 
 by kicking his next neighbor, who passed on the penalty 
 till, by this simple and ingenious process, the guilty 
 cause of the trouble was infallibly reached and kicked 
 at last. I placed a number of soldi in the boy’s hand, 
 to the visible sensation of the crowd, and then we 
 moved away and left him, heading, as we went, a pro¬ 
 cession of Chiozzotti, who could not make up their 
 minds to relinquish us till we took refuge in a church. 
 When we came out the procession had disappeared, 
 but all round the church door, and picturesquely scat- 
 j tered upon the pavement in every direction, lay boys 
 I asleep, with their heads upon their arms. As we 
 passed laughing through the midst of these slumberers, 
 
 I they rose and followed us with cries of “Mi tiri zu! 
 
 I Mi tiri zu /” (Take me down! Take me down!) They 
 | ran ahead, and fell asleep again in our path, and 
 i| round every corner we came upon a sleeping boy; and, 
 j indeed, we never got out of that atmosphere of slumber 
 j till we returned to the steamer for Venice, when Chioggia 
 | shook off her drowsy stupor, and began to tempt us to 
 
172 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 throw soldi into the water, to be dived for by her 
 awakened children. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 Among the pleasantest friends we made in Venice 
 were the monks of the Armenian Convent, whose cloistral 
 buildings rise from the glassy lagoon, upon the south 
 of the city, near a mile away. This bulk 
 
 “Of mellow brick-work on an isle of bowers” 
 
 is walled in with solid masonry from the sea, and en¬ 
 closes a garden-court, filled with all beautiful flowers, 
 and with the memorable trees of the East; while an¬ 
 other garden encompasses the monastery itself, and 
 yields those honest fruits and vegetables which supply 
 the wants of the well-cared-for mortal part of the good 
 brothers. The island is called San Lazzaro, and the 
 convent was established in 1717 by a learned and 
 devoted Armenian priest named Mechithar, from whom 
 the present order of monks is called Mechitharist. He 
 was the first who formed the idea of educating a class 
 of priests to act as missionaries among the Armenian 
 nation in the East, and infuse into its civil and religious 
 decay the life of European piety and learning. He 
 founded at Sebaste, therefore, a religious order of which 
 the seat was presently removed to Constantinople, where 
 the friars met with so much persecution from Armenian 
 heterodoxy that it was again transferred, and fixed at 
 Modone in Morea. That territory falling into the hands 
 
THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 173 
 
 of the Turks, the Mechitharists fled with their leader 
 to Venice, where the Republic bestowed upon them a 
 waste and desolate island, which had formerly been 
 used as a place of refuge for lepers; and the monks 
 made it the loveliest spot in all the lagoons. 
 
 The little island has such a celebrity in travel and 
 romance, that I feel my pen catching in the tatters of 
 a threadbare theme. And yet I love the place and its 
 people so well, that I could scarcely pass it without 
 mention. Every tourist who spends a week in Venice 
 goes to see the convent, and every one is charmed 
 with it and the courteous welcome of the fathers. Its 
 best interest is the intrinsic interest attaching to it as 
 a seat of Armenian culture; but persons who relish the 
 cheap sentimentalism of Byron’s life, find the convent 
 all the more entertaining from the fact that he did the 
 Armenian language the favor to study it there, a little. 
 The monks show his autograph, together with those of 
 other distinguished persons, and the Armenian Bible 
 which he used to read. I understood from one of the 
 friars, Padre Giacomo Issaverdanz, that the brothers 
 knew little or nothing of Byron’s celebrity as a poet 
 while he studied with them, and that his proficiency as 
 an Armenian scholar was not such as to win high re¬ 
 gard from them. 
 
 I think most readers who have visited the convent 
 will recall the pleasant face and manners of the young 
 father mentioned, who shows the place to English- 
 speaking travelers, and will care to know that Padre 
 Giacomo was born at Smyrna, and dwelt there in the 
 i family of an English lady, till he came to Venice, and 
 | entered on his monastic life at San Lazzaro. 
 
 He came one morning to breakfast with us, bring- 
 
174 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 ing with him Padre Alessio, a teacher in the Armenian 
 College in the city. As for the latter, it was not with¬ 
 out a certain shock that I heard Mesopotamia men¬ 
 tioned as his birthplace, having somehow in childhood 
 learned to regard that formidable name as little better 
 than a kind of profane swearing. But I soon came to 
 know Padre Alessio apart from his birthplace, and to 
 find him very interesting as a scholar and an artist. 
 He threw a little grace of poetry around our simple 
 feast, by repeating some Armenian verses,—grace all 
 the more ethereal from our entire ignorance of what 
 the verses meant. Our breakfast-table talk wrought to 
 friendship the acquaintance made some time before, 
 and the next morning we received the photograph of 
 Padre Giacomo, and the compliments of the Orient, in 
 a heaped basket of ripe and luscious figs from the 
 garden of the Convent San Lazzaro. When, in turn, 
 we went to visit him at the convent, we had experience 
 of a more curious oriental hospitality. Refreshments 
 were offered to us as to friends, and we lunched fairily 
 upon little dishes of rose leaves, delicately preserved, 
 with all their fragrance, in a “lucent sirup.” It seemed 
 that this was a common conserve in the East; but we 
 could hardly divest ourselves of the notion of sacrilege, 
 as we thus fed upon the very most luxurious sweetness 
 and perfume of the soul of summer. Pleasant talk ac¬ 
 companied the dainty repast,—Padre Giacomo recount¬ 
 ing for us some of his adventures with the people 
 whom he had to show about the convent, and of whom 
 many were disappointed at not finding a gallery or 
 museum, and went away in extreme disgust; and re¬ 
 lating with a sly, sarcastic relish that blent curiously 
 with his sweetness and gentleness of spirit, how some 
 
THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 175 
 
 English people once came with the notion that Lord 
 Byron was an Armenian; how an unhappy French gen¬ 
 tleman, who had been robbed in Southern Italy, would 
 not be parted a moment from a huge bludgeon which 
 he carried in his hand, and (probably disordered by 
 his troubles) could hardly be persuaded from attacking 
 the mummy which is in one of the halls; how a sharp, 
 bustling, go-ahead Yankee rushed in one morning, rub¬ 
 bing his hands, and demanding, “ Show me all you can 
 in five minutes.” 
 
 As a seat of learning, San Lazzaro is famed through¬ 
 out the Armenian world, and gathers under its roof 
 the best scholars and poets of that nation. In the 
 printing-office of the convent books are printed in some 
 thirty different languages; and a number of the fathers 
 employ themselves constantly in works of translation. 
 The most distinguished of the Armenian literati now 
 living at San Lazzaro is the Reverend Father Gomidas 
 Pakraduni, who has published an Armenian version of 
 “Paradise Lost,” and whose great labor, the translation 
 of Homer, has been recently issued from the convent 
 press. He was born at Constantinople of an ancient 
 and illustrious family, and took religious orders at San 
 Lazzaro, where he was educated, and where for twenty- 
 five years after his consecration he held the professor¬ 
 ship of his native tongue. He devoted himself especially 
 to the culture of the ancient Armenian, and developed 
 it for the expression of modern ideas; he made ex¬ 
 haustive study of the vast collection of old manuscripts 
 at San Lazzaro, and then went to Paris in pursuance 
 of his purpose, and acquainted himself with all the 
 treasures of Armenian learning in the Bibliothique 
 Royale. He became the first scholar of the age in his 
 
176 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 national language, and acquired at the same time a 
 profound knowledge of Latin and Greek. 
 
 Returning to Constantinople, Father Pakraduni, 
 whose fame had preceded him, took up his residence 
 in the family of a noble Armenian, high in the service 
 of the Turkish government; and while assuming the 
 care of educating his friend’s children, began those 
 labors of translation which have since so largely em¬ 
 ployed him. He made an Armenian version of Pindar, 
 and wrote a work on Rhetoric, both of which were de¬ 
 stroyed by fire while yet in the manuscript. He labored, 
 meanwhile, on his translation of the Iliad,—a youthful 
 purpose which he did not see fulfilled till the year 
 i860, when he had already touched the Psalmist’s 
 limit of life. In this translation he revived with ad¬ 
 mirable success an ancient species of Armenian verse, 
 which bears, in flexibility and strength, comparison 
 with the original Greek. Another of his great labors 
 was the production of an Armenian Grammar, in which 
 he reduced to rule and order the numerous forms of 
 his native tongue, never before presented by one work 
 in all its eastern variety. 
 
 Padre Giacomo, to whose great kindness I am in¬ 
 debted for a biographic and critical notice in writing 
 of Father Pakraduni, considers the epic poem by that 
 scholar a far greater work than any of his philo¬ 
 logical treatises, profound and thorough as they are. 
 When nearly completed, this poem perished in the 
 same conflagration which consumed the Pindar .and 
 the Rhetoric; but the poet patiently began his work 
 anew, and after eight years gave his epic of twenty 
 books and twenty-two thousand verses to the press. 
 The hero of the poem is Haik, the first Armenian 
 
THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 177 
 
 patriarch after the flood, and the founder of a kingly 
 dynasty. Nimrod, the great hunter, drunk with his 
 victories, declares himself a god, and ordains his own 
 worship throughout the Orient. Haik refuses to obey 
 the commands of the tyrant, takes up arms against 
 him, and finally kills him in battle. “In the style of 
 this poem,” writes Padre Giacomo, “it is hard to tell 
 whether to admire most its richness, its energy, its 
 sweetness, its melancholy, its freedom, its dignity, or 
 its harmony, for it has all these virtues in turn. The 
 descriptive parts are depicted with the faithfulest 
 pencil: the battle scenes can only be matched in the 
 Iliad.” 
 
 Father Pakraduni returned, after twenty-five years’ 
 sojourn at Constantinople, to publish his epic at San 
 Lazzaro, where he still lives, a tranquil, gentle old 
 man, with a patriarchal beauty and goodness of face. 
 In 1861 he printed his translation of Milton, with a 
 dedication to Queen Victoria. His other works bear 
 witness to the genuineness of his inspiration and piety, 
 and the diligence of his study: they are poems, poetic 
 translations from the Italian, religious essays, and 
 grammatical treatises. 
 
 Indeed, the existence of all the friars at San Laz¬ 
 zaro is one of close and earnest study; and life grows 
 so fond of these quiet monks that it will hardly part 
 with them at last. One of them is ninety-five years 
 old, and, until 1863, there was a lay-brother among 
 them whose years numbered a hundred and eight, and 
 who died of old age, on the 17th of September, after 
 passing fifty-eight years at San Lazzaro. From bio¬ 
 graphic memoranda furnished me by Padre Giacomo, 
 I learn that the name of this patriarch was George 
 
 Venetian Life, 
 
 2 
 
i7« 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Karabagiak, and that he was a native of Kutaieh in 
 Asia Minor. He was for a long time the disciple 
 of D£d& Vartabied, a renowned preacher of the Ar¬ 
 menian faith, and he afterward taught the doctrines 
 of his master in the Armenian schools. Failing in 
 his desire to enter upon the sacerdotal life at Con¬ 
 stantinople, he procured his admission as lay-brother 
 at San Lazzaro, where all his remaining days were 
 spent. He was but little learned; but he had a 
 great passion for poetry, and he was the author of 
 some thirty small works on different subjects. During 
 the course of his long and diligent life, which was 
 chiefly spent in learning and teaching, he may be 
 said to have hardly known a day’s sickness. And 
 at last he died of no perceptible disorder. The years 
 tired him to death. He had a trifling illness in 
 August, and as he convalesced, he grew impatient of 
 the tenacious life which held him to earth. Slowly 
 pacing up and down the corridors of the convent, he 
 used to crave the prayers of the brothers whom he 
 met, beseeching them to intercede with Heaven that 
 he might be suffered to die. One day he said to the 
 archbishop, “I fear that God has abandoned me, and 
 I shall live.” Only a little while before his death 
 he wrote some verses, as Padre Giacomo’s memoran¬ 
 dum witnesses, “with a firm and steady hand,” and 
 the manner of his death was this,—as recorded in 
 the grave and simple words of my friend’s note:— 
 “Finally, on the 17th of September, very early in 
 the morning, a brother entering his chamber, asked 
 him how he was. ‘Well,’ he replied, turning his face 
 to the wall, and spoke no more. He had passed to 
 a better life,” 
 
THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 179 
 
 It seems to me there is a pathos in the close of 
 this old man’s life,—which I hope has not been lost 
 by my way of describing it,—and there is certainly 
 a moral. I have read of an unlucky sage who dis¬ 
 covered the Elixir of Life, and who, after thrice 
 renewing his existence, at last voluntarily resigned 
 himself to death, because he had exhausted all that 
 life had to offer of pleasure or of pain, and knew all 
 its vicissitudes but the very last. Brother Karabagiak 
 seems to have had no humor to take even a second 
 lease of life. It is perhaps well that most men die 
 before reaching the over-ripeness of a hundred and 
 eight years; and, doubtless, with all our human will¬ 
 fulness and ignorance, we would readily consent, if we 
 could fix the time, to go sooner-—say, at a hundred 
 and seven years, friends? 
 
 Besides the Convent of San Lazzaro, where Ar¬ 
 menian boys from all parts of the East are educated 
 for the priesthood, the nation has a college in the 
 city in which boys intended for secular careers receive 
 their schooling. The Palazzo Zenobia is devoted to 
 the use of this college, where, besides room for study, 
 the boys have abundant space and apparatus for 
 gymnastics, and ample grounds for gardening. We 
 once passed a pleasant summer evening there, strolling 
 through the fragrant alleys of the garden, in talk with 
 the father-professors, and looking on at the gymnastic 
 feats of the boys; and when the annual exhibition of 
 the school took place in the fall, we were invited to 
 be present. 
 
 The room appointed for the exhibition was the 
 great hall of the palace, which in other days had 
 evidently been a ball-room. The ceiling was frescoed 
 
 12* 
 
i8o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 in the manner of the last century, with Cupids and 
 Venuses, Vices and Virtues, fruits and fiddles, dwarfs 
 and blackamoors; and the painted faces looked down 
 on a scene of as curious interest as ever the extra¬ 
 vagant loves and graces of Tiepolo might hope to 
 see, when the boys of the college, after assisting at 
 Te Deum in the chapel, entered the room, and took 
 their places. 
 
 At the head of the hall sat the archbishop in his 
 dark robes, with his heavy gold chain about his neck 
 —a figure and a countenance in all things spiritual, 
 gracious, and reverend. There is small difference, 
 I believe, between the creeds of the Armenians and 
 the Roman Catholics, but a very great disparity in 
 the looks of the two priesthoods, which is all in favor 
 of the former. The Armenian wears his beard, and 
 the Latin shaves—which may have a great deal to do 
 with the holiness of appearance. Perhaps, also, the 
 gentle and mild nature of the oriental yields more 
 sweetly and entirely to the self-denials of the eccle¬ 
 siastical vocation, and thus wins a fairer grace from 
 them. At any rate, I have not seen any thing but 
 content and calm in the visages of the Armenian 
 fathers, among whom the priest-face, as a type, does 
 not exist, though it would mark the Romish ecclesiastic 
 in whatever dress he wore. There is, moreover, a look 
 of such entire confidence and unworldly sincerity in 
 their eyes, that I could not help thinking, as I turned 
 from the portly young fathers to the dark-faced, grave, 
 old-fashioned school-boys, that an exchange of beard 
 only was needed to effect an exchange of character 
 between those youthful elders and their pupils. The 
 gray-haired archbishop is a tall and slender man; 
 
THE ARMENIANS. 
 
 181 
 
 but nearly all the fathers take kindly to curves and 
 circles, and glancing down a row of these amiable 
 priests I could scarcely repress a smile at the con¬ 
 stant recurrence of the line of beauty in their well- 
 rounded persons. 
 
 On the right and left of the archbishop were the 
 few invited guests, and at the other end of the saloon 
 sat one of the fathers, the plump key-stone of an 
 arch of comfortable young students expanding to¬ 
 ward us. Most of the boys are from Turkey (the 
 Armenians of Venice, though acknowledging the Pope 
 as their spiritual head, are the subjects of the Sultan), 
 others are of Asiatic birth, and two are Egyptians. 
 
 As to the last, I think the Sphinx and the Pyramid 
 could hardly have impressed me more than their dark 
 faces, that seemed to look vaguely on our modern 
 world from the remote twilights of old, and in their 
 very infancy to be reverend through the antiquity of 
 their race. The mother of these boys—a black-eyed, 
 olive-cheeked lady, very handsome and stylish—was 
 present with their younger brother. I hardly know 
 whether to be ashamed of having been awed by hear¬ 
 ing of the little Egyptian that his native tongue was 
 Arabic, and that he spoke nothing more occidental 
 than Turkish. But, indeed, was it wholly absurd to 
 offer a tacit homage to this favored boy, who must 
 know the “Arabian Nights” in the original? 
 
 The exercises began with a theme in Armenian— 
 a language which, but for its English abundance of 
 I sibilants, and a certain German rhythm, was wholly 
 outlandish to our ears. Themes in Italian, German, 
 and French succeeded, and then came one in English. 
 We afterward had speech with the author of this 
 
182 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 essay, who expressed the liveliest passion for English, 
 in the philosophy and poetry of which it seemed he 
 particularly delighted. He told us that he was a 
 Constantinopolitan, and that in six months more he 
 would complete his collegiate course, when he would 
 return to his native city, and take employment in the 
 service of the Turkish Government. Many others of 
 the Armenian students here also find this career open 
 to them in the East. 
 
 The literary exercises closed with another essay in 
 Armenian; and then the archbishop delivered, very 
 gracefully and impressively, an address to the boys. 
 After this, the distribution of the premiums—medals 
 of silver and bronze, and books—took place at the 
 desk of the archbishop. Each boy, as he advanced 
 to receive his premium, knelt and touched the hand of 
 the priest with his lips and forehead,—a quaint and 
 pleasing ceremony which had preceded and followed 
 the reading of all the themes. 
 
 The social greetings and congratulations that now 
 took place ended an entertainment throughout which 
 every body was pleased, and the good-natured fathers 
 seemed to be moved with a delight no less hearty than 
 that of the boys themselves. Indeed, the ground of 
 affection and confidence on which the lads and their 
 teachers seemed to meet, was something very novel 
 and attractive. We shook hands with our smiling 
 friends among the padri, took leave of the archbishop, 
 and then visited the studio of Padre Alessio, who had 
 just finished a faithful and spirited portrait of mon¬ 
 signore. Adieux to the artist and to Padre Giacomo 
 brought our visit to an end; and so, from that scene 
 of oriental learning, simplicity, and kindliness, we 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 183 
 
 walked into our western life once more, and resumed 
 our citizenship and burden in the Venetian world— 
 out of the waters of which, like a hydra or other 
 water beast, a bathing boy instantly issued and begged 
 of us. 
 
 A few days later our good Armenians went to pass 
 a month on the main-land near Padua, where they have 
 comfortable possessions. Peace followed them, and 
 they came back as plump as they went. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 
 
 As I think it extremely questionable whether I 
 could get through a chapter on this subject without 
 some feeble pleasantry about Shylock, and whether, if 
 I did, the reader would be at all satisfied that I had 
 treated the matter fully and fairly, I say at the be¬ 
 ginning that Shylock is dead; that if he lived, Antonio 
 would hardly spit upon his gorgeous pantaloons or his 
 Parisian coat, as he met him on the Rialto; that he 
 would far rather call out to him, “ Cid Shylock! Bon 
 di! Go piaser vedei'la that if Shylock by any 
 chance entrapped Antonio into a foolish promise to 
 pay him a pound of his flesh on certain conditions, 
 the honest commissary of police before whom they 
 brought their affair would dismiss them both to the 
 madhouse at San Servolo. In a word, the present 
 social relations of Jew and Christian in this city render 
 the “Merchant of Venice” quite impossible; and the 
 reader, though he will find the Ghetto sufficiently 
 * “Shylock, old fellow, good-day. Glad to see you.” 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 184 
 
 noisome and dirty, will not find an oppressed people 
 there, nor be edified by any of those insults or beatings 
 which it was once a large share of Christian duty to 
 inflict upon the enemies of our faith. The Catholic 
 Venetian certainly understands that his Jewish fellow- 
 citizen is destined to some very unpleasant experiences 
 in the next world, but Corpo di Bacco! that is no 
 reason why he should not be friends with him in this. 
 He meets him daily on exchange and at the Casino, 
 and he partakes of the hospitality of his conversazioni. 
 If he still despises him—and I think he does, a little 
 —he keeps his contempt to himself, for the Jew is 
 gathering into his own hands great part of the trade 
 of the city, and has the power that belongs to wealth. 
 He is educated, liberal, and enlightened, and the last 
 great name in Venetian literature is that of the Jewish 
 historian of the Republic, Romanin. The Jew’s poli¬ 
 tical sympathies are invariably patriotic, and he calls 
 himself, not Ebreo, but Veneziano. He lives, when 
 rich, in a palace or a fine house on the Grand Canal, 
 and he furnishes and lets many others (I must say at 
 rates which savor of the loan secured by the pound of 
 flesh) in which he does not live. The famous and 
 beautiful Ca’ Doro now belongs to a Jewish family; 
 and an Israelite, the most distinguished physician in 
 Venice, occupies the appartament0 signorile in the 
 palace of the famous Cardinal Bembo. The Jew is a 
 physician, a banker, a manufacturer, a merchant; and 
 he makes himself respected for his intelligence and his 
 probity,—which perhaps does not infringe more than 
 that of Italian Catholics. He dresses well,—with that 
 indefinable difference, however, which distinguishes 
 him in every thing from a Christian,—and his wife 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 185 
 
 and daughter are fashionable and stylish. They are 
 sometimes, also, very pretty; and I have seen one 
 Jewish lady who might have stepped out of the sacred 
 page, down from the patriarchal age, and been known 
 for Rebecca, with her oriental grace, and delicate, 
 sensitive, high-bred look and bearing—no more western 
 and modern than a lily of Palestine. 
 
 But it is to the Ghetto I want to take you now (by 
 the way we went one sunny day late last fall), that I 
 may show you something of the Jewish past, which has 
 survived to the nineteenth century in much of the dis¬ 
 comfort and rank savor of the dark ages. 
 
 In the fifteenth century all the riches of the Orient 
 had been poured into the lap of Venice, and a spirit 
 of reckless profusion took possession of her citizens. 
 The money, hastily and easily amassed, went as rapidly 
 as it came. It went chiefly for dress, in which the 
 Venetian still indulges very often to the stint of his 
 stomach; and the ladies of that bright-coloured, showy 
 day bore fortunes on their delicate persons in the 
 shape of costly vestments of scarlet, black, green, 
 white, maroon, or violet, covered with gems, glittering 
 j with silver buttons, and ringing with silver bells. The 
 | fine gentlemen of the period were not behind them in 
 j extravagance; and the priests were peculiarly luxurious 
 in dress, wearing gay silken robes, with cowls of fur, 
 j and girdles of gold and silver. Sumptuary laws were 
 j vainly passed to repress the general license, and for- 
 j tunes were wasted, and wealthy families reduced to 
 beggary* At this time, when so many worthy gentle- 
 | men and ladies had need of the Uncle to whom hard- 
 j pressed nephews fly to pledge the wrecks of prosperity, 
 * Galliciolli, Mzmorie Ventfe, 
 
t 86 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 there was yet no Monte di Pieta, and the demand for 
 pawnbrokers becoming imperative, the Republic was 
 obliged to recall the Hebrews from the exile into 
 which they had been driven some time before, that 
 they might set up pawnshops and succor necessity. 
 They came back, however, only for a limited time, 
 and were obliged to wear a badge of yellow color upon 
 the breast, to distinguish them from the Christians, 
 and later a yellow cap, then a red hat, and then a hat 
 of oil-cloth. They could not acquire house or lands 
 in Venice, nor practice any trade, nor exercise any 
 noble art but medicine. They were assigned a dwell¬ 
 ing-place in the vilest and unhealthiest part of the 
 city, and their quarter was called Ghetto, from the 
 Hebrew nghedah , a congregation* They were obliged 
 to pay their landlords a third more rent than Chris¬ 
 tians paid; the Ghetto was walled in, and its gates 
 were kept by Christian guards, who every day opened 
 them at dawn and closed them at dark, and who were 
 paid by the Jews. They were not allowed to issue at 
 all from the Ghetto on holidays; and two barges, 
 with armed men, watched over them night and day, 
 while a special magistracy had charge of their affairs. 
 Their synagogues were built at Mestre, on the main¬ 
 land; and their dead were buried in the sand upon 
 the sea-shore, whither, on the Mondays of September, 
 the baser sort of Venetians went to make merry, and 
 drunken men and women danced above their desecrated 
 tombs. These unhappy people were forced also to pay 
 tribute to the state at first every third year, then every 
 fifth year, and then every tenth year, the privilege of 
 residence being ingeniously renewed to them at these 
 * Mutinelli. 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OT VENICE. 187 
 
 periods for a round sum; but, in spite of all, they 
 flourished upon the waste and wickedness of their op¬ 
 pressors, waxed rich as these waxed poor, and were 
 not again expelled from the city* 
 
 There never was any attempt to disturb the Hebrews 
 by violence, except on one occasion, about the close 
 of the fifteenth century, when a tumult was raised 
 against them for child-murder. This, however, was 
 promptly quelled by the Republic before any harm 
 was done them; and they dwelt peacefully in their 
 Ghetto till the lofty gates of their prison caught the 
 sunlight of modern civilization, and crumbled beneath 
 it. Then many of the Jews came forth and fixed 
 their habitations in different parts of the city, but 
 many others clung to the spot where their temples 
 still remain, and which was hallowed by long suffer¬ 
 ing, and soaked with the blood of innumerable genera¬ 
 tions of geese. So, although you find Jews every¬ 
 where in Venice, you never find a Christian in the 
 Ghetto, which is held to this day by a large Hebrew 
 population. 
 
 We had not started purposely to see the Ghetto, 
 and for this reason it had that purely incidental relish, 
 which is the keenest possible savor of the object of 
 interest. We were on an expedition to find Sior 
 Antonio Rioba, who has been, from time immemorial, 
 the means of ponderous practical jokes in Venice. 
 Sior Antonio is a rough-hewn statue set in the corner 
 of an ordinary grocery, near the Ghetto. He has a 
 pack on his back and a staff in his hand; his face is 
 painted, and is habitually dishonoured with dirt thrown 
 upon it by boys. On the wall near him is painted a 
 * Del Commercio dei Veneziani. Mutinelli. 
 
188 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 bell-pull, with the legend, Sior Antonio Rioba. Rustics, 
 raw apprentices, and honest Germans new to the city, 
 are funished with packages to be carried to Sior 
 Antonio Rioba, who is very hard to find, and not 
 able to receive the messages when found, though there 
 is always a crowd of loafers near to receive the un¬ 
 lucky simpleton who brings them. 11 E poi , che corn- 
 media vederli arrabiarsi! Che rider el” That is the 
 Venetian notion of fun, and no doubt the scene is 
 amusing. I was curious to see Sior Antonio, because 
 a comic journal bearing his name had been published 
 during the time of the Republic of 1848, and from 
 the fact that he was then a sort of Venetian Pasquino. 
 But I question now if he was worth seeing, except as 
 something that brought me into the neighborhood of 
 the Ghetto, and suggested to me the idea of visiting 
 that quarter. 
 
 As we left him and passed up the canal in our 
 gondola, we came unawares upon the church of Santa 
 Maria dell’ Orto, one of the most graceful Gothic 
 churches in the city. The facade is exquisite, and 
 has two Gothic windows of that religious and heavenly 
 beauty which pains the heart with its inexhaustible 
 richness. One longed to fall down on the space of 
 green turf before the church, now bathed in the soft 
 golden October sunshine, and recant these happy, 
 commonplace centuries of heresy, and have back 
 again the good old believing days of bigotry, and 
 superstition, and roasting, and racking, if only to have 
 once more the men who dreamed those windows out 
 of their faith and piety (if they did, which I doubt), 
 and made them with their patient, reverent hands 
 (if their hands were reverent, which I doubt). The 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 189 
 
 church is called Santa Maria dell’ Orto, from the 
 miraculous image of Our Lady which was found in an 
 orchard where the temple now stands. We saw this 
 miraculous sculpture, and thought it reflected little 
 credit upon the supernatural artist. The church is 
 properly that of Saint Christopher, but the saint has 
 been titularly vanquished by the Madonna, though he 
 comes out gigantically triumphant in a fresco above 
 the high altar, and leads to confused and puzzling 
 reminiscences of Bluebeard and Morgante Maggiore, 
 to both of which characters he bears a bewildering 
 personal resemblance. 
 
 There were once many fine paintings by Tinto¬ 
 retto and Bellini in this church; but as the interior 
 is now in course of restoration, the paintings have 
 been removed to the Academy, and we only saw one, 
 which was by the former master, and had all his strik¬ 
 ing imagination in the conception, all his strength in 
 the drawing and all his lampblack in the faded color¬ 
 ing. In the centre of the church, the sacristan scraped 
 the carpenter’s rubbish away from a flat tablet in 
 the floor, and said that it was Tintoretto’s tomb. It 
 is a sad thing to doubt even a sacristan, but I 
 pointed out that the tomb bore any name in the world 
 rather than Robusti. “Ah!” said the sacristan, “it 
 is just that which makes it so very curious,—that 
 Tintoretto should wish to be buried under another 
 name! ” * 
 
 It was a warm, sunny day in the fall, as I said; 
 yet as we drew near the Ghetto, we noticed in the 
 
 * Members of tlie family of Tintoretto are actually buried in 
 this church; and no sacristan of right feeling could do less than 
 point out some tomb as that of the great painter himself. 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 i go 
 
 air many white, floating particles, like lazy, straggling 
 flakes of snow. These we afterward found to be the 
 down of multitudes of geese, which are forever plucked 
 by the whole apparent force of the populace,—the 
 fat of the devoted birds being substituted for lard in 
 the kitchens of the Ghetto, and their flesh for pork. 
 As we approached the obscene little riva at which 
 we landed, a blond young Israelite, lavishly adorned 
 with feathers, came running to know if we wished to 
 see the church—by which name he put the synagogue 
 to the Gentile comprehension. The street through 
 which we passed had shops on either hand, and at 
 the doors groups of jocular Hebrew youth sat pluck¬ 
 ing geese; while within, long files of all that was 
 mortal of geese hung from the rafters and the walls. 
 The ground was webbed with the feet of geese, and 
 certain loutish boys, who paused to look at us, had 
 each a goose dragging at his heels, in the forlorn and 
 elongated manner peculiar to dead poultry. The 
 ground was stained with the blood of geese, and the 
 smell of roasting geese came out of the windows of 
 the grim and lofty houses. 
 
 Our guide was picturesque, but the most helpless 
 and inconclusive cicerone I ever knew; and while his 
 long, hooked Hebrew nose caught my idle fancy, and 
 his soft blue eyes excused a great deal of inefficiency, 
 the aimless fashion in which he mounted dirty stair¬ 
 cases for the keys of the synagogue, and came down 
 without them, and the manner in which he shouted to 
 the heads of unctuous Jessicas thrust out of windows, 
 and never gained the slightest information by his 
 efforts, were imbecilities that we presently found in¬ 
 supportable, and we gladly cast him off for a dark- 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. I g I 
 
 faced Hebrew boy who brought us at once to the door 
 of the Spanish synagogue. 
 
 Of seven synagogues in the Ghetto, the principal 
 was built in 1655, by the Spanish Jews who had fled 
 to Venice from the terrors of the Holy Office. Its 
 exterior has nothing to distinguish it as a place of 
 worship, and we reached the interior of the temple 
 by means of some dark and narrow stairs. In the 
 floor and the wajls of the passage-way were set tablets 
 to the memory of rich and pious Israelites who had 
 bequeathed their substance for the behoof of the 
 sanctuary; and the sacristan informed us that the 
 synagogue was also endowed with a fund by rich 
 descendants of Spanish Jews in Amsterdam. These 
 moneys are kept to furnish indigent Israelitish couples 
 with the means of marrying, and any who claim the 
 benefit of the fund are entitled to it. The sacristan— 
 a little wiry man, with bead-black eyes, and of a 
 shoemakerish presence—told us with evident pride 
 that he was himself a descendant of the Spanish Jews. 
 Howbeit, he was now many centuries from speaking 
 the Castilian, which, I had read, was still used in the 
 families of the Jewish fugitives from Spain to the 
 Levant. He spoke, instead, the abominable Venetian 
 of Cannaregio, with that Jewish thickness which dis¬ 
 tinguishes the race’s utterance, no matter what language 
 its children are born to. It is a curious philological 
 fact, which I have heard repeatedly alleged by Vene¬ 
 tians, and which is perhaps worth noting here, that 
 Jews speaking their dialect, have not only this thick¬ 
 ness of accent, but also a peculiarity of construction 
 which marks them at once. 
 
 We found the contracted interior of the synagogue 
 
IQ2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 hardly worth looking at. Instead of having any thing 
 oriental or peculiar in its architecture, it was in a bad 
 spirit of Renaissance art. A gallery encircled the in¬ 
 side, and here the women, during worship, sat apart 
 from the men, who had seats below, running back 
 from either side of the altar. I had no right, coming 
 from a Protestant land of pews, to indulge in that 
 sentimentality; but I could not help being offended to 
 see that each of these seats might be lifted up and 
 locked into the upright back, and thus placed beyond 
 question at the disposal of the owner: I like the 
 freedom and equality in the Catholic churches much 
 better. The sacristan brought a ponderous silver key, 
 and unlocking the door behind the pulpit, showed us 
 the Hebrew Scriptures used during the service by the 
 Rabbi. They formed an immense parchment volume, 
 and were rolled in silk upon a wooden staff. This 
 was the sole object of interest in the synagogue, and 
 its inspection concluded our visit. 
 
 We descended the narrow stairs and emerged upon 
 the piazza which we had left. It was only partly 
 paved with brick, and was very dirty. The houses 
 which surrounded it were on the outside old and 
 shabby, and, even in this Venice of lofty edifices, re¬ 
 markably high. A wooden bridge crossed a vile canal 
 to another open space, where once congregated the 
 merchants who sell antique furniture, old pictures, 
 and objects of vertu. They are now, however, found 
 everywhere in the city, and most of them are on the 
 Grand Canal, where they heap together marvelous col¬ 
 lections, and establish authenticities beyond cavil. “Is 
 it an original?” asked a young lady who was visiting 
 one of their shops, as she paused before an attributive 
 
THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. IQ 3 
 
 Veronese, or—what know I?—perhaps a Titian. “Si, 
 signora, originalissimo! ” 
 
 I do not understand why any class of Jews should 
 still remain in the Ghetto, but it is certain, as I said, 
 that they do remain there in great numbers. It may 
 be that the impurity of the place and the atmosphere 
 is conducive to purity of race; but I question if the 
 Jews buried on • the sandy slope of the Lido, and 
 blown over by the sweet sea wind—it must needs 
 blow many centuries to cleanse them of the Ghetto 
 —are not rather to be envied by the inhabitants of 
 those high dirty houses and low dirty lanes. There 
 was not a touch of any thing wholesome, or pleasant, 
 or attractive, to relieve the noisomeness of the Ghetto 
 to its visitors; and they applauded, with a common 
 voice, the neatness which had prompted Andrea the 
 gondolier to roll up the carpet from the floor of his 
 gondola, and not to spread it again within the limits 
 of that quarter. 
 
 In the good old times, when pestilence avenged 
 the poor and oppressed upon their oppressors, what 
 grim and dismal plagues may not have stalked by 
 night and noonday out of those hideous streets, and 
 passed the marble bounds of patrician palaces, and 
 brought to the bedsides of the rich and proud the 
 filthy misery of the Ghetto turned to poison! Thank 
 God that the good old times are gone and going! 
 One learns in these aged lands to hate and execrate 
 the past. 
 
 
 Venetian Life. 
 
 13 
 
94 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 We came away from the Ghetto, as we had ar¬ 
 rived, in a gentle fall of goose-down, and winding 
 crookedly through a dirty canal, glided into purer air 
 and cleaner waters. I cannot well say how it was we 
 came upon the old Servite Convent, which I had often 
 looked for in vain, and which, associated with the great 
 name of Paolo Sarpi, is to me one of the most 
 memorable places in Venice. We reached it, after 
 passing by that old, old palace, which was appointed 
 in the early ages of Venetian commerce for the recep¬ 
 tion of oriental traffic and traffickers, and where it is 
 said the Moorish merchants resided till the later time 
 of the Fondaco dei Turchi on the Grand Canal. The 
 facade of the palace is richly sculptured; and near one 
 corner is the bass-relief of a camel and his turbaned 
 driver,—in token, perhaps, that man and beast (as 
 orientals would understand them) were here enter¬ 
 tained. 
 
 We had lived long enough in Venice to know that 
 it was by no means worth while to explore the interior 
 of this old palace because the outside was attractive, 
 and so we left it; and turning a corner, found our¬ 
 selves in a shallow canal, with houses on one side, and 
 a grassy bank on the other. The bank sloped gently 
 from the water up to the walls of some edifice, on 
 which ruin seemed to have fastened soon after the 
 architect had begun his work, The vast walls, em~ 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 195 
 
 bracing several acres in their close, rose only some 
 thirty or forty feet from the ground—only high enough, 
 indeed, to join over the top of the great Gothic gates, 
 which pierced them on two facades. There must have 
 been barracks near; for on the sward, under the walls, 
 muskets were stacked, and Austrian soldiers were 
 practicing the bayonet-exercise with long poles padded 
 at the point. “Eins, zwei ,, drei t —vorwarts ! Eins , zwei, 
 drei, — riickwarts !” snarled the drill-sergeant, and the 
 darkfaced Hungarian soldiers—who may have soon 
 afterward prodded their Danish fellow-beings all the 
 more effectively for that day’s training—stooped, 
 writhed, and leaped obedient. I, who had already 
 caught sight of a little tablet in the wall bearing the 
 name of Paolo Sarpi, could not feel the propriety of 
 the military performance on that scene; yet I was very 
 glad, dismounting from the gondola, to get by the 
 soldiers without being forced back at the padded point 
 of a pole, and offered no audible objection to their 
 presence. 
 
 So passing to the other side, I found entrance 
 through a disused chapel to the interior of the convent. 
 The gates on the outside were richly sculptured, and 
 were reverend and clean; tufts of harsh grass grew 
 from their arches, and hung down like the “over¬ 
 whelming brows” of age. Within, at first sight, I saw 
 nothing but heaps of rubbish, piles of stone, and here 
 and there a mutilated statue. I remember two pathetic 
 caryatides, that seemed to have broken and sunk under 
 too heavy a weight for their gentle beauty—and every¬ 
 where the unnamable filth with which ruin is always 
 dishonored in Italy, and which makes the most pic¬ 
 turesque and historic places inaccessible to the foot, 
 
 13 * 
 
196 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 and intolerable to the senses and the soul. I was 
 thinking with a savage indignation on this incurable 
 porcheria of the Italian poor (who are guilty of such 
 desecrations), when my eye fell upon an enclosed space 
 in one corner, where some odd-looking boulders were 
 heaped together. It was a space about six feet in 
 depth, and twenty feet square; and the boulders, on 
 closer inspection, turned out to be human skulls, nest¬ 
 ling on piles of human bones. In any other land than 
 Italy I think I should have turned from the grisly sight 
 with a cowardly sickness and shuddering; but here!— 
 Why, heaven and earth seem to take the loss of men 
 so good-naturedly,—so many men have died and 
 passed away with their difficult, ambitious, and trouble¬ 
 some little schemes,—and the great mass of mankind 
 is taken so small account of in the course of destiny, 
 that the idea of death does pot appear so alien and 
 repulsive as elsewhere, and the presence of such evi¬ 
 dences of our poor mortality can scarcely offend sen¬ 
 sibility. These were doubtless the bones of the good 
 Servite friars who had been buried in their convent, 
 and had been digged up to make way for certain im¬ 
 provements now taking place within its walls. I have 
 no doubt that their deaths were a rest to their bodies, 
 to say nothing of their souls. If they were at all in 
 their lives like those who have come after them, the 
 sun baked their bald brows in summer, and their 
 naked feet—poor feet! clapping round in wooden-soled 
 sandals over the frozen stones of Venice—were swollen 
 and gnawed with chilblains in winter; and no doubt 
 some fat friar of their number, looking all the droller 
 in his bare feet for the spectacles on his nose, came 
 down Calle Falier then, as now, to collect the charity 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 197 
 
 of bread and fuel, far oftener than the dwellers in that 
 aristocratic precinct wished to see him. 
 
 The friars’ skulls looked contented enough, and 
 smiled after the hearty manner of skulls; and some of 
 the leg-bones were thrust through the enclosing fence, 
 and hung rakishly over the top. As to their spirits, I 
 suppose they must have found out by this time that 
 these confused and shattered tabernacles which they 
 left behind them are not nearly so corrupt and dead 
 as the monastic system which still cumbers the earth. 
 People are building on the site of the old convent a 
 hospital for indigent and decrepit women, where a 
 religious sisterhood will have care of the inmates. It 
 is a good end enough, but I think it would be the true 
 compensation if all the rubbish of the old cloister were 
 cleared from the area of those walls, and a great 
 garden planted in the space, where lovers might 
 whisper their wise nonsense, and children might romp 
 and frolic, till the crumbling masonry forgot its old 
 office of imprisonment and the memory of,its prisoners. 
 For here, one could only think of the moping and 
 mumming herd of monks, who were certainly not worth 
 remembering, while the fame of Paolo Sarpi, and the 
 good which he did, refused to be localized. That 
 good is an inheritance which has enriched the world; 
 but the share of Venice has been comparatively small 
 in it, and that of this old convent ground still less. I 
 rather wondered, indeed, that I should have taken the 
 trouble to look up the place; but it is a harmless, if 
 even a very foolish, pastime to go seeking for the 
 sublime secret of the glory of the palm in the earth 
 where it struck root and flourished. So far as the 
 life-long presence and the death of a man of clear 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 I98 
 
 brain and true heart could hallow any scene, this 
 ground was holy; for here Sarpi lived, and here in his 
 cell he died, a simple Servite friar—he who had 
 caught the bolts of excommunication launched against 
 the Republic from Rome, and broken them in his 
 hand,—who had breathed upon the mighty arm of the 
 temporal power, and withered it to the juiceless stock 
 it now remains. And yet I could not feel that ground 
 was holy, and it did not make me think of Sarpi; and 
 I believe that only those travelers who invent in cold 
 blood their impressions of memorable places ever have ' 
 remarkable impressions to record. 
 
 Once, before the time of Sarpi, an excommunica¬ 
 tion was pronounced against the Republic with a re¬ 
 sult as terrible as that of the later interdict was absurd. 
 Venice took possession, early in the fourteenth century, 
 of Ferrara, by virtue of a bargain which the high con¬ 
 tracting parties—the Republic and an exiled claimant 
 to the ducal crown of Ferrara—had no right to make. 
 The father of the banished prince had displeased him 
 by marrying late in life, when the thoughts of a good 
 man should be turned on other things, and the son 
 compassed the sire’s death. For this the Ferrarese 
 drove him away, and as they would not take him back 
 to reign over them at the suggestion of Venice, he re¬ 
 signed his rights in favor of the Republic, and the 
 Republic at once annexed the city to its territories. 
 The Ferrarese appealed to the pope for his protection, 
 and Clement V., supporting an ancient but long quies¬ 
 cent claim to Ferrara on the part of the Church, called 
 upon the Venetians to surrender the city, and, on their 
 refusal, excommunicated them. All Christian peoples 
 were commanded “to arm against the Venetians, to 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 IQ 9 
 
 spoil them of their goods, as separated from the union 
 of Christians, and as enemies of the Roman Church.” 
 They were driven out of Ferrara, but their troubles 
 did not end with their loss of the city. Giustina 
 Renier-Michiel says the nations, under the shelter of 
 the pope’s permission and command, “exercised against 
 them every species of cruelty; there was no wrong or 
 violence of which they were not victims. All the rich 
 merchandise which they had in France, in Flanders, 
 and in other places, was confiscated; their merchants 
 were arrested, maltreated and some of them killed. 
 Woe to us, if the Saracens had been baptized Chris¬ 
 tians! our nation would have been utterly destroyed. 
 Such was the ruin brought upon us by this excom¬ 
 munication that to this day it is a popular saying, con¬ 
 cerning a man of gloomy aspect, ‘ He looks as if he 
 were bringing the excommunication of Ferrara * ” 
 
 No proverb, sprung from the popular terror, com¬ 
 memorates the interdict of the Republic which took 
 place in 1606, and which, I believe, does not survive 
 in popular recollection at Venice. It was at first a 
 collision of the Venetian and Papal authorities at 
 Ferrara, and then an interference of the pope to pre¬ 
 vent the execution of secular justice upon certain ec¬ 
 clesiastical offenders in Venetia, which resulted in the 
 excommunication of the Republic, and finally in the 
 defeat of St. Peter and the triumph of St. Mark. Chief 
 among the ecclesiastical offenders mentioned were the 
 worthy Abbate Brandolino of Narvesa, who was ac¬ 
 cused, among other things, of poisoning his own father; 
 and the good Canonico Saraceni of Vicenza, who was 
 repulsed in overtures made to his beautiful cousin, and 
 
200 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 who revenged himself by defaming her character, and 
 “filthily defacing” the doors of her palace. The 
 abbate was arrested, and the canon, on this lady’s 
 complaint to the Ten at Venice, was thrown into prison, 
 and the weak and furious Pope Paul V., being refused 
 their release by the Ten, excommunicated the whole 
 Republic. 
 
 In the same year, that is to say 1552, the bane 
 and antidote, Paul the Pope and Paul Sarpi the friar, 
 were sent into the world. The latter grew in piety, 
 fame, and learning, and at the time the former began 
 his quarrel with the Republic, there was none in 
 Venice so fit and prompt as Sarpi to stand forth in 
 her defense. He was at once taken into the service of 
 St. Mark, and his clear, acute mind fashioned the 
 spiritual weapons of the Republic, and helped to shape 
 the secular measures taken to annul the interdict. As 
 soon as the bull of excommunication was issued, the 
 Republic instructed her officers to stop every copy of 
 it at the frontier, and it was never read in any church 
 in the Venetian dominions. The Senate refused to re¬ 
 ceive it from the Papal Nuncio. All priests, monks, 
 and other servants of the Church, as well as all secular 
 persons, were commanded to disregard it; and re¬ 
 fractory ecclesiastics were forced to open their churches 
 on pain of death. The Jesuits and Capuchins were 
 banished; and clerical intriguers, whom Rome sent in 
 swarms to corrupt social and family relations, by de¬ 
 claring an end of civil government in Venice, and 
 preaching among women disobedience to patriotic hus¬ 
 bands and fathers, were severely punished. With 
 internal safety thus provided for, the Republic in- 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 201 
 
 trusted her moral, religious, and political defense en¬ 
 tirely to Sarpi, who devoted himself to his trust with 
 fidelity, zeal, and power. 
 
 It might have been expected that the friend of 
 Galileo, and the most learned and enlightened man of 
 his country, would have taken the short and decisive 
 method of discarding all allegiance to Rome as the 
 most logical resistance to the unjust interdict. But the 
 Venetians have ever been faithful Catholics ,* and 
 Sarpi was (or, according to the papal writers, seemed 
 to be) a sincere and obedient Servite friar, believing 
 in the spiritual supremacy of the pope, and revering 
 the religion of Rome. He therefore fought Paul inside 
 of the Church, and his writings on the interdict remain 
 
 * It is convenient here to attest the truth of certain views of 
 religious sentiment in Italy, which Mr. Trollope, in his Paul the 
 Pope and Paul the Friar, quotes from an “Italian author, by no 
 means friendly to Catholicism, and very well qualified to speak of 
 the progress of opinions and tendencies among his fellow-country¬ 
 men.” This author is Bianchi Giovini, who, speaking of modern 
 Catholicism as the heir of the old materialistic paganism, says: 
 “The Italians have identified themselves with this mode of religion. 
 Cultivated men find in it the truth there is in it, and the people 
 find what is agreeable to them. But both the former and the latter 
 approve it as conformable to the national character. And whatever 
 may be the religious system which shall govern our descendants 
 twenty centuries hence, I venture to affirm that the exterior forms 
 of it will be pretty nearly the same as those which prevail at pre¬ 
 sent, and which did prevail twenty centuries ago.” Mr. Trollope 
 generously dissents from the “ pessimism ” of these views. The 
 views are discouraging for some reasons; but, with considerable dis¬ 
 position and fair opportunity to observe Italian character in this re¬ 
 spect, I had arrived at precisely these conclusions. I wish here to 
 state that in my slight sketch of Sarpi and his times I have availed 
 myself freely of Mr. Trollope’s delightful book—it is near being 
 too much of a good thing—named above. 
 
205 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the monument of his polemical success. He was the 
 heart and brain of the Republic’s whole resistance,— 
 he supplied her with inexhaustible reasons and answers, 
 —and, though tempted, accused, and threatened, he 
 neyer swerved from his fidelity to her. 
 
 As he was the means of her triumph,* he re¬ 
 mained the object of her love. He could never be 
 persuaded to desert his cell in the Minorite Convent 
 for the apartments appointed him by the State; and 
 even when his busy days were spent in council at the 
 Ducal Palace, he returned each night to sleep in the 
 cloister. After the harmless interdict had been re¬ 
 moved by Paul, and the unyielding Republic forgiven, 
 the wrath of Rome remained kindled against the friar 
 whose logic had been too keen for the last reason of 
 popes. He had been tried for heresy in his youth at 
 Milan, and acquitted; again, during the progress of 
 St. Mark’s quarrel with Rome, his orthodoxy had been 
 questioned; and now that all was over, and Rome 
 could turn her attention to one particular offender, he 
 was entreated, coaxed, commanded to come to her, 
 and put her heart at rest concerning these old ac¬ 
 cusations. But Sarpi was very well in Venice. He 
 had been appointed Consultor in Theology to the Re¬ 
 public, and had received free admission to the secret 
 archives of the State,—a favor, till then, never bestowed 
 on any. So he would not go to Rome, and Rome sent 
 
 * The triumph was such only so far as the successful resistance 
 to the interdict was concerned; for at the intercession of the Catholic 
 powers the Republic gave up the ecclesiastical prisoners, and allowed 
 all the banished priests except the Jesuits to return. The Venetians 
 utterly refused to perform any act of humiliation or penance. The 
 interdict had been defied, and it remained despised. 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 203 
 
 assassins to take his life. One evening, as he was 
 returning from the Ducal Palace in company with a 
 lay-brother of the convent, and an old patrician, very 
 infirm and helpless, he was attacked by these nuncios 
 of the papal court: one of them seized the lay-brother, 
 and another the patrician, while a third dealt Sarpi 
 innumerable dagger thrusts. He fell as if dead, and 
 the ruffians made off in the confusion. 
 
 Sarpi had been fearfully wounded, but he re¬ 
 covered. The action of the Republic in this affair is 
 a comforting refutation of the saying that Republics 
 are ungrateful, and the common belief that Venice was 
 particularly so. The most strenuous and unprecedented 
 efforts were made to take the assassins, and the most 
 terrific penalties were denounced against them. What 
 was much better, new honors were showered upon 
 Sarpi, and extraordinary and affectionate measures 
 were taken to provide for his safety. 
 
 And, in fine, he lived in the service of the Re- • 
 public, revered and beloved, till his seventieth year, 
 when he died with zeal for her good shaping his last 
 utterance: “I must go to St. Mark, for it is late, and I 
 have much to do.” 
 
 Brave Sarpi, and brave Republic! Men cannot 
 honor them enough. For though the terrors of the 
 interdict were doubted to be harmless even at that 
 time, it had remained for them to prove the interdict, 
 then and forever, an instrument as obsolete as the 
 catapult. 
 
 I was so curious as to make some inquiry among 
 the workmen on the old convent ground, whether any 
 stone or other record commemorative of Sarpi had 
 been found in the demolished cells. I hoped, not very 
 
204 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 confidently, to gather some trace of his presence there 
 —to have, perhaps, the spot on which he died shown 
 me. To a man, they were utterly ignorant of Sarpi, 
 while affecting, in the Italian manner, to be perfectly 
 informed on the subject. I was passed, with my 
 curiosity, from one to another, till I fell into the hands 
 of a kind of foreman, to whom I put my questions 
 anew. He was a man of Napoleonic beard, and such 
 fair red-and-white complexion that he impressed me 
 as having escaped from a show of wax-works, and I 
 was not at all surprised to find him a wax figure in 
 point of intelligence. He seemed to think my ques¬ 
 tions the greatest misfortunes which had ever befallen 
 him, and to regard each suggestion of Sarpi—tempo 
 della Repubblica—scomunica di Paolo Quinto —as an 
 intolerable oppression. He could only tell me that on 
 a certain spot (which he pointed out with his foot) in 
 the demolished church, there had been found a stone 
 with Sarpi’s name upon it. The padrone, who had 
 the contract for building the new convent, had said, 
 —“Truly, I have heard speak of this Sarpi;” but the 
 stone had been broken, and he did not know what 
 had become of it. 
 
 And, in fact, the only thing that remembered 
 Sarpi, on the site of the convent where he spent his 
 life, died, and was buried, was the little tablet on 
 the outside of the wall, of which the abbreviated Latin 
 announced that he had been Theologue to the Re¬ 
 public, and that his dust was now removed to the 
 island of San Michele. After this failure, I had no 
 humour to make researches for the bridge on which 
 the friar was attacked by his assassins. But, indeed, 
 why should I look for it? Finding it, could I have 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 205 
 
 kept in my mind the fine dramatic picture I now have, 
 of Sarpi returning to his convent on a mild October 
 evening, weary with his long walk from St. Mark’s, 
 and pacing with downcast eyes,—the old patrician and 
 the lay-brother at his side, and the masked and stealthy 
 assassins, with uplifted daggers, behind him? Nay, I 
 fear I should have found the bridge with some scene 
 of modern life upon it, and brought away in my re¬ 
 membrance an old woman with an oil-bottle, or a 
 straggling boy with a tumbler, and a very little wine 
 in it. 
 
 On our way home from the Servite Convent, we 
 stopped again near the corner and bridge of Sior 
 Antonio Rioba,—this time to go into the house of 
 Tintoretto, which stands close at the right hand, on 
 the same quay. The house, indeed, might make some 
 pretensions to be called a palace: it is large, and has 
 a carved and balconied front, in which are set a now 
 illegible tablet describing it as the painter’s dwelling, 
 and a medallion portrait of Robusti. It would have 
 been well if I had contented myself with this goodly 
 outside; for penetrating, by a long narrow passage and 
 complicated stairway, to the interior of the house, I 
 found that it had nothing to offer me but the usual 
 number of commonplace rooms in the usual blighting 
 state of restoration. I must say that the people of the 
 house, considering they had nothing in the world to 
 show me, were kind and patient under the intrusion, 
 and answered with very polite affirmation my dis¬ 
 couraged inquiry if this were really Tintoretto’s house. 
 
 Their conduct was different from that of the present 
 inmates of Titian’s house, near the FondamentaNuove, 
 in a little court at the left of the church of the Jesuits, 
 
206 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 These unreasonable persons think it an intolerable bore 
 that the enlightened traveling public should break in 
 upon their privacy. They put their heads out of the 
 upper windows, and assure the strangers that the house 
 is as utterly restored within as they behold it without 
 (and it is extremely restored), that it merely occupies 
 the site of the painter’s dwelling, and that there is 
 nothing whatever to see in it. I never myself had the 
 heart to force an entrance after these protests; but an 
 acquaintance of the more obdurate sex, whom I had 
 the honor to accompany thither, once did so, and came 
 out with a story of rafters of the original Titianic 
 kitchen being still visible in the new one. After a 
 lapse of two years I revisited the house, and found 
 that so far from having learned patience by frequent 
 trial, the inmates had been apparently goaded into 
 madness during the interval. They seemed to know 
 of our approach by instinct, and thrust their heads 
 out, ready for protest, before we were near enough to 
 speak. The lazy, frowzy women, the worthless men, 
 and idle, loafing boys of the neighborhood, gathered 
 round to witness the encounter; but though repeatedly 
 commanded to ring (I was again in company with 
 ladies), and try to force the place, I refused decidedly 
 to do so. The garrison were strengthening their posi¬ 
 tion by plastering and renewed renovation, and I doubt 
 that by this time the original rafters are no longer to 
 be seen. A plasterer’s boy, with a fine sense of humor, 
 stood clapping his trowel on his board, inside the 
 house, while we debated retreat, and derisively invited 
 us to enter: “ Suoni'pure, O signore! Questa l la 
 famosa casa del gran pit tore, Vimmortale Tiziano ,— 
 $uoni, signore /” (Ring, by all means, sir. This is the 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 
 
 2 07 
 
 famous house of the great painter, the immortal Titian. 
 Ring!) Da capo. We retired amid the scorn of the 
 populace. But indeed I could not blame the inhabitants 
 of Titian’s house; and were I condemned to live in a 
 place so famous as to attract idle curiosity, flushed 
 and insolent with travel, I should go to the verge of 
 man-traps and shot-guns to protect myself. 
 
 This house, which is now hemmed in by larger 
 buildings of later date, had in the painter’s time an 
 incomparably “lovely and delightful situation.” Stand¬ 
 ing near the northern boundary of the city, it looked 
 out over the lagoon,—across the quiet isle of sepulchres, 
 San Michele,—across the smoking chimneys of the 
 Murano glass-works, and the bell-towers of her churches, 
 —to the long line of the sea-shore on the right and 
 to the main-land on the left; and beyond the nearer 
 lagoon islands and the faintly penciled outlines of 
 Torcello and Burano in front, to the sublime distance 
 of the Alps, shining in silver and purple, and resting 
 their snowy heads against the clouds. It had a plea¬ 
 sant garden of flowers and trees, into which the painter 
 descended by an open stairway, and in which he is 
 said to have studied the famous tree in The Death of 
 Peter Martyr. Here he entertained the great and noble 
 of his day, and here he feasted and made merry with 
 the gentle sculptor Sansovino, and with their common 
 friend, the rascal-poet Aretino. The painter’s and the 
 sculptor’s wives knew each other, and Sansovino’s 
 Paola was often in the house of Cecilia Vecellio;* 
 
 * The wife of Titian’s youth was, according to Ticozzi, named 
 Lucia. It is in Mutinelli that I find allusion to Cecilia. The 
 author of the A nnali Urbani , speaking of the friendship and frequent 
 meetings of Titian and Sansovino, says, “Viveyano . , . allora 
 
2oS 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 and any one who is wise enough not to visit the place, 
 can easily think of those ladies there, talking at an 
 open window that gives upon the pleasant garden, 
 where their husbands walk up and down together in 
 the purple evening light. 
 
 In the palace where Goldoni was born a servant 
 showed me an entirely new room near the roof, in 
 which he said the great dramatist had composed his 
 immortal comedies. As I knew, however, that Goldoni 
 had left the house when a child, I could scarcely 
 believe what the cicerone said, though I was glad he 
 said it, and that he knew any thing .at all of Goldoni. 
 It is a fine old Gothic palace on a small canal near 
 the Frari, and on the Calle dei Nomboli, just across 
 from a shop of indigestible pastry. It is known by an 
 inscription, and by the medallion of the dramatist 
 above the land-door; and there is no harm in looking 
 in at the court on the ground-floor, where you may be 
 pleased with the picturesque old stairway, wandering 
 upward I hardly know how high, and adorned with 
 many little heads of lions. 
 
 Several palaces dispute the honor of being Bianca 
 Cappello’s birthplace, but Mutinelli awards the dis¬ 
 tinction to the palace at Sant’ Appollinare near the 
 Ponte Storto. One day a gondolier vaingloriously 
 rowed us to the water-gate of the edifice through a 
 very narrow, damp, and uncleanly canal, pretending 
 that there was a beautiful staircase in its court. At 
 
 ambedue di un amore fatto sacro dalle leggi divine, essendo moglie 
 di Tiziano una Cecilia. ” I would not advise the reader to place 
 too fond a trust in any thing concerning the house of Titian. Mu¬ 
 tinelli refers to but one house of the painter, while Ticozzi makes 
 him proprietor of two. 
 
SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 26Q 
 
 the moment of our arrival, however, Bianca happened 
 to be hanging out clothes from a window, and shrilly- 
 disclaimed the staircase, attributing this merit to an¬ 
 other Palazzo Cappello. We were less pleased with 
 her appearance here, than with that portrait of her 
 which we saw on another occasion in the palace of a 
 lady of her name and blood. This lady has since 
 been married, and the name of Cappello is now ex¬ 
 tinct. 
 
 The Palazzo Mocenigo, in which Byron lived, is 
 galvanized into ghastly newness by recent repairs, and 
 as it is one of the ugliest palaces on the Grand Canal, 
 it has less claim than ever upon one’s interest. The 
 custodian shows people the rooms where the poet 
 wrote, dined, and slept, and I suppose it was from the 
 hideous basket-balcony over the main door that one 
 of his mistresses threw herself into the canal. An¬ 
 other of these interesting relicts is pointed out in the 
 small butter-and-cheese shop which she keeps in the 
 street leading from Campo Sant’ Angelo to San Pa- 
 terinan: she is a fat sinner, long past beauty, bald, 
 and somewhat melancholy to behold. Indeed, Byron’s 
 memory is not a presence which I approach with plea¬ 
 sure, and I had most enjoyment in his palace when I 
 thought of good-natured little Thomas Moore, who once 
 visited his lordship there. Byron himself hated the 
 recollection of his life in Venice, and I am sure no 
 one else need like it. But he is become a cosa di 
 Venezia , and you cannot pass his palace without having 
 it pointed out to you by the gondoliers. Early after 
 my arrival in the city I made the acquaintance of an 
 old smooth-shaven, smooth-mannered Venetian, who 
 j said he had known Byron, and who told me that he 
 
 Venetian Life . 1 4 
 
210 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 once swam with him from the Port of San Nicolo to 
 his palace-door. The distance is something over three 
 miles; but if the swimmers came in with the sea the 
 feat was not so great as it seems, for the tide is as 
 swift and strong as a mill-race. I think it would be 
 impossible to make the distance against the tide. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 To make an annual report in September upon the 
 Commercial Transactions of the port, was an official 
 duty to which I looked forward at Venice with a vague 
 feeling of injury during a year of almost uninterrupted 
 tranquillity. It was not because the preparation of 
 the report was an affair of so great labor that I shrank 
 from it; but because the material was wanting with 
 which to make a respectable show among my consular 
 peers in the large and handsomely misprinted volume 
 of Commercial Relations annually issued by the enter¬ 
 prising Congressional publishers. It grieved me that 
 upstart ports like Marseilles, Liverpool, and Bremen, 
 should occupy so much larger space in this important 
 volume than my beloved Venice; and it was with a 
 feeling of profound mortification that I used to post 
 my meagre account of a commerce that once was 
 greater than all the rest of the world’s together. I 
 sometimes desperately eked out the material furnished 
 me in the statistics of the Venetian Chamber of Com¬ 
 merce by an agricultural essay on the disease of the 
 grapes and its cure, or by a few wretched figures re- 
 
COMMERCE. 
 
 2 II 
 
 preservative of a very slender mining interest in the 
 province. But at last I determined to end these dis¬ 
 pleasures, and to make such researches into the history 
 of her Commerce as should furnish me forth material 
 for a report worthy of the high place Venice held in 
 my reverence. 
 
 Indeed, it seemed to be by a sort of anachronism 
 that I had ever mentioned contemporary Venetian 
 Commerce; and I turned with exultation from the 
 phantom transactions of the present to that solid and 
 magnificent prosperity of the past, of which the long- 
 enduring foundations were laid in the earliest Christian 
 times. For the new cities formed by the fugitives 
 from barbarian invasion of the main-land, during the 
 fifth century, had hardly settled around a common 
 democratic government on the islands of the lagoons, 
 when they began to develop maritime energies and 
 I resources; and long before this government was finally 
 i established at Rialto, (the ancient sea-port of Padua,) 
 j or Venice had become the capital of the young Re- 
 | public, the Veneti had thriftily begun to turn the wild 
 j invaders of the main-land to account, to traffic with 
 | them, and to make treaties of commerce with their 
 | rulers. Theodoric, the king of the Goths, had fixed 
 J his capital at Ravenna, in the sixth century, and would 
 have been glad to introduce Italian civilization among 
 , his people; but this warlike race were not prepared to 
 ! practice the useful arts, and although they inhabited 
 one of the most fruitful parts of Italy, with ample 
 j borders of sea, they were neither sailors nor tillers of 
 ' the ground. The Venetians supplied them (at a fine 
 ! profit, no doubt,) with the salt made in the lagoons, 
 j and with wines brought from Istria, The Goths viewed 
 
2 I 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 with especial amazement their skill in the management 
 of their river-craft, by means of which the dauntless 
 traders ascended the shallowest streams to penetrate 
 the main-land, “running on the grass of the meadows, 
 and between the stalks of the harvest field,”—just as 
 in this day our own western steamers are known to 
 run in a heavy dew. 
 
 The Venetians continued to extend and confirm 
 their commerce with those helpless and hungry war¬ 
 riors, and were ready also to open a lucrative trade 
 with the Longobards when they descended into Italy 
 about the year 570. They had, in fact, abetted the 
 Longobards in their war with the Greek Emperor 
 Justinian, (who had opposed their incursion,) and in 
 return the barbarians gave them the right to hold 
 great free marts or fairs on the shores of the lagoons, 
 whither the people resorted from every part of the 
 Longobard kingdom to buy the salt of the lagoons, 
 grain from Istria and Dalmatia, and slaves from every 
 country. 
 
 The slave-trade, indeed, formed then one of the 
 most lucrative branches of Venetian commerce, as now 
 it forms the greatest stain upon the annals of that 
 commerce. The islanders, however, were not alone 
 guilty of this infamous trade in men; other Italian 
 states made profit of it, and it may be said to have 
 been all but universal. But the Venetians were the 
 most deeply involved in it, they pursued it the most 
 unscrupulously, and they relinquished it the last. The 
 pope forbade and execrated their commerce, and they 
 sailed from the papal ports with cargoes of slaves for 
 the infidels in Africa. In spite of the prohibitions of 
 their own government, they bought Christians of kid' 
 
COMMERCE. 
 
 213 
 
 nappers throughout Europe, and purchased the cap- 
 tives of the pirates on the seas, to sell them again to 
 the Saracens. Nay, being an ingenious people, they 
 turned their honest penny over and over again: they 
 sold the Christians to the Saracens, and then for 
 certain sums ransomed them and restored them to 
 their countries; they sold Saracens to the Christians, 
 and plundered the infidels in similar transactions of 
 ransom and restoration. It is not easy to fix the dates 
 of the rise or fall of this slave-trade; but slavery con¬ 
 tinued in Venice as late as the fifteenth century, and 
 in earlier ages was so common that every prosperous 
 person had two or three slaves* The corruption of 
 the citizens at this time is properly attributed in part 
 to the existence of slavery among them; and Mutinelli 
 goes so far as to declare that the institution impressed 
 permanent traits on the populace, rendering them idle 
 and indisposed to honest labor, by degrading labor 
 and making it the office of bondmen. 
 
 While this hateful and enormous traffic in man 
 was growing up, the Venetians enriched themselves 
 by many other more blameless and legitimate forms 
 of commerce, and gradually gathered into their grasp 
 that whole trade of the East with Europe which passed 
 through their hands for so many ages. After the 
 dominion of the Franks was established in Italy in the 
 eighth century, they began to supply that people, more 
 luxurious than the Lombards, with the costly stuffs, 
 the rich jewelry, and the perfumes of Byzantium; and 
 held a great annual fair at the imperial city of Pavia, 
 
 * Mutinelli, Del Costume Veneziano . The present sketch of the 
 history of Venetian commerce is based upon facts chiefly drawn 
 from Mutinelli’s delightful treatise, Del Com?nercio dei Veneziani, 
 
214 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 where they sold the Franks the manufactures of the 
 polished and effeminate Greeks, and whence in return 
 they carried back to the East the grain, wine, wool, 
 iron, lumber, and excellent armor of Lombardy. 
 
 From the time when they had assisted the Longo- 
 bards against the Greeks, the Venetians found it to 
 their interest to cultivate the friendship of the latter, 
 until in the twelfth centuiy, they mastered the people 
 so long caressed, and took their capital, under Enrico 
 Dandolo. The privileges conceded to the wily and 
 thrifty republican traders by the Greek Emperors, 
 were extraordinary in their extent and value. Otho, 
 the western Caesar, having succeeded the Franks in the 
 dominion of Italy, had already absolved the Venetians 
 from the annual tribute paid the Italian kings for the 
 liberty of traffic, and had declared their commerce 
 free throughout the Peninsula. In the mean time they 
 had attacked and beaten the pirates of Dalmatia, and 
 the Greeks now recognized their rule all over Dalmatia, 
 thus securing to the Republic every port on the eastern 
 shores of the Adriatic. Then, as they aided the Greeks 
 to repel the aggressions of the Saracens and Normans, 
 their commerce was declared free in all the ports of 
 the empire, and they were allowed to trade without 
 restriction in all the cities, and to build warehouses 
 and depdts throughout the dominions of the Greeks, 
 wherever they chose. The harvest they reaped from 
 the vast field thus opened to their enterprise, must 
 have more than compensated them for their losses in 
 the barbarization of the Italian continent by the in¬ 
 cessant civil wars which followed the disruption of the 
 Lombard League, when trade and industry languished 
 throughout Italy. When the Crusaders had taken the 
 
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 215 
 
 Holy Land, the king of Jerusalem bestowed upon the 
 Venetians, in return for important services against the 
 infidel, the same privileges conceded them by the 
 Greek Emperor; and when, finally, Constantinople fell 
 into the hands of the Crusaders, (whom they had skill¬ 
 fully diverted from the reconquest of Palestine to the 
 siege of the Greek metropolis,) nearly all the Greek 
 islands fell to the share of Venice; and the Latin 
 emperors, who succeeded the Greeks in dominion, gave 
 her such privileges as made her complete mistress of 
 the commerce of the Levant. 
 
 From this opulent traffic the insatiable enterprise 
 of the Republic turned, without relinquishing the old, 
 to new gains in the farthest Orient. Against her trade 
 the exasperated infidel had closed the Egyptian ports, 
 but she did not scruple to coax the barbarous prince 
 of the Scythian Tartars, newly descended upon the 
 shores of the Black Sea; and having secured his 
 friendship, she proceeded, without imparting her design 
 to her Latin allies at Constantinople, to plant a com¬ 
 mercial colony at the mouth of the Don, where the 
 city of Azof stands. Through this entrepdt, thence¬ 
 forward, Venetian energy, with Tartar favor, directed 
 the entire commerce of Asia with Europe, and in¬ 
 credibly enriched the Republic. The vastness and 
 importance of such a trade, even at that day, when 
 the wants of men were far simpler and fewer than 
 now, could hardly be over-stated; and one nation then 
 monopolized the traffic which is now free to the whole 
 world. The Venetians bought their wares at the great 
 marts of Samarcand, and crossed the country of Tartary 
 in caravans to the shores of the Caspian Sea, where 
 they set sail and voyaged to the River Volga, which 
 
2 l6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 they ascended to the point of its closest proximity to 
 the Don. Their goods were then transported overland 
 to the Don, and were again carried by water down to 
 their mercantile colony at its mouth. Their ships, 
 having free access to the Black Sea, could, after re¬ 
 ceiving their cargoes, return direct to Venice. The 
 products of every country of Asia were carried into 
 Europe by these dauntless traffickers, who, enlightened 
 and animated by the travels and discoveries of Matteo, 
 Nicolo, and Marco Polo, penetrated the remotest regions, 
 and brought away the treasures which the prevalent 
 fears and superstitions of other nations would have 
 deterred them from seeking, even if they had possessed 
 the means of access to them. 
 
 The partial civilization of the age of chivalry had 
 now reached its climax, and the class which had felt 
 its refining effects was that best able to gratify the 
 tastes still unknown to the great mass of the ignorant 
 and impoverished people. It was a splendid time, 
 and the robber counts and barons of the continent, 
 newly tamed and Christianized into knights, spent 
 splendidly, as became magnificent cavaliers serving 
 noble ladies. The Venetians, who seldom did merely 
 heroic things, who turned the Crusades to their own 
 account and made money out of the Holy Land, and 
 whom one always fancies as having a half scorn of 
 the noisy grandeur of chivalry, were very glad to 
 supply the knights and ladies with the gorgeous stuffs, 
 precious stones, and costly perfumes of the East; and 
 they now also began to establish manufactories, and to 
 practice the industrial arts at home. Their jewelers 
 and workers in precious metals soon became famous 
 throughout Europe; the glass-works of Murano rose 
 
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 217 
 
 into celebrity and importance which they have never 
 since lost (for they still supply the world with beads); 
 and they began to weave stuffs of gold tissue at Venice, 
 and silks so exquisitely dyed that no cavalier or dame 
 of perfect fashion was content with any other. Besides 
 this they gilded leather for lining walls, wove carpets, 
 and wrought miracles of ornament in wax,—a material 
 that modern taste is apt to disdain,—while Venetian 
 candles in chandeliers of Venetian glass lighted up 
 the palaces of the whole civilized world. 
 
 The private enterprise of citizens was in every 
 way protected and encouraged by the State, which 
 did not, however, fail to make due and just profit out 
 of it. The ships of the merchants always sailed to 
 and from Venice in fleets, at stated seasons, seven 
 fleets departing annually,—one for the Greek do¬ 
 minions, a second for Azof, a third for Trebizond, a 
 fourth for Cyprus, a fifth for Armenia, a sixth for 
 Spain, France, the Low Countries, and England, and 
 a seventh for Africa. Each squadron of traders was 
 accompanied and guarded from attacks of corsairs 
 and other enemies, by a certain number of the state 
 galleys, let severally to the highest bidders for the 
 voyage, at a price never less than about five hundred 
 dollars of our money. The galleys were all manned 
 and armed by the State, and the crew of each amounted 
 to three hundred persons; including a captain, four 
 supercargoes, eight pilots, two carpenters, two calkers, 
 a master of the oars, fifty cross-bowmen, three drum¬ 
 mers, and two hundred rowers. The State also ap¬ 
 pointed a commandant of the whole squadron, with 
 absolute authority to hear complaints, decide contro¬ 
 versies, and punish offences. 
 
2 l8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 While the Republic was thus careful in the protec¬ 
 tion and discipline of its citizens in their commerce 
 upon the seas, it was no less zealous for their security 
 and its own dignity in their traffic with the continent 
 of Europe. In that rude day, neither the life nor the 
 property of the merchant who visited the ultramontane 
 countries was safe; for the sorry device which he 
 practiced, of taking with him a train of apes, buffoons, 
 dancers, and singers, in order to divert his ferocious 
 patrons from robbery and murder, was not always 
 successful. The Venetians, therefore, were forbidden 
 by the State to trade in those parts; and the Bohe¬ 
 mians, Germans, and Hungarians, who wished to buy 
 their wares, were obliged to come to the lagoons and 
 buy them at the great marts which were held in dif¬ 
 ferent parts of the city, and on the neighboring main¬ 
 land. A triple purpose was thus served,—the Venetian 
 merchants were protected in their lives and goods, the 
 national honor was saved from insult, and many an 
 honest zecchino was turned by the innkeepers and 
 others who lodged and entertained the customers of 
 the merchants. 
 
 Five of these great fairs were held every week, the 
 chief market being at Rialto; and the transactions in 
 trade were carefully supervised by the servants of the 
 State. Among the magistracies especially appointed 
 for the orderly conduct of the foreign and domestic 
 commerce were the so-called Mercantile Consuls (Uf- 
 ficio dei Consoli dei Mercanti ), whose special duty it 
 was to see that the traffic of the nation received no 
 hurt from the schemes of any citizen or foreigner, and 
 to punish offenses of this kind with banishment and 
 even graver penalties. They measured every ship 
 
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 about to depart, to learn if her cargo exceeded the 
 lawful amount; they guarded creditors against debtors 
 and protected poor debtors against the rapacity of 
 creditors, and they punished thefts sustained by the 
 merchants. It is curious to find, contemporary with 
 this beneficent magistracy, a charge of equal dignity 
 exercised by the College of Reprisals. A citizen of¬ 
 fended in his person or property abroad, demanded 
 justice of the government of the country in which the 
 offense was committed. If the demand was refused, it 
 was repeated by the Republic; if still refused, then 
 the Republic, although at peace with the nation from 
 which the offense came, seized any citizen of that 
 country whom it could find, and, through its College 
 of Reprisals, spoiled him of sufficient property to pay 
 the damage done to its citizen. Finally, besides 
 several other magistracies resident in Venice, the Re¬ 
 public appointed Consuls in its colonies and some 
 foreign ports, to superintend the traffic of its citizens, 
 and to compose their controversies. The Consuls were 
 paid out of duties levied on the merchandise; they 
 were usually nobles, and acted with the advice and 
 consent of twelve other Venetian nobles or merchants. 
 
 At this time, and, indeed, throughout its existence, 
 the great lucrative monopoly of the Republic was the 
 salt manufactured in the lagoons, and forced into 
 every market, at rates that no other salt could compete 
 with. Wherever alien enterprise attempted rivalry, it 
 was instantly discouraged by Venice. There were 
 troublesome salt mines, for example, in Croatia; and 
 in 1381 the Republic caused them to be closed by 
 paying the King of Hungary an annual pension of 
 seven thousand crowns of gold. The exact income 
 
220 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 of the State, however, from the monopoly of salt, or 
 from the various imposts and duties levied upon 
 merchandise, it is now difficult to know, and it is im¬ 
 possible to compute accurately the value or extent of 
 Venetian commerce at any one time. It reached the 
 acme of its prosperity under Tommaso Mocenigo, who 
 was Doge from 1414 to 1423. There were then three 
 thousand and three hundred vessels of the mercantile 
 marine, giving employment to thirty-three thousand 
 seamen, and netting to their owners a profit of forty 
 per cent, on the capital invested. How great has been 
 the decline of this trade may be understood from the 
 fact that in 1833 it amounted, according to the care¬ 
 ful statistics of the Chamber of Commerce, to only 
 $60,229,740, and that the number of vessels now 
 owned in Venice is one hundred and fifty. As the 
 total tonnage of these is but 26,000, it may be in¬ 
 ferred that they are small craft, and in fact they are 
 nearly all coasting vessels. They no longer bring to 
 Venice the drugs and spices and silks of Samarcand, 
 or carry her own rare manufactures to the ports of 
 western Europe; but they sail to and from her canals 
 with humble freights of grain, lumber, and hemp. 
 Almost as many Greek as Venetian ships now visit 
 the old queen, who once levied a tax upon every 
 foreign vessel in her Adriatic; and the shipping from 
 the cities of the kingdom of Italy exceeds her by 
 ninety sail, while the tonnage of Great Britain is 
 vastly greater. Her commerce has not only wasted to 
 the shadow of its former magnitude, but it has also 
 almost entirely lost its distinctive character. Glass of 
 Murano is still exported to a value of about two 
 millions of dollars annually; but in this industry, as in 
 
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 221 
 
 nearly all others of the lagoons, there is an annual 
 decline. The trade of the port falls off from one to 
 three millions of dollars yearly, and the manufacturing 
 interests of the province have dwindled in the same 
 proportion. So far as silk is concerned, there has 
 been an immediate cause for the decrease in the 
 disease which has afflicted the cocoons for several 
 years past. Wine and oil are at present articles of 
 import solely,—the former because of a malady of the 
 grape, the latter because of negligent cultivation of 
 the olive. 
 
 A considerable number of persons are still em¬ 
 ployed in the manufacture of objects of taste and or¬ 
 nament; and in the Ruga Vecchia at Rialto they yet 
 make the famous Venetian gold chain, which few visi¬ 
 tors to the city can have failed to notice hanging in 
 strands and wound upon spools, in the shop windows 
 of the Old Procuratie and the Bridge of Rialto. It is 
 wrought of all degrees of fineness, and is always so 
 flexile that it may be folded and wound in any shape. 
 It is now no longer made in great quantity, and is 
 chiefly worn by contadine (as a safe investment of their 
 ready money),* and old-fashioned people of the city, 
 who display the finer sort in skeins or strands. At 
 Chioggia, I remember to have seen a babe at its 
 christening in church literally manacled and shackled 
 with Venetian chain; and the little girl who came to 
 
 * Certain foreigners living in Venice were one day astonished 
 to find their maid-servant in possession of a mass of this chain, and 
 thought it their business to reprove her extravagance. “Signori,” 
 she explained paradoxically, “if I keep my money, I spend it; if I 
 buy this chain, it is always money (e sempre soldi)” 
 
222 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 us one day, to show us the splendors in which she had 
 appeared at a disputa (examination of children in doc¬ 
 trine), was loaded with it. Formerly, in the luxurious 
 days of the Republic, it is said the chain was made 
 as fine as sewing-silk, and worn embroidered on Genoa 
 velvet by the patrician dames. It had then a cruel 
 interest from the fact that its manufacture, after a time, 
 cost the artisans their eyesight, so nice and subtle was 
 the work. I could not help noticing that the work¬ 
 men at their shops in the Ruga Vecchia still suffer in 
 their eyes, even though the work is much coarser. I 
 do not hope to describe the chain, except by saying 
 that the links are horseshoe and oval shaped, and are 
 connected by twos,—an oval being welded crosswise 
 into a horseshoe, and so on, each two being linked 
 loosely into the next. 
 
 An infinitely more important art, in which Venice 
 was distinguished a thousand years ago, has recently 
 been revived there by Signor Salviati, an enthusiast in 
 mosaic painting. His establishment is on the Grand 
 Canal, not far from the Academy, and you might go 
 by the old palace quite unsuspicious of the ancient art 
 stirring with new life in its breast. “A. Salviati, Av- 
 vocato,” is the legend of the bell-pull, and you do not 
 by any means take this legal style for that of the re¬ 
 storer of a neglected art, and a possessor of forgotten 
 secrets in gilded glass and “smalts,” as they term the 
 small delicate rods of vitreous substance, with which 
 the wonders of the art are achieved. But inside of 
 the palace are some two hundred artisans at work,— 
 cutting the smalts and glass into the minute fragments 
 of which the mosaics are made, grinding and smooth- 
 
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 223 
 
 mg these fragments, polishing the completed works, 
 and reproducing, with incredible patience and skill, the 
 lights and shadows of the pictures to be copied. 
 
 You first enter the rooms of those whose talent 
 distinguishes them as artists, and in whose work all 
 the wonderful neatness and finish and long-suffering 
 toil of the Byzantines are visible, as well as original 
 life and inspiration alike impossible and profane to 
 the elder mosaicists. Each artist has at hand a great 
 variety of the slender stems of smalts already men¬ 
 tioned, and breaking these into minute fragments as 
 he proceeds, he inserts them in the bed of cement 
 prepared to receive his picture, and thus counter¬ 
 feits in enduring mineral the perishable work of the 
 painter. 
 
 In other rooms artisans are at work upon various 
 tasks of marqueterie ,—table-tops, album-covers, paper¬ 
 weights, brooches, pins and the like,—and in others 
 they are sawing the smalts and glass into strips, and 
 grinding the edges. Passing through yet another room, 
 where the finished mosaic-works—of course not the 
 pictorial mosaics—are polished by machinery, we enter 
 the store-room, where the crowded shelves display 
 blocks of smalts and glass of endless variety of color. 
 By far the greater number of these colors are dis¬ 
 coveries or improvements of the venerable mosaicist 
 Lorenzo Radi, who has found again the Byzantine se¬ 
 crets of counterfeiting, in vitreous paste, aventurine 
 (gold stone), onyx, chalcedony, malachite, and other 
 natural stones, and who has been praised by the Aca¬ 
 demy of Fine Arts in Venice for producing mosaics 
 even more durable in tint and workmanship than those 
 of the Byzantine artists. 
 
22 4 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 In an upper story of the palace a room is set apart 
 for the exhibition of the many beautiful and costly 
 things which the art of the establishment produces. 
 Here, besides pictures in mosaic, there are cunningly 
 inlaid tables and cabinets, caskets, rich vases of chal¬ 
 cedony mounted in silver, and delicately wrought 
 jewelry, while the floor is covered with a mosaic pave¬ 
 ment ordered for the Viceroy of Egypt. There are 
 here, moreover, to be seen the designs furnished by 
 the Crown Princess of Prussia for the mosaics of the 
 Queen’s Chapel at Windsor. These, like all other 
 pictures and decorations in mosaic, are completed in 
 the establishment on the Grand Canal, and are after¬ 
 ward put up as wholes in the places intended for 
 them. 
 
 In Venice nothing in decay is strange. But it is 
 startling to find her in her old age nourishing into 
 fresh life an art that, after feebly preserving the 
 memory of painting for so many centuries, had de¬ 
 corated her prime only with the glories of its decline; 
 —for Kugler ascribes the completion of the mosaics 
 of the church of St. Cyprian in Murano to the year 
 882, and the earliest mosaics of St. Mark’s to the tenth 
 or eleventh centuries, when the Greek Church had al¬ 
 ready laid her ascetic hand on Byzantine art, and fixed 
 its conventional forms, paralyzed its motives, and for¬ 
 bidden its inspirations. 
 
 I think, however, one would look about him in vain 
 for other evidences of a returning prosperity in the 
 lagoons. The old prosperity of Venice, was based 
 upon her monopoly of the most lucrative traffic in the 
 world, as we have already seen,—upon her exclusive 
 privileges in foreign countries, upon the enlightened 
 
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 225 
 
 zeal of her government, and upon men’s imperfect 
 knowledge of geography, and the barbarism of the 
 rest of Europe, as well as upon the indefatigable in¬ 
 dustry and intelligent enterprise of her citizens. America 
 was still undiscovered; the overland route to India was 
 the only one known; the people of the continent out¬ 
 side of Italy were unthrifty serfs, ruled and ruined by 
 unthrifty lords. The whole world’s ignorance, pride, 
 and sloth were Venetian gain; and the religious super¬ 
 stitions of the day, which, gross as they were, embodied 
 perhaps its noblest and most hopeful sentiment, were 
 a source of incalculable profit to the sharp-witted 
 mistress of the Adriatic. It was the age of penances, 
 pilgrimages, and relic-hunting, and the wealth which 
 she wrung from the devotion of others was exceedingly 
 great. Her ships carried the pilgrims to and from the 
 Holy Land; her adventurers ransacked Palestine and 
 the whole Orient for the bones and memorials of the 
 saints; and her merchants sold the precious relics 
 throughout Europe at an immense advance upon first 
 cost. 
 
 But the foundations of this prosperity were at last 
 sapped by the tide of wealth which poured into Venice 
 from every quarter of the world. Her citizens brought 
 back the vices as well as the luxuries of the debauched 
 Orient, and the city became that seat of splendid idle¬ 
 ness and proud corruption which it continued till the 
 Republic fell. It is needless here to rehearse the story 
 of her magnificence and decay. At the time when the 
 hardy, hungry people of other nations were opening 
 paths to prosperity by land and sea, the Venetians, 
 gorged with the spoils of ages, relinquished their old 
 habits of daring enterprise, and dropped back into 
 
 Venetian Life , 15 
 
226 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 luxury and indolence. Their incessant wars with the 
 Genoese began, and though they signally defeated the 
 rival Republic in battle, Genoa finally excelled in 
 commerce. A Greek prince had arisen to dispute the 
 sovereignty of the Latin Emperors, whom the Venetians 
 had helped to place upon the Byzantine throne; the 
 Genoese, seeing the favorable fortunes of the Greek, 
 threw the influence of their arms and intrigues in his 
 favor, and the Latins were expelled from Constantinople 
 in 1271. The new Greek Emperor had promised to 
 give the sole navigation of the Black Sea to his allies, 
 together with the church and palaces possessed by the 
 Venetians in his capital, and he bestowed also upon 
 the Genoese the city of Smyrna. It does not seem 
 that he fulfilled literally all his promises, for the Vene¬ 
 tians still continued to sail to and from their colony of 
 Tana, at the head of the Sea of Azof, though it is 
 certain that they had no longer the sovereignty of 
 those waters; and the Genoese now planted on the 
 shores of the Black Sea three large and important 
 colonies to serve the entrepots for the trade taken 
 from their rivals. The oriental traffic of the latter was 
 maintained through Tana, however, for nearly two cen¬ 
 turies later, when, in 1410, the Mongol Tartars, under 
 Tamerlane, fell upon the devoted colony, took, sacked, 
 burnt, and utterly destroyed it. This was the first 
 terrible blow to the most magnificent commerce which 
 the world had ever seen, and which had endured for 
 ages. No wonder that, on the day of Tana’s fall, ter¬ 
 rible portents of woe were seen at Venice,—that me¬ 
 teors appeared, that demons rode the air, that the 
 winds and waters rose and blew down houses and 
 swallowed ships! A thousand persons are said to have 
 
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 22 7 
 
 perished in the calamities which commemorated a 
 stroke so mortally disastrous to the national grandeur. 
 After that the Venetians humbly divided with their 
 ancient foes the possession and maintenance of the 
 Genoese colony of Cafifa, and continued, with greatly 
 diminished glory, their traffic in the Black Sea; till 
 the Turks having taken Constantinople, and the Greeks 
 having acquired under their alien masters a zeal for 
 commerce unknown to them during the times of their 
 native princes, the Venetians were finally, on the first 
 pretext of war, expelled from those waters in which 
 they had latterly maintained themselves only by pay¬ 
 ment of heavy tribute to the Turks. 
 
 In the mean time the industrial arts, in which 
 Venice had heretofore excelled, began to be practised 
 elsewhere, and the Florentines and the English took 
 that lead in the manufactures of the world, which the 
 latter still retain. The league of the Hanseatic cities 
 was established and rose daily in importance. At Lon¬ 
 don, at Bruges, at Bergen, and Novogorod banks were 
 opened under the protection and special favor of the 
 Hanseatic League; its ships were preferred to any 
 other, and the tide of commerce setting northward, 
 the cities of the League persecuted the foreigners who 
 would have traded in their ports. On the west, Bar¬ 
 celona began to dispute the preeminence of Venice in 
 the Mediterranean, and Spanish salt was brought to 
 Italy itself and sold by the enterprising Catalonians. 
 Their corsairs vexed Venetian commerce everywhere; 
 and in that day, as in our own, private English enter¬ 
 prise was employed in piratical depredations on the 
 traffic of a friendly power. 
 
 The Portuguese also began to extend their com- 
 
 * 5 * 
 
228 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 merce, once so important, and catching the rage for 
 discovery then prevalent, infested every sea in search 
 of unknown land. One of their navigators, sailing by 
 a chart which a monk named Fra Mauro, in his con¬ 
 vent on the island of San Michele, had put together 
 from the stories of travelers, and his own guesses at 
 geography, discovered the Cape of Good Hope, and 
 the trade of India with Europe was turned in that di¬ 
 rection, and the old over-land traffic perished. The 
 Venetian monopoly of this traffic had long been gone; 
 had its recovery been possible, it would now have been 
 useless to the declining prosperity of the Republic. 
 
 It remained for Christopher Columbus, born of 
 that Genoese nation which had hated the Venetians 
 so long and so bitterly, to make the discovery of 
 America, and thus to give the death-blow to the su¬ 
 premacy of Venice. While all these discoveries were 
 taking place," the old queen of the seas had been 
 weighed down with many and unequal wars. Her 
 naval power had been everywhere crippled; her re¬ 
 venues had been reduced; her possessions, one after 
 one, had been lopped away; and at the time Columbus 
 was on his way to America half Europe, united in the 
 League of Cambray, was attempting to crush the Re¬ 
 public of Venice. 
 
 The whole world was now changed. Commerce 
 sought new channels; fortune smiled on other nations. 
 How Venice dragged onward from the end of her com¬ 
 mercial greatness, and tottered with a delusive splendor 
 to her political death, is surely one of the saddest of 
 stories if not the sternest of lessons. 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 229 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 The national character of the Venetians was so 
 largely influenced by the display and dissipation of 
 the frequent festivals of the Republic, that it cannot be 
 fairly estimated without taking them into consideration, 
 nor can the disuse of these holidays (of which I have 
 heretofore spoken) be appreciated in all its import, 
 without particular allusion to their number and nature. 
 They formed part of the aristocratic polity of the old 
 commonwealth, which substituted popular indulgence for 
 popular liberty, and gave the people costly pleasures in 
 return for the priceless rights of which they had been 
 robbed, set up national pride in the place of patriotism, 
 and was as well satisfied with a drunken joy in its 
 subjects as if they had possessed a true content. 
 
 Full notice of these holidays would be history* of 
 
 * “Siccome,” says the editor of Giustina Renier-Michiel’s 
 Origine delle Feste Veneziane, — “Siccome l’illustre Autrice ha vo- 
 luto applicare al suo lavoro il modesto titolo di Origine delle Feste 
 Vc7ieziane i e siccome questo potrebbe porgere un’ idea assai diversa 
 dell’ opera a chi non ne ha alcuna cognizione, da quello che e 
 sostanzialmente, si espone questo Epitome, perche ognun vegga 
 almeno in parte, che quest’ opera sarebbe del titolo di storia con- 
 degna, giacche essa non e che una costante descrizione degli avveni- 
 menti piu importanti e luminosi della Repubblica di Venezia. ” The 
 work in question is one of much research and small philosophy, 
 like most books which Venetians have written upon Venice; but it 
 has admirably served my purpose, and I am indebted to it for most 
 gf the information contained in this chapter, 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 230 
 
 Venice, for each one had its origin in some great event 
 of her existence, and they were so numerous as to 
 commemorate nearly every notable incident in her an¬ 
 nals. Though, as has been before observed, they had 
 nearly all a general religious character, the Church, as 
 usual in Venice, only seemed to direct the ceremonies 
 in its own honor, while it really ministered to the poli¬ 
 tical glory of the oligarchy, which knew how to manage 
 its priests as well as its prince and people. Nay, it 
 happened in one case, at least, that a religious anni¬ 
 versary was selected by the Republic as the day on 
 which to put to shame before the populace certain of 
 the highest and reverendest dignitaries of the Church. 
 In 1162, Ulrich, the Patriarch of Aquileja, seized, by 
 a treacherous stratagem, the city of Grado, then sub¬ 
 ject to Venice. The Venetians immediately besieged 
 and took the city, with the patriarch and twelve of his 
 canons in it, and carried them prisoners to the lagoons. 
 The turbulent patriarchs of Aquileja had long been 
 disturbers of the Republic’s dominion, and the people 
 now determined to make an end of these displeasures. 
 They refused, therefore, to release the patriarch, except 
 on condition that he should bind himself to send them 
 annually a bull and twelve fat hogs. It is not known 
 what meaning the patriarch attached to this singular 
 ceremony; but with the Venetians the bull was typical 
 of himself, and the swine of his canons, and they yearly 
 suffered death in these animals, which were slaughtered 
 during Shrovetide in the Piazza San Marco amid a 
 great concourse of the people, in the presence of the 
 Doge and Signory. The locksmiths, and other workers 
 in iron, had distinguished themselves in the recapture 
 of Grado, and to their guild was allotted the honor of 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 231 
 
 putting to death the bull and swine. Great art was 
 shown in striking off the bull’s head at one blow, with¬ 
 out suffering the sword to touch the ground after pass¬ 
 ing through the animal’s neck; the swine were slain 
 with lances. Athletic games among the people suc¬ 
 ceeded, and the Doge and his Senators attacked and 
 destroyed, with staves, several lightly built wooden 
 castles, to symbolize the abasement of the feudal power 
 before the Republic. As the centuries advanced this 
 part of the ceremony, together with the slaughter of 
 the swine, was disused; in which fact Mr. Ruskin sees 
 evidence of a corrupt disdain of simple and healthy 
 allegory on the part of the proud doges, but in which 
 I think most people will discern only a natural wish to 
 discontinue in more civilized times a puerile barbarity. 
 Mr. Ruskin himself finds no evidence of “state pride” 
 in the abolition of the slaughter of the swine. The 
 festival was very popular, and continued a long time, 
 though I believe not till the fall of the Republic. 
 
 Another tribute, equally humiliating to those who 
 paid it, was imposed upon the Paduans for an insult 
 offered to St. Mark, and gave occasion for a national 
 holiday, some fifty years after the Patriarch of Aquileja 
 began atonement for his outrage. In the year 1214, 
 the citizens of Treviso made an entertainment to which 
 they invited the noble youth of the surrounding cities. 
 In the chief piazza of the town a castle of wood ex¬ 
 quisitely decorated was held against all comers by a 
 garrison of the fairest Trevisan damsels. The weapons 
 of defense were flowers, fruits, bonbons, and the bright 
 eyes of the besieged; while the missiles of attack were 
 much the same, with whatever added virtue might lie 
 in tender prayers and sugared supplications. Padua, 
 
232 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Vicenza, Bassano, and Venice sent their gallantest 
 youths, under their municipal banners, to take part in 
 this famous enterprise; and the attack was carried on 
 by the leagued forces with great vigor, but with no 
 effect on the Castle of Love, as it was called, till the 
 Venetians made a breach at a weak point. These 
 young men were better skilled in the arts of war than 
 their allies; they were richer, and had come to Treviso 
 decked in the spoils of the recent sack of Constan¬ 
 tinople, and at the moment they neared the castle it is 
 reported that they corrupted the besieged by throwing 
 handfuls of gold into the tower. Whether this be true 
 or not, it is certain that the conduct of the Venetians 
 in some manner roused the Paduans to insult, and that 
 the hot youths came to blows. In an instant the 
 standard of St. Mark was thrown down and trampled 
 under the feet of the furious Paduans; blood flowed, 
 and the indignant Trevisans drove the combatants out 
 of their city. The spark of war spreading to the rival 
 cities, the Paduans were soon worsted, and three hun¬ 
 dred of their number were made prisoners. These 
 they would willingly have ransomed at any price, but 
 their enemies would not release them except on the 
 payment of two white pullets for each warrior. The 
 shameful ransom was paid in the Piazza, to the inex¬ 
 tinguishable delight of the Venetians, who, never want¬ 
 ing in sharp and biting wit, abandoned themselves to 
 sarcastic exultation. They demanded that the Paduans 
 should, like the patriarch, repeat the tribute annually; 
 but the prudent Doge Ziani judged the single humilia¬ 
 tion sufficient, and refused to establish a yearly celebra¬ 
 tion of the feast. 
 
 One of the most famous occasional festivals of 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 233 
 
 Venice is described by Petrarch in a Latin letter to 
 his friend Pietro Bolognese. It was in celebration of 
 the reduction of the Greeks of Candia, an island which 
 in 1361 had recently been ceded to the Republic. 
 The Candiotes rose in general rebellion, but were 
 so promptly subdued that the news of the outbreak 
 scarcely anticipated the announcement of its suppression 
 in Venice. Petrarch was at this time the guest of the 
 Republic, and from his seat at the right of the Doge 
 on the gallery of St. Mark’s Church, in front of the 
 bronze horses, he witnessed the chivalric shows given 
 in the Piazza below, which was then unpaved, and ad¬ 
 mirably adapted for equestrian feats of arms. It is 
 curious to read the poet’s account of these in a city 
 where there is now no four-footed beast larger than a 
 dog. But in the age of chivalry even the Venetians 
 were mounted, and rode up and down their narrow 
 streets, and jousted in their great campos. 
 
 Speaking of twenty-four noble and handsome youths, 
 whose feats formed a chief part of a show of which 
 he “does not know if in the whole world there has 
 been seen the equal,” Petrarch says: “It was a gentle 
 sight to see so many youths decked in purple and gold, 
 as they ruled with the rein and urged with the spur 
 their coursers, moving in glittering harness, with iron- 
 shod feet which scarcely seemed to touch the ground.” 
 And it must have been a noble sight, indeed, to be¬ 
 hold all this before the “golden facade of the temple,” 
 in a place so packed with spectators “that a grain of 
 barley could not have fallen to the ground. The great 
 piazza, the church itself, the towers, the roofs, the 
 arcades, the windows, all were—I will not say full, but 
 running over, walled and paved with people.” At the 
 
^34 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 right of the church was built a great platform, on 
 which sat “four hundred honestest gentlewomen, chosen 
 from the flower of the nobility, and distinguished in 
 their dress and bearing, who, amid the continual homage 
 offered them morning, noon, and night, presented the 
 image of a celestial congress.” Some noblemen, come 
 hither by chance, “from the part of Britain, comrades 
 and kinsmen of their king, were present,” and attracted 
 the notice of the poet. The feasts lasted many days, 
 but on the third day Petrarch excused himself to the 
 Doge, pleading, he says, his “ordinary occupations, al¬ 
 ready known to all.” 
 
 Among remoter feasts in honor of national triumphs, 
 was one on the Day of the Annunciation, commemora¬ 
 tive of the removal of the capital of the Venetian isles 
 to Rialto from Malamocco, after King Pepin had burnt 
 the latter city, and when, advancing on Venice, he was 
 met in the lagoons and beaten by the islanders and 
 the tides: these by their recession stranding his boats 
 in the mud, and those falling upon his helpless host 
 with the fury of an insulted and imperiled people. 
 The Doge annually assisted at mass in St. Mark’s in 
 honor of the victory, but not long afterward the celebra- 
 of it ceased, as did that of a precisely similar defeat 
 of the Hungarians, who had just descended from Asia 
 into Europe. In 1339 there were great rejoicings in 
 the Piazza for the peace with Mastino della Scala, 
 who, beaten by the Republic, ceded his city of Treviso 
 to her. 
 
 Doubtless the most splendid of all the occasional 
 festivals was that held for the Venetian share of the 
 great Christian victory at Lepanto over the Turks. All 
 orders of the State took part in it; but the most re- 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 235 
 
 markable feature of the celebration was the roofing of 
 the Merceria, all the way from St. Mark’s to Rialto, 
 with fine blue cloth, studded with golden stars to re¬ 
 present the firmament, as the shopkeepers imagined it. 
 The pictures of the famous painters of that day, Titian, 
 Tintoretto, Palma, and the rest, were exposed under 
 this canopy, at the end near Rialto. Later, the Vene¬ 
 tian victories over the Turks at the Dardanelles were 
 celebrated by a regatta, in 1658; and Morosini’s bril¬ 
 liant reconquest of the Morea, in 1688, was the occa¬ 
 sion of other magnificent shows. 
 
 The whole world has now adopted, with various 
 modifications, the picturesque and exciting pastime of 
 the regatta, which, according to Mutinelli,* originated 
 among the lagoons at a very early period, from a pe¬ 
 culiar feature in the military discipline of the Republic. 
 A target for practice with the bow and cross-bow was 
 set up every week on the beach at the Lido, and 
 nobles and plebeians rowed thither in barges of thirty 
 oars, vying with each other in the speed and skill with 
 which the boats were driven. To divert the popular 
 discontent that followed the Serrar del Consiglio and 
 the suppression of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s conspiracy 
 early in the fourteenth century, the proficiency arising 
 from this rivalry was turned to account, and the spec¬ 
 tacle of the regatta was instituted. Agreeably, how¬ 
 ever, to the aristocratic spirit of the newly established 
 oligarchy, the patricians withdrew from the lists, and 
 the regatta became the affair exclusively of the gondo¬ 
 liers. In other Italian cities, where horse and donkey 
 races were the favorite amusement, the riders were of 
 
 Annali Urbani di Venezia . 
 
236 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 both sexes; and now at Venice women also entered 
 into the rivalry of the regatta. But in gallant deference 
 to their weakness, they were permitted to begin the 
 course at the mouth of the Grand Canal before the 
 Doganna di Mare, while the men were obliged to start 
 from the Public Gardens. They followed the Grand 
 Canal to its opposite extremity, beyond the present 
 railway station, and there doubling a pole planted in 
 the water near the Ponte della Croce, returned to the 
 common goal before the Palazzo Foscari. Here was 
 erected an ornate scaffolding to which the different 
 prizes were attached. The first boat carried off a red 
 banner; the next received a green flag; the third, a 
 blue; and the fourth, a yellow one. With each of these 
 was given a purse, and with the last was added, by 
 way of gibe, a live pig, a picture of which was painted 
 on the yellow banner. Every regatta included five 
 courses, in which single and double oared boats, and 
 single and double oared gondolas successively com¬ 
 peted,—the fifth contest being that in which the women 
 participated with two-oared boats. Four prizes like 
 those described were awarded to the winners in each 
 course. 
 
 The regatta was celebrated with all the pomp which 
 the superb city could assume. As soon as the govern¬ 
 ment announced that it was to take place, the prepara¬ 
 tions of the champions began. “From that time the 
 gondolier ceased to be a servant; he became almost an 
 adoptive son;”* his master giving him every possible 
 assistance and encouragement in the daily exercises 
 by which he trained himself for the contest, and his 
 
 Fesle VenezwUx 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 *37 
 
 parish priest visiting him in his own house, to bless 
 his person, his boat, and the image of the Madonna or 
 other saint attached to the gondola. When the great 
 day arrived the Canalazzo swarmed with boats of every 
 kind. “All the trades and callings,” says Giustina 
 Renier-Michiel,* with that pride in the Venetian past 
 which does not always pass from verbosity to elo¬ 
 quence, “had each its boats appropriately mounted 
 and adorned; and private societies filled an hundred 
 more. The chief families among the nobility appeared 
 in their boats, on which they had lavished their taste 
 and wealth.” The rowers were dressed with the most 
 profuse and elaborate luxury, and the barges were 
 made to represent historical and mythological con¬ 
 ceptions. “To this end the builders employed carving 
 and sculpture, together with all manner of costly stuffs 
 of silk and velvet, gorgeous fringes and tassels of silver 
 and gold, flowers, fruits, shrubs, mirrors, furs, and 
 plumage of rare birds. . . . Young patricians, in fleet 
 and narrow craft, propelled by swift rowers, preceded 
 the champions and cleared the way for them, obliging 
 the spectators to withdraw on either side. . . . They 
 knelt on sumptuous cushions in the prows of their 
 gondolas, cross-bow in hand, and launched little pellets 
 of plaster at the directors of such obstinate boats as 
 failed to obey their orders to retire. . . . 
 
 “To augment the brilliancy of the regatta the 
 nature of the place concurred. Let us imagine that 
 superb canal, flanked on either side by a long line of 
 edifices of every sort; with great numbers of marble 
 palaces,—nearly all of noble and majestic structure, 
 
 Feste Veneziane. 
 
238 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 some admirable for an antique and Gothic taste, some 
 for the richest Greek and Roman architecture,—their 
 windows and balconies decked with damasks, stuffs of 
 the Levant, tapestries, and velvets, the vivid colors of 
 which were animated still more by borders and fringes 
 of gold, and on which leaned beautiful women richly 
 dressed and wearing tremulous and glittering jewels in 
 their hair. Wherever the eye turned, it beheld a vast 
 multitude at doorways, on the rivas, and even on the 
 roofs. Some of the spectators occupied scaffoldings 
 erected at favorable points along the sides of the 
 canal; and the patrician ladies did not disdain to 
 leave their palaces, and, entering their gondolas, lose 
 themselves among the infinite number of the boats. . . . 
 
 “The cannons give the signal of departure. The 
 boats dart over the water with the rapidity of light¬ 
 ning. . . . They advance and fall behind alternately. 
 One champion who seems to yield the way to a rival 
 suddenly leaves him in the rear. The shouts of his 
 friends and kinsmen hail his advantage, while others 
 already passing him, force him to redouble his efforts. 
 Some weaker ones succumb midway, exhausted. . . . 
 They withdraw, and the kindly Venetian populace will 
 not aggravate their shame with jeers; the spectators 
 glance at them compassionately, and turn again to 
 those still in the lists. Here and there they encourage 
 them by waving handkerchiefs, and the women toss 
 their shawls in the air. Each patrician following close 
 upon his gondolier’s boat, incites him with his voice, 
 salutes him by name, and flatters his pride and spirit. 
 . . . The water foams under the repeated strokes of 
 the oars; it leaps up in spray and falls in showers on 
 the backs of the rowers already dripping with their 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 239 
 
 own sweat. ... At last behold the dauntless mortal 
 who seizes the red banner! His rival had almost 
 clutched it, but one mighty stroke of the oar gave him 
 the victory. . . . The air reverberates with a clapping 
 of hands so loud that at the remotest point on the 
 canal the moment of triumph is known. The victors 
 plant on their agile boat the conquered flag, and in¬ 
 stead of thinking to rest their weary arms, take up the 
 oars again and retrace their course to receive congra¬ 
 tulations and applause.” 
 
 The regattas were by no means of frequent occur¬ 
 rence, for only forty-one took place during some five 
 centuries. The first was given in 1315, and the last 
 in 1857, in honor of the luckless Archduke Maximi¬ 
 lian’s marriage with Princess Charlotte of Belgium. 
 The most sumptuous and magnificent regatta of all 
 was that given to the city in the year 1686, by Duke 
 Ernest of Brunswick. This excellent prince having 
 sold a great part of his subjects to the Republic for 
 use in its wars against the Turk, generously spent their 
 price in the costly and edifying entertainments of 
 which Venice had already become the scene. The 
 Judgment of Paris, and the Triumph of the Marine 
 Goddesses had been represented at his expense on 
 the Grand Canal, with great acceptance, and now the 
 Triumph of Neptune formed a principal feature in the 
 gayeties of his regatta. Nearly the whole of the salt¬ 
 water mythology was employed in the ceremony. An 
 immense wooden whale supporting a structure of dol¬ 
 phins and Tritons, surmounted by a statue of Neptune, 
 and drawn by sea-horses, moved from the Piazzetta to 
 the Palazzo Foscari, where numbers of Sirens sported 
 about in every direction till the. regatta began. The 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 2 46 
 
 whole company of the deities, very splendidly arrayed, 
 then joined them as spectators, and behaved in the 
 manner affected by gods and goddesses on these occa¬ 
 sions. Mutinelli* recounts the story with many sighs 
 and sneers and great exactness; but it is not in¬ 
 teresting. 
 
 The miraculous recovery of the body of St. Mark, 
 in 1094, after it had been lost for nearly two centuries, 
 created a festive anniversary which was celebrated for 
 a while with great religious pomp; but the rejoicings 
 were not separately continued in after years. The 
 festival was consolidated (if one may so speak) with 
 two others in honor of the same saint, and the triple 
 occasions were commemorated by a single holiday. 
 The holidays annually distinguished by civil or eccle¬ 
 siastical displays were twenty-five in number, of which 
 only eleven were of religious origin, though all were of 
 partly religious observance. One of the most curious 
 and interesting of the former was of the earliest date, 
 and was continued till the last years of the Republic. 
 In 596 Narses, the general of the Greek Emperor, was 
 furnished by the Venetians with means of transport by 
 sea from Aquileja to Ravenna for the army which he 
 was leading against the Ostrogoths; and he made a 
 vow that if successful in his campaign, he would re¬ 
 quite their generosity by erecting two churches in Ve¬ 
 nice. Accordingly, when he had beaten the Ostrogoths, 
 he caused two votive churches to be built,—one to 
 St. Theodore, on the site of the present St. Mark’s 
 Church, and another to San Geminiano, on the oppo¬ 
 site bank of the canal which then flowed there. In 
 
 * Annali Urbani. 
 
Venetian Holidays. 
 
 Ht 
 
 lapse of time the citizens, desiring to enlarge their 
 Piazza, removed the church of San Geminiano back as 
 far as the present Fabbrica Nuova, which Napoleon 
 built on the site of the demolished temple, between 
 the western ends of the New and Old Procuratie. The 
 removal was effected without the pope’s leave, which 
 had been asked, but was refused in these words,— 
 “The Holy Father cannot sanction the commission of 
 a sacrilege, though he can pardon it afterwards.” The 
 pontiff, therefore, imposed on the Venetians for penance 
 that the Doge should pay an annual visit forever to 
 the church. On the occasion of this visit the parish 
 priest met him at the door, and offered the holy water 
 to him; and then the Doge, having assisted at mass, 
 marched with his Signory and the clergy of the church 
 to its original site, where the clergy demanded that it 
 should be rebuilt, and the Doge replied with the pro¬ 
 mise,—“Next year.” A red stone was set in the pave¬ 
 ment to mark the spot where the Doge renewed this 
 never-fulfilled promise.* The old church was destroyed 
 by fire, and Sansovino built, in 1506, the temple 
 thrown down by Napoleon to make room for his 
 palace. 
 
 The 31st of January, on which day in 828 the 
 body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria to 
 
 * As the author of the Feste Veneziane tells this story it is less 
 dramatic and characteristic. The clergy, she says, reminded the 
 Doge of the occasion of his visit, and his obligation to renew it the 
 following year, which he promised to do. I cling to the version in 
 the text, for it seems to me that the Doge’s perpetual promise to 
 rebuild the church was a return in kind for the pope’s astute answer 
 to the petition asking him to allow its removal. So good a thing 
 ought to be history. 
 
 Venetian Life. 
 
 6 
 
242 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Venice, is still observed, though the festival has lost 
 all the splendor which it received from civil interven¬ 
 tion. For a thousand years the day was hallowed by 
 a solemn mass in St. Mark’s, at which the Doge and 
 his Signory assisted. 
 
 The chief of the State annually paid a number of 
 festive visits, which were made the occasion of as 
 many holidays. To the convent of San Zaccaria he 
 went in commemoration of the visit paid to that re¬ 
 treat by Pope Benedict III., in 855, when the pontiff 
 was so charmed by the piety and goodness of the fair 
 nuns, that, after his return to Rome, he sent them 
 great store of relics and indulgences. It thus became 
 one of the most popular of the holidays, and the people 
 repaired in great multitude with their Doge to the 
 convent, on each recurrence of the day, that they might 
 see the relics and buy the indulgences. The nuns 
 were of the richest and noblest families of the city, 
 and on the Doge’s first visit, they presented him with 
 that bonnet which became the symbol of his sovereignty. 
 It was wrought of pure gold, and set with precious 
 stones of marvelous great beauty and value; and in 
 order that the State might never seem forgetful of the 
 munificence which bestowed the gift, the bonnet was 
 annually taken from the treasury and shown by the 
 Doge himself to the Sisters of San Zaccaria. The 
 Doge Pietro Tradonico, to whom the bonnet was given, 
 was killed in a popular tumult on this holiday, while 
 going to the convent. 
 
 There was likewise a vast concourse of people and 
 traffic in indulgences at the church of Santa Maria 
 della Carita (now the Academy of Fine Arts), on the 
 anniversarv of the day when Pope Alexander III., in 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 243 
 
 1177, flying from the Emperor Barbarossa, found re¬ 
 fuge in that monastery.* He bestowed great privileges 
 upon it, and the Venetians honored the event to the 
 end of their national existence. 
 
 One of the rare occasions during the year when 
 the Doge appeared officially in public after nightfall, 
 was on St. Stephen’s Day. He then repaired at dusk 
 in his gilded barge, with splendid attendance of nobles 
 and citizens, to the island church of San Giorgio 
 Maggiore, whither, in 1009, the body of St. Stephen 
 was brought from Constantinople. On the first of May 
 the Doge visited the Convent of the Virgins, (the con¬ 
 vent building now forms part of the Arsenal,) where 
 the abbess presented him with a bouquet, and grace¬ 
 ful and pleasing ceremonies took place in commemora¬ 
 tion of the erection and endowment of the church. 
 The head of the State also annually assisted at mass 
 in St. Mark’s, to celebrate the arrival in Venice of 
 St. Isidore’s body, which the Doge Domenico Michiel 
 brought with him from the East, at the end of twenty- 
 six years’ war against the infidels; and, finally, after 
 the year 1485, when the Venetians stole the bones of 
 San Rocco from the Milanese, and deposited them in 
 the newly finished Scuola di San Rocco, a ducal visit 
 was annually paid to that edifice. 
 
 Two only of the national religious festivals yet sur¬ 
 vive the Republic,—that of the church of the Reden- 
 tore on the Giudecca, and that of the church of the 
 Salute on the Grand Canal,—both votive churches, 
 
 * Selvatico and Lazari in their admirable Guida Artistica e 
 Storica di Venezia , say that the pope merely lodged in the monastery 
 on the day when he signed the treaty of peace with Barbarossa 
 
 l6* 
 
H4 
 
 VENETIAN LlEE. 
 
 built in commemoration of the city’s deliverances from 
 the pest in 1578 and 1630. In their general features 
 the celebrations of the two holidays are much alike; 
 but that of the Salute is the less important of the two, 
 and is more entirely religious in its character. A bridge 
 of boats is annually thrown across the Canalazzo, and 
 on the day of the Purification, the people throng to 
 the Virgin’s shrine to express their gratitude for her 
 favor. This gratitude was so strong immediately after 
 the cessation of the pest in 1630, that the Senate, 
 while the architects were preparing their designs for 
 the present church, caused a wooden one to be built 
 on its site, and consecrated with ceremonies of singular 
 splendor. On the Festa del Redentore (the third Sun¬ 
 day of July) a bridge of boats crosses the great canal 
 of the Giudecca, and vast throngs constantly pass it, 
 day and night. But though the small tradesmen who 
 deal in fried cakes, and in apples, peaches, pears, 
 and other fruits, make intolerable uproar behind their 
 booths on the long quay before the church; though 
 the venders of mulberries (for which the gardens of 
 the Giudecca are famous) fill the air with their sweet 
 jargoning (for their cries are like the shrill notes of 
 so many singing-birds); though thousands of people 
 pace up and down, and come and go upon the bridge, 
 yet the Festa del Redentore has now none of the old- 
 time gayety it wore when the Venetians thronged the 
 gardens, and feasted, sang, danced, and flirted the 
 night away, and at dawn went in their fleets of many- 
 lanterned boats, covering the lagoon with fairy light, 
 to behold the sunrise on the Adriatic Sea. 
 
 Besides the religious festivals mentioned, there 
 were five banquets annually given by the State on the 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 245 
 
 several days of St. Mark, St. Vitus, St. Jerome, and 
 St. Stephen, and the Day of the Ascension, all of which 
 were attended with religious observances. Good Fri¬ 
 day was especially hallowed by church processions in 
 each of the campos; and St. Martha’s Day was occasion 
 for junketings on the Giudecca Canal, when a favorite 
 fish, being in season, was devotionally eaten. 
 
 The civil and political holidays which lasted till 
 the fall of the Republic were eleven. One of the 
 earliest was the anniversary of the recapture of the 
 Venetian Brides, who were snatched from their bride¬ 
 grooms, at the altar of San Pietro di Castello, by 
 Triestine pirates. The class of citizens most dis¬ 
 tinguished in the punishment of the abductors was the 
 trade of carpenters, who lived chiefly in the parish 
 of Santa Maria Formosa; and when the Doge in his 
 gratitude bade them demand any reasonable grace, 
 the trade asked that he should pay their quarter an 
 annual visit. “But if it rains?” said the Doge. “We 
 will give you a hat to cover you,” answered the car¬ 
 penters. “And if I am hungry?” “We will give you 
 to eat and drink.” So when the Doge made his visit 
 on the day of the Virgin’s Purification, he was given 
 a hat of gilded straw, a bottle of wine, and loaves of 
 bread. On this occasion the State bestowed dowers 
 upon twelve young girls among the fairest and best of 
 Venice (chosen two from each of the six sections of 
 the city), who marched in procession to the church of 
 Santa Maria Formosa. But as time passed, the custom 
 lost its simplicity and purity: pretty girls were said to 
 make eyes at handsome youths in the crowd, and scan¬ 
 dals occurred in public. Twelve wooden figures were 
 then substituted, but the procession in which they 
 
246 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 were carried was followed by a disgusted and hooting 
 populace, and assailed with a shower of turnips. The 
 festivities, which used to last eight days, with incredible 
 magnificence, fell into discredit, and were finally abol¬ 
 ished during the war when the Genoese took Chioggia 
 and threatened Venice, under Doria. This was the 
 famous Festa delle Marie. 
 
 In 997 the Venetians beat the Narentines at sea, 
 and annexed all Istria, as far as Dalmatia, to the Re¬ 
 public. On the day of the Ascension, of the same 
 year, the Doge, for the first time, celebrated the do¬ 
 minion of Venice over the Adriatic, though it was not 
 till some two hundred years later that the Pope Alex¬ 
 ander III. blessed the famous espousals, and confirmed 
 the Republic in the possession of the sea forever. 
 “What,” cries Giustina Renier-Michiel, turning to speak 
 of the holiday thus established, and destined to be the 
 proudest in the Venetian calendar,—“what shall I say 
 of the greatest of all our solemnities, that of the Ascen¬ 
 sion? Alas! I myself saw Frenchmen and Venetians, 
 full of derision and insult, combine to dismantle the 
 Bucintoro and burn it for the gold upon it!”* . . . 
 (This was the nuptial-ship in which the Doge went to 
 
 * That which follows is a translation of the report given by 
 Cesare Cantu, in his Grande Illustrazione del Lombardo-Veneto , of 
 a conversation with the author of Feste Veneziane. It is not neces¬ 
 sary to remind readers of Venetian history that Renier and Michiel 
 were of the foremost names in the Golden Book. She who bore 
 them both was born before the fall of the Republic which she so 
 much loved and lamented, and no doubt felt more than the grief 
 she expresses for the fate of the last Bucintoro. It was destroyed, 
 as she describes, in 1796, by the French Republicans and Venetian 
 Democrats after the abdication of the oligarchy; but a fragment of 
 its mast yet remains, and is to be seen in the museum of the Arsenal. 
 

 >X%L-V> Ifc 
 
 ^v!i 
 
 i-^r .vpjjijp 
 
 
 fc»?* ’Wvl 
 
 
 
 
 pfc^XS 
 
 ^ii 
 
 
 \3fi®p«\ 13 
 
 l§52^. \ \« 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 247 
 
 wed the sea, and the patriotic lady tells us concerning 
 the Bucintoro of her day): “It was in the form of a 
 galley, and two hundred feet long, with two decks. 
 The first of these was occupied by an hundred and 
 sixty rowers, the handsomest and strongest of the fleet, 
 who sat four men to each oar, and there awaited their 
 orders; forty other sailors completed the crew. The 
 upper deck was divided lengthwise by a partition, 
 pierced with arched doorways, ornamented with gilded 
 figures, and covered with a roof supported by carya¬ 
 tides—the whole surmounted by a canopy of crimson 
 velvet embroidered with gold. Under this were ninety 
 seats, and at the stern a still richer chamber for the 
 Doge’s throne, over which drooped the banner of St. 
 Mark. The prow was double-beaked, and the sides 
 of the vessel were enriched with figures of Justice, 
 Peace, Sea, Land, and other allegories and ornaments. 
 
 “Let me imagine those times—it is the habit of 
 the old. At midday, having heard mass in the chapel 
 of the Collegio, the Doge descends the Giant’s Stairs, 
 issues from the Porta della Carta,* and passes the 
 booths of the mercers and glass-venders erected for 
 the fair beginning that evening. He is preceded by 
 eight standard-bearers with the flags of the Republic, 
 —red, blue, white, and purple,—given by Alexander III. 
 to the Doge Ziani. Six trumpets of silver, borne by 
 as many boys, mix their notes with the clangor of the 
 bells of the city. Behind come the retinues of the 
 ambassadors in sumptuous liveries, and the fifty Co- 
 mandadori in their flowing blue robes and red caps; 
 
 * The gate of the Ducal Palace which opens upon the Piazzetta 
 next St. Mark’s. 
 
248 VENETIAN LIFE, 
 
 then follow musicians, and the squires of the Doge in 
 black velvet; then the guards of the Doge, two chan¬ 
 cellors, the secretary of the Pregadi, a deacon clad in 
 purple and bearing a wax taper, six canons, three 
 parish priests in their sacerdotal robes, and the Doge’s 
 chaplain dressed in crimson. The grand chancellor is 
 known by his crimson vesture. Two squires bear the 
 Doge’s chair and the cushion of cloth of gold. And 
 the Doge—the representative, and not the master of 
 his country; the executor, and not the maker of the 
 laws; citizen and prince, revered and guarded, 
 sovereign of individuals, servant of the State—comes 
 clad in a long mantle of ermine, cassock of blue, and 
 vest and hose of tocca (Toro ,* with the golden bonnet 
 on his head, under the umbrella borne by a squire, 
 and surrounded by the foreign ambassadors and the 
 papal nuncio, while his drawn sword is -carried by a 
 patrician recently destined for some government of 
 land or sea, and soon to depart upon his mission. In 
 the rear comes a throng of personages,—the grand 
 captain of the city, the judges, the three chiefs of the 
 Forty, the Avogodori, the three chiefs of the Council 
 of Ten, the three censors, and the sixty of the Senate 
 with the sixty of the Aggiunta, all in robes of crimson 
 silk. 
 
 “On the Bucintoro, each takes the post assigned 
 him, and the prince ascends the throne. The Admiral 
 of the Arsenal and the Lido stands in front as pilot; 
 at the helm is the Admiral of Malamacco, and around 
 him the ship-carpenters of the Arsenal. The Bucintoro, 
 amid redoubled clamor of bells and roar of cannon, 
 
 A gauze of gold and silk, 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 249 
 
 quits the riva and majestically plows the lagoon, sur¬ 
 rounded by innumerable boats of every form and size. 
 
 “The Patriarch, who had already sent several vases 
 of flowers to do courtesy to the company in the Bucin- 
 toro, joins them at the island of Sant’ Elena, and 
 sprinkles their course with holy water. So they reach 
 the port of Lido, whence they formerly issued out 
 upon the open sea; but in my time they paused there, 
 turning the stern of the vessel to the sea. Then the 
 Doge, amid the thunders of the artillery of the fort, 
 took the ring blessed by the Patriarch,—who now 
 emptied a cup of holy water into the sea,—and, ad¬ 
 vancing into a little gallery behind his throne, threw 
 the ring into the waves, pronouncing the words, De- 
 sponsamus te, mare , in signum veri perpetuique dominii . 
 Proceeding then to the church of San Nicoletto, they 
 listened to a solemn mass, and returned to Venice, 
 where the dignitaries were entertained at a banquet, 
 while the multitude peacefully dispersed among the 
 labyrinths of the booths erected for the fair.”* 
 
 * One of the sops thrown to the populace on this occasion, as 
 we learn from Mutinelli, was the admission to the train of gilded 
 barges following the Bucintoro of a boat bearing the chief of the 
 Nicolotti, one of the factions into which from time immemorial the 
 lower classes of Venice had been divided. The distinction between 
 the two parties seems to have been purely geographical; for there is 
 no apparent reason why a man should have belonged to the Castel- 
 lani except that he lived in the eastern quarter of the city, or to the 
 Nicolotti, except that he lived in the western quarter. The govern¬ 
 ment encouraged a rivalry not dangerous to itself, and for a long 
 time the champions of the two sections met annually and beat each 
 other with rods. The form of contest was afterwards modified, and 
 became a struggle for the possession of certain bridges, in which 
 the defeated were merely thrown into the canals. I often passed 
 the scene of the fiercest of these curious battles at San Barnaba, 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 550 
 
 This fair, which was established as early as 1180, 
 was an industrial exhibition of the arts and trades 
 peculiar to Venice, and was repeated annually, with 
 increasing ostentation, till the end, in 1796. Indeed, 
 the feasts of the Republic at last grew so numerous 
 that it became necessary, as we have seen before, to 
 make a single holiday pay a double or triple debt of 
 rejoicing. When the Venetians recovered Chioggia 
 after the terrible war of 1380, the Senate refused to 
 yield them another festa, and merely ordered that St. 
 Mark’s Day should be thereafter observed with some 
 added ceremony: there was already one festival com¬ 
 memorative of a triumph over the Genoese (that of 
 San Giovanni Decollate, on whose day, in 1358, the 
 Venetians beat the Genoese at Negroponte), and the 
 Senate declared that this was sufficient. A curious 
 custom, however, on the Sunday after Ascension, cele¬ 
 brated a remoter victory over the same enemies, to 
 which it is hard to attach any historic probability. It 
 is not known exactly when the Genoese in immense 
 force penetrated to Poveglia (one of the small islands 
 of the lagoons), nor why being there they stopped to 
 ask the islanders the best way of getting to Venice. 
 But tradition says that the sly Povegliesi persuaded 
 these silly Genoese that the best method of navigating 
 the lagoons was by means of rafts, which they con¬ 
 structed for them, and on which they sent them afloat. 
 About the time the Venetians came out to meet the 
 armada, the withes binding the members of the rafts 
 
 where the Ponte de Pugni is adorned with four feet of stone let into 
 the pavement, and defying each other from the four comers of the 
 bridge. Finally, even these contests were given up, and the Cas- 
 tellani and Nicolotti spent their rivalry in marvelous acrobatic feats. 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 251 
 
 gave way, and the Genoese who were not drowned in 
 the tides stuck in the mud, and were cut in pieces 
 like so many melons. No one will be surprised to 
 learn that not a soul of them escaped, and that only 
 the Povegliesi lived to tell the tale. Special and con¬ 
 siderable privileges were conferred on them for their 
 part in this exploit, and were annually confirmed by 
 the Doge, when a deputation of the islanders called 
 on him in his palace, and hugged and kissed the de¬ 
 voted prince. 
 
 People who will sentimentalize over the pigeons of 
 St. Mark’s, may like to know that they have been 
 settled in the city ever since 877. After the religious 
 services on Palm Sunday, it was anciently the custom 
 of the sacristans of St. Mark’s to release doves fettered 
 with fragments of paper, and thus partly disabled from 
 flight, for the people to scramble for in the Piazza. 
 The people fatted such of the birds as they caught, 
 and ate them at Easter, but those pigeons which 
 escaped took refuge in the roof of the church, where 
 they gradually assumed a certain sacredness of cha¬ 
 racter, and increased to enormous numbers. They 
 were fed by provision of the Republic, and being 
 neglected at the time of its fall, many of them were 
 starved. But they now flourish on a bequest left by 
 a pious lady for their maintenance, and on the largess 
 of grain and polenta constantly bestowed by strangers. 
 
 Besides the holidays mentioned, the 6th of De¬ 
 cember was religiously observed in honor of the taking 
 of Constantinople, the Doge assisting at mass in the 
 ducal chapel of St. Nicholas. He also annually visited, 
 with his Signory in the state barges, and with great 
 concourse of people, the church of San Vito on the 
 
252 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 15th of June, in memory of the change of the govern¬ 
 ment from a democracy to an oligarchy, and of the 
 suppression of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s conspiracy. On 
 St. Isidore’s Day he went with his Signory, and the 
 religious confraternities, in torch-light procession, to 
 hear mass at St. Mark’s in celebration of the failure of 
 Marin Falier’s plot. On the 17th of January he visited 
 by water the hospital erected for invalid soldiers and 
 sailors, and thus commemorated the famous defence 
 of Scutari against the Turks, in 1413. For the peace 
 of 1516, concluded after the dissolution of the League 
 of Cambray, he went in his barge to the church of 
 Santa Marina, who had potently exerted her influence 
 for the preservation of the Republic against allied 
 France, Austria, Spain, and Rome. On St. Jerome’s 
 Day, when the newly-elected members of the Council 
 of Ten took their seats, the Doge entertained them 
 with a banquet, and there were great popular rejoic¬ 
 ings over an affair in which the people had no interest. 
 
 It is by a singular caprice of fortune that, while 
 not only all the Venetian holidays in anywise con¬ 
 nected with the glory of the Republic, but also those 
 which peculiarly signalized her piety and gratitude, 
 have ceased to be, a festival common to the whole 
 Catholic world should still be observed in Venice 
 with extraordinary display. On the day of Corpus 
 Christ! there is a superb ecclesiastical procession in 
 the Piazza. 
 
 The great splendor of the solemnization is said to 
 date from the times when Enrico Dandolo and his 
 fellow-Crusaders so far forgot their purpose of taking 
 Palestine from the infidels as to take Constantinople 
 from the schismatics. Up to that period the day of 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 253 
 
 Corpus Christi was honored by a procession from what 
 was then the Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello; but 
 now all the thirty parishes of the city, with their hun¬ 
 dred churches, have part in the procession, which is 
 of such great length as to take some two hours in its 
 progress round the Piazza. 
 
 Several days before the holiday workmen begin to 
 build, within the Place of St. Mark, the colonnade 
 through which the procession is to pass; they roof it 
 with blue cotton cloth, and adorn it with rolls of paste¬ 
 board representing garlands of palm. At last, on the 
 festive morning, the dwellers on the Grand Canal are 
 drawn to their balconies by the apparition of boat¬ 
 loads of facchini, gorgeous in scarlet robes, and bear¬ 
 ing banners, painted candles, and other movable ele¬ 
 ments of devotion, with which they pass to the Piazzetta, 
 and thence into St. Mark’s. They re-appear presently, 
 and, with a guard of Austrian troops to clear the way 
 before them, begin their march under the canopy of 
 the colonnade. 
 
 When you have seen the Place of St. Mark by 
 night your eye has tasted its most delicate delight. 
 But then it is the delight given by a memory only, 
 and it touches you with sadness. You must see 
 the Piazza to-day,—every window fluttering with 
 rich stuffs and vivid colors; the three great flag- 
 staffs* hanging their heavy flags; the brilliant square 
 alive with a holiday population, with resplendent uni¬ 
 forms, with Italian gesture and movement, and that 
 long glittering procession, bearing slowly on the august 
 paraphernalia of the Church—you must see all this 
 
 Once bearing the standards of Cyprus, Candia, and Venice. 
 
254 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 before you can enter into the old heart of Venetian 
 magnificence, and feel its life about you. 
 
 To-day, the ancient church of San Pietro di Cas- 
 tello comes first in the procession, and, with a proud 
 humility, the Basilica San Marco last. Before each 
 parochial division goes a banner displaying the picture 
 or distinctive device of its titular saint, under the 
 shadow of which chants a priest; there are the hosts 
 of the different churches, and the gorgeous canopies 
 under which they are elevated; then come facchini 
 dressed in scarlet and bearing the painted candles, or 
 the long carved and gilded candlesticks; and again 
 facchini delicately robed in vestments of the purest 
 white linen, with caps of azure, green, and purple, and 
 shod with sandals or white shoes, carrying other ap¬ 
 paratus of worship. Each banner and candlestick has 
 a fluttering leaf of tinsel paper attached to it, and the 
 procession makes a soft rustling as it passes. The 
 matter-of-fact character of the external Church walks 
 between those symbolists, the candle-bearers,—in the 
 form of persons who gather the dropping fatness of 
 the candles, and deposit it in a vase carried for that 
 purpose. Citizens march in the procession with candles; 
 and there are charity-schools which also take part, 
 and sing in the harsh, shrill manner, of which I think 
 only little boys who have their heads closely shorn are 
 capable. 
 
 On all this we looked down from a window of the 
 Old Procuratie—of course with that calm sense of 
 superiority which people are apt to have in regarding 
 the solemnities of a religion different from their own. 
 But that did not altogether prevent us from enjoying 
 what was really beautiful and charming in the scene. 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 255 
 
 I thought most of the priests, very good and gentle 
 looking,—and in all respects they were much pleasanter 
 to the eye than the monks of the Carmelite order, who, 
 in shaving their heads to simulate the Saviour’s crown 
 of thorns, produce a hideous burlesque of the divine 
 humiliation. Yet many even of these had earnest and 
 sincere faces, and I could not think so much as I 
 ought, perhaps, of their idle life, and the fleas in their 
 coarse brown cloaks. I confess, indeed, I felt rather a 
 sadness than an indignation at all that self-sacrifice to 
 an end of which I could but dimly see the usefulness. 
 With some things in this grand spectacle we were 
 wholly charmed, and doubtless had most delight in 
 the little child who personated John the Baptist, and 
 who was quite naked, but for a fleece folded about 
 him: he bore the cross-headed staff in one small hand, 
 and led with the other a lamb much tied up with blue 
 ribbon. Here and there in the procession little girls, 
 exquisitely dressed, and gifted by fond mothers with 
 wings and aureoles, walked, scattering flowers. I like¬ 
 wise greatly relished the lively holiday air of a com¬ 
 pany of airy old men, the pensioners of some charity, 
 who, in their white linen trousers and blue coats, 
 formed a prominent feature of the display. Far from 
 being puffed up with their consequence, they gossiped 
 cheerfully with the spectators in the pauses of the 
 march, and made jests to each other in that light¬ 
 hearted, careless way observable in old men taken 
 care of, and with nothing before them to do worth 
 speaking of but to die. I must own that the honest 
 facchini who bore the candles were equally affable, 
 and even freer with their jokes. But in this they 
 formed a fine contrast to here and there a closely 
 
256 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 hooded devotee, who, with hidden face and silent lips, 
 was carrying a taper for religion, and not, like them, 
 for money. I liked the great good-natured crow T d, so 
 orderly and amiable; and I enjoyed even that old 
 citizen in the procession who, when the Patriarch gave 
 his blessing, found it inconvenient to kneel, and com¬ 
 promised by stretching one leg a great way out behind 
 him. These things, indeed, quite took my mind off of 
 the splendors; and I let the canopy of the Scuola di 
 San Rocco (worth 40,000 ducats) go by with scarce a 
 glance, and did not bestow much more attention upon 
 the brilliant liveries of the Patriarch’s servants,—though 
 the appearance of these ecclesiastical flunkies is far 
 more impressive than that of any of their secular 
 brethren. They went gorgeously before the Patriarch, 
 who was surrounded by the richly dressed clergy of 
 St. Mark’s, and by clouds of incense rising from the 
 smoking censers. Pie walked under the canopy in 
 his cardinal’s robes, and with his eye fixed upon the 
 Host. 
 
 All at once the procession halted, and the Pa¬ 
 triarch blessed the crowd, which knelt in a profound 
 silence. Then the military band before him struck 
 up an air from “Un Ballo in Maschera;” the proces¬ 
 sion moved on to the cathedral, and the crowd melted 
 away. 
 
 The once - magnificent day of the Ascension the 
 Venetians now honor by closing all shop-doors behind 
 them and putting all thought of labor out of their 
 minds, and going forth to enjoy themselves in the 
 mild, inexplosive fashion which seems to satisfy Italian 
 nature. It is the same on all the feast-days: then the 
 city sinks into profounder quiet; only bells are noisy, 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 257 
 
 and where their clangor is so common as in Venice, 
 seems at last to make friends with the general stillness, 
 and disturbs none but people of untranquil minds. We 
 always go to the Piazza San Marco when we seek 
 pleasure, and now, for eight days only of all the year, 
 we have there the great spectacle of the Adoration of 
 the Magi, performed every hour by automata wdthin 
 the little golden-railed gallery on the facade of the 
 Giant’s Clock Tower. There the Virgin sits above the 
 azure circle of the zodiac, all heavily gilded, and hold¬ 
 ing the Child, equally splendid. Through the doors 
 on either side, usually occupied by the illuminated 
 figures of the hours, appears the procession, and dis¬ 
 appears. The stately giant on the summit of the 
 tower, at the hither side of the great bell, solemnly 
 strikes the hour—as a giant should who has struck it 
 for centuries—with a grand, whole-arm movement, and 
 a slow, muscular pride. We look up—we tourists of 
 the red-backed books; we peasant-girls radiant with 
 converging darts of silver piercing the masses of our 
 thick black hair; we Austrian soldiers in white coats 
 and blue tights; we voiceful sellers of the cherries of 
 Padua, and we calm loafers about the many-pillared 
 base of the church—we look up and see the Adoration. 
 First, the trumpeter, blowing the world news of the 
 act; then the first king, turning softly to the Virgin, 
 and bowing; then the second, that enthusiastic devotee, 
 —the second who lifts his crown quite from his head; 
 last the Ethiopian prince, gorgeous in green and gold, 
 who, I am sorry to say, burlesques the whole solemnity. 
 His devotion may be equally heart-felt, but it is more 
 jerky than that of the others. He bows well and ad¬ 
 equately, but recovers his balance with a prodigious 
 
 Venetian Life, 17 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 258 
 
 start, altogether too suggestive of springs and wheels. 
 Perhaps there is a touch of the pathetic in this gro¬ 
 tesque fatality of the black king, whose suffering race has 
 always held mankind between laughter and tears, and 
 has seldom done a fine thing without leaving some¬ 
 where the neutralizing absurdity; but if there is, the 
 sentimental may find it, not I. When the procession 
 has disappeared, we wait till the other giant has struck 
 the hour, and then we disperse. 
 
 If it is six o’clock, and the sea has begun to breathe 
 cool across the Basin of St. Mark, we find our account 
 in strolling upon the long Riva degli Schiavoni towards 
 the Public Gardens. One would suppose, at first thought, 
 that here, on this magnificent quay, with its glorious 
 lookout over the lagoons, the patricians would have 
 built their finest palaces; whereas there is hardly any 
 thing but architectural shabbiness from the Ponte della 
 Paglia at one end, to the Ponte Santa Marina at the 
 other. But there need be nothing surprising in the 
 fact, after all. The feudal wealth and nobility of other 
 cities kept the base at a respectful distance by means 
 of lofty stone walls, and so shut in their palaces and 
 gardens. Here equal seclusion could only be achieved 
 by building flush upon the water, and therefore all the 
 finest palaces rise sheer from the canals; and caffe, 
 shops, barracks, and puppet-shows occupy the Riva 
 degli Schiavoni. Nevertheless, it is the favorite pro¬ 
 menade of the Venetians for the winter sunshine, and 
 at such times in the summer as when the sun’s rage is 
 tempered. There is always variety in the throng on 
 the Riva, but the fashionable part of it is the least 
 interesting: here and there a magnificent Greek flashes 
 through the crowd, in dazzling white petticoats and 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 259 
 
 gold-embroidered leggings and jacket; now and then a 
 tall Dalmat or a solemn Turk; even the fishermen and 
 the peasants, and the lower orders of the people, are 
 picturesque; but polite Venice is hopelessly given to 
 the pride of the eyes, and commits all the excesses of 
 the French modes. The Venetian dandy, when dressed 
 to his own satisfaction, is the worst-dressed man in the 
 world. His hat curls outrageously in brim and sides; 
 his coat-sleeves are extremely full, and the garment 
 pinches him at the waist; his pantaloons flow forth 
 from the hips, and contract narrowly at the boot, which 
 is square-toed and made too long. The whole effect 
 is something not to be seen elsewhere, and is well cal¬ 
 culated to move the beholder to desperation.* The 
 Venetian fine lady, also, is prone to be superfine. Her 
 dress is as full of color as a Paolo Veronese; in these 
 narrow streets, where it is hard to expand an umbrella, 
 she exaggerates hoops to the utmost; and she fatally 
 hides her ankles in pantalets. 
 
 In the wide thoroughfare leading from the last 
 bridge of the Riva to the gate of the gardens there 
 is always a clapping of wooden shoes on the stones, a 
 braying of hand-organs, a shrieking of people who sell 
 fish and fruit, at once insufferable and indescribable. 
 The street is a rio terra ,—a filled-up canal,—and, as 
 always happens with rii terrain is abandoned to the 
 poorest classes who manifest themselves, as the poorest 
 classes are apt to do always, in groups of frowzy 
 women, small girls carrying large babies, beggars, of 
 course, and soldiers. I spoke of fruit-sellers; but in 
 
 * These exaggerations of the fashions of 1862 have been suc¬ 
 ceeded by equal travesties of the present inodes. 
 
 17 
 
26o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 this quarter the traffic in pumpkin-seeds is the most 
 popular,—the people finding these an inexpensive and 
 pleasant excess, when taken with a glass of water 
 flavored with anise. 
 
 The Gardens were made by Napoleon, who de¬ 
 molished to that end some monasteries once cumber¬ 
 ing the ground. They are pleasant enough, and are 
 not gardens at all, but a park of formally-planted trees 
 —sycamores, chiefly. I do not remember to have seen 
 here any Venetians of the better class, except on the 
 Mondays-of-the-Garden, in September. Usually the 
 promenaders are fishermen, Austrian corporals, loutish 
 youth of low degree, and women too old and too poor 
 to have any thing to do. Strangers go there, and the 
 German visitors even drink the exceptionable beer 
 which is sold in the wooden cottage on the little hil¬ 
 lock at the end of the Gardens. There is also a stable 
 —where are the only horses in Venice. They are let 
 at a florin an hour, and I do not know why the riders 
 are always persons of the Hebrew faith. In a word, 
 nothing can be drearier than the company in the Gar¬ 
 dens, and nothing lovelier than the view they com¬ 
 mand,—from the sunset on the dome of the church of 
 the Salute, all round the broad sweep of lagoon, to the 
 tower at the port of San Nicolo, where you catch a 
 glimpse of the Adriatic. 
 
 The company is commonly stupid, but one even¬ 
 ing, as we strolled idly through the walks, we came 
 upon an interesting group—forty or fifty sailors, soldiers, 
 youth of the people, gray-haired fishermen, and con- 
 tadini—sitting and lying on the grass, and listening 
 with rapt attention to an old man reclining against a 
 tree. I never saw a manner of sweeter or easier dignity 
 
VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 
 
 26 l 
 
 than the speaker’s. Nature is so lavish of her grace 
 to these people that grow near her heart—the sun! 
 Infinite study could not have taught one northern-born 
 the charm of oratory as this old man displayed it. I 
 listened, and heard that he was speaking Tuscan. Do 
 you guess with what he was enchanting his simple 
 auditors? Nothing less than “Orlando Furioso.” They 
 listened with the hungriest delight, and when Ariosto’s 
 interpreter raised his finger and said, “Disse l’impera- 
 tore,” or, “ Orlando disse, Carlomano mio,” they hardly 
 breathed. 
 
 On the Lunedl dei Giardini , already mentioned, all 
 orders of the people flock thither, and promenade, and 
 banquet on the grass. The trees get back the voices 
 of their dryads, and the children fill the aisles with 
 glancing movement and graceful sport. 
 
 Of course, the hand-organ seeks here its proper 
 element, the populace,—but here it brays to a pecu¬ 
 liarly beautiful purpose. For no sooner does it sound 
 than the young girls of the people wreathe themselves 
 into dances, and improvise the poetry of motion. Over 
 the grass they whirl, and up and down the broad 
 avenues, and no one of all the gentle and peaceable 
 crowd molests or makes them afraid. It is a scene to 
 make you believe in Miriam dancing with Donatello 
 there in that old garden at Rome, and reveals a simple 
 beauty in the nature of the Italian poor, which shall 
 one day, I hope, be counted in their favor when they 
 are called to answer for lying and swindling. 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 262 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 It often happens, even after the cold has announced 
 itself in Venice, that the hesitating winter lingers in 
 the Tyrol, and a mellow Indian-summer weather has 
 possession of the first weeks of December. There was 
 nothing in the December weather of 1863 to remind 
 us Northerners that Christmas was coming. The skies 
 were as blue as those of June, the sun was warm, and 
 the air was bland, with only now and then a trenchant 
 breath from the Alps, coming like a delicate sarcasm 
 from loveliness unwilling to be thought insipidly ami¬ 
 able. But if there was no warning in the weather, there 
 were other signs of Christmas-time not to be mistaken: 
 a certain foolish leaping of the heart in one’s own 
 breast, as if the dead raptures of childhood were 
 stirred in their graves by the return of the happy 
 season; and in Venice, in weary, forlorn Venice, there 
 was the half-unconscious tumult, the expectant bustle 
 which cities feel at the approach of holidays. The 
 little shops put on their gayest airs; there was a great 
 clapping and hammering on the stalls and booths which 
 were building in the campos; the street-cries were more 
 shrill and resonant than ever, and the air was shaken 
 with the continual clangor of the church bells. 
 
 All this note of preparation is rather bewildering 
 to strangers, and is apt to disorder the best-disciplined 
 intentions of seeing Christmas as the Venetians keep it. 
 The public observance of the holiday in the churches 
 and on the streets is evident and accessible to the 
 
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 263 
 
 most transient sojourner; but it is curious proof of the 
 difficulty of knowledge concerning the in-door life and 
 usages of the Italians, that I had already spent two 
 Christmases in Venice without learning any thing of 
 their home celebration of the day. Perhaps a degree 
 of like difficulty attends like inquiry everywhere, for 
 the happiness of Christmas contracts the family circle 
 more exclusively than ever around the home hearth, 
 or the domestic scaldino, as the case may be. But, at 
 any rate, I was quite ready to say that the observance 
 of Christmas in Venice was altogether public, when I 
 thought it a measure of far-sighted prudence to con¬ 
 sult my barber. 
 
 In all Latin countries the barber is a source of in¬ 
 formation, which, skilfully tapped, pours forth in a 
 stream of endless gossip and local intelligence. Every 
 man talks with his barber; and perhaps a lingering 
 dignity clings to this artist from his former profession 
 of surgeon: it is certain the barber here prattles on 
 with a freedom and importance perfectly admitted 
 and respected by the interlocutory count under his 
 razor. Those who care to know how things passed in 
 an Italian barber shop three hundred years ago, may 
 read it in Miss Evans’s “Romola;” those who are 
 willing to see Nello alive and carrying on his art in 
 Venice at this day, must go to be shaved at his shop 
 in the Frezzaria. Here there is a continual exchange 
 of gossip, and I have often listened with profit to the 
 sage and piquant remarks of the head barber and 
 chief ciarlone, on the different events of human life 
 brought to his notice. His shop is well known as a 
 centre of scandal, and I have heard a fair Venetian 
 declare that she had cut from her list all acquaintance 
 
264 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 who go there, as persons likely to become infected 
 with the worst habits of gossip. 
 
 To this Nello, however, I used to go only when in 
 the most brilliant humor for listening, and my au¬ 
 thority on Christmas observances is another and hum¬ 
 bler barber, but not less a babbler, than the first. By 
 birth, I believe, he is a Mantuan, and he prides him¬ 
 self on speaking Italian instead of Venetian. He has 
 a defective eye, which obliges him to tack before 
 bringing his razor to bear, but which is all the more 
 favorable to conversation. On the whole, he is flat¬ 
 tered to be asked about Christmas in Venice, and he 
 first tells me that it is one of the chief holidays of 
 the year:— 
 
 “It is then, Signore, that the Venetians have the 
 custom to make three sorts of peculiar presents: 
 Mustard, Fish, and Mandorlato. You must have seen 
 the mustard in the shop windows: it is a thick con¬ 
 serve of fruits, flavored with mustard; and the mandor¬ 
 lato is a candy made of honey, and filled with almonds. 
 Well, they buy fish, as many as they will, and a vase 
 of mustard, and a box of mandorlato, and make pre¬ 
 sents of them, one family to another, the day before 
 Christmas. It is not too much for a rich family to 
 present a hundred boxes of mandorlato and as many 
 pots of mustard. These are exchanged between friends 
 in the city, and Venetians also send them to acquaint^ 
 ance in the country, whence the gift is returned in 
 cakes and eggs at Easter. Christmas Eve people in¬ 
 vite each other to great dinners, and eat and drink, 
 and make merry; but there are only fish and vege¬ 
 tables, for it is a meagre day, and meats are forbidden. 
 This dinner lasts so long that, when it is over, it is 
 
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 265 
 
 almost time to go to midnight mass, which all must 
 attend, or else hear three masses on the morrow; and 
 no doubt it was some delinquent who made our say¬ 
 ing,—‘Long as a Christmas mass/ On Christmas Day 
 people dine at home, keeping the day with family 
 reunions. But the day after! Ah-heigh! That is the 
 first of Carnival, and all the theatres are opened, and 
 there is no end to the amusements—or was not, in the 
 old time. Now, they never begin. A week later comes 
 the day of the Lord’s Circumcision, and then the next 
 holiday is Easter. The Nativity, the Circumcision, 
 and the Resurrection—behold! these are the three 
 mysteries of the Christian faith. Of what religion are 
 the Americans, Signore?” 
 
 I think I was justified in answering that we were 
 Christians. My barber was politely surprised. “But 
 there are so many different religions,” he said, in 
 excuse. 
 
 On the afternoon before Christmas I walked through 
 the thronged Merceria to the Rialto Bridge, where the 
 tumultuous mart which opens at Piazza San Marco 
 culminates in a deafening uproar of bargains. At this 
 time the Merceria, or street of the shops, presents the 
 aspect of a fair, and is arranged with a tastefulness 
 and a cunning ability to make the most of every thing, 
 which are seldom applied to the abundance of our 
 fairs at home. The shops in Venice are all very small, 
 and the streets of lofty houses are so narrow and dark, 
 that whatever goods are not exposed in the shop- 
 windows are brought to the door to be clamored over 
 by purchasers; so that the Merceria is roused by un¬ 
 usual effort to produce a more pronounced effect of 
 traffic and noise than it always wears; but now the 
 
266 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 effort had been made and the effect produced. The 
 street was choked with the throngs, through which all 
 sorts of peddlers battled their way and cried their 
 wares. In Campo San Bartolomeo, into which the 
 Merceria expands, at the foot of Rialto Bridge, holi¬ 
 day traffic had built enormous barricades of stalls, and 
 entrenched itself behind booths, whence purchasers 
 were assailed with challenges to buy bargains. More 
 than half the campo was paved with crockery from 
 Rovigo and glass-ware from Murano; clothing of every 
 sort, and all kinds of small household wares, were 
 offered for sale; and among the other booths, in the 
 proportion of two to one, were stalls of the inevitable 
 Christmas mustard and mandorlato. 
 
 But I cared rather for the crowd than what the 
 crowd cared for. I had been long ago obliged to 
 throw aside my preconceived notions of the Italian 
 character, though they were not, I believe, more ab¬ 
 surd than the impressions of others who have never 
 studied Italian character in Italy. I hardly know what 
 of bacchantic joyousness I had not attributed to them 
 on their holidays: a people living in a mild climate 
 under such a lovely sky, with wine cheap and abun¬ 
 dant, might not unreasonably have been expected to 
 put on a show of the greatest jollity when enjoying 
 themselves. Venetian crowds are always perfectly 
 gentle and kindly, but they are also as a whole usually 
 serious; and this Christmas procession, moving up 
 and down the Merceria, and to and fro between the 
 markets of Rialto, was in the fullest sense a solemnity. 
 It is true that the scene was dramatic, but the drama 
 was not consciously comic. Whether these people 
 bought or sold, or talked together, or walked up and 
 
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 267 
 
 down in silence, they were all equally in earnest. The 
 crowd, in spite of its noisy bustle and passionate 
 uproar, did not seem to me a blithe or light-hearted 
 crowd. Its sole activity was that of traffic, for, far 
 more dearly than any Yankee, a Venetian loves a 
 bargain, and puts his whole heart into upholding and 
 beating down demands. 
 
 Across the Bridge began the vegetable and fruit 
 market, where whole Hollands of cabbage and Spains 
 of onions opened on the view, with every other suc¬ 
 culent and toothsome growth; and beyond this we 
 entered the glory of Rialto, the fish-market, which is 
 now more lavishly supplied than at any other season. 
 It was ^picturesque and full of gorgeous color; for the 
 fish of Venice seem all to catch the rainbow hues of 
 the lagoon. There is a certain, kind of red mullet, 
 called triglia , which is as rich and tender in its dyes 
 as if it had never swam in water less glorious than 
 that which crimsons under October sunsets. But a 
 fish-market, even at Rialto, with fishermen in scarlet 
 caps and triglie in sunset splendors, is only a fish- 
 market after all: it is wet and slimy under foot, and 
 the innumerable gigantic eels, writhing everywhere, set 
 the soul asquirm, and soon-sated curiosity slides will¬ 
 ingly away. 
 
 We had an appointment with a young Venetian 
 lady to attend midnight mass at the church of San 
 Mois£, and thither about half-past eleven we went to 
 welcome in Christmas. The church of San Mois£ is 
 in the highest style of the Renaissance art, which is, 
 I believe, the lowest style of any other. The richly 
 sculptured facade is divided into stories; the fluted 
 columns are stilted upon pedestals, and their lines 
 
268 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 are broken by the bands which encircle them like 
 broad barrel-hoops. At every possible point theatrical 
 saints and angels, only sustained from falling to the 
 ground by iron bars let into their backs, start from 
 the niches and cling to the sculpture. The outside 
 of the church is in every way detestable, and the in¬ 
 side is consistently bad. All the side-altars have broken 
 arches, and the high altar is built of rough blocks of 
 marble to represent Mount Sinai, on which a melo¬ 
 dramatic statue of Moses receives the tables of the 
 law from God the Father, with frescoed seraphim in 
 the background. For the same reason, I suppose, that 
 the devout prefer a hideous Bambino and a Madonna 
 in crinoline to the most graceful artistic conception of 
 those sacred personages, San Mois6 is the most popular 
 church for the midnight mass in Venice, and there is 
 no mass at all in St. Mark’s, where its magnificence 
 would be so peculiarly impressive. 
 
 On Christmas Eve, then, this church was crowded, 
 and the door-ways were constantly thronged with 
 people passing in and out. I was puzzled to see so 
 many young men present, for Young Italy is not 
 usually in great number at church; but a friend ex¬ 
 plained the anomaly: “After the guests at our 
 Christmas Eve dinners have well eaten and drunken, 
 they all go to mass in at least one church, and the 
 younger offer a multiplied devotion by going to all. It 
 is a good thing in some ways, for by this means they 
 manage to see every pretty face in the city, which that 
 night has specially prepared itself to be seen;” and 
 from this slender text my friend began to discourse at 
 large about these Christmas Eve dinners, and chiefly 
 how jollily the priests fared, ending with the devout 
 
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 269 
 
 wish, “Would God had made me nephew of a canonico!” 
 The great dinners of the priests are a favorite theme 
 with Italian talkers; but I doubt it is after all only a 
 habit of speech. The priests are too numerous to feed 
 sumptuously in most cases. 
 
 We had a good place to see and hear, sitting in 
 the middle of the main aisle, directly over the dust of 
 John Law, who alighted in Venice when his great 
 Mississippi bubble burst, and died here, and now 
 sleeps peacefully under a marble tablet in the ugly 
 church of San Mois£. The thought of that busy, 
 ambitious life, come to this unscheming repose under 
 our feet,—so far from the scene of its hopes, successes, 
 and defeats,—gave its own touch of solemnity to the 
 time and place, and helped the offended sense of pro¬ 
 priety through the bursts of operatic music, which inter¬ 
 spersed the mass. But on the whole, the music was 
 good and the function sufficiently impressive,—what 
 with the gloom of the temple everywhere starred with 
 tapers, and the grand altar lighted to the mountain- 
 top. The singing of the priests also was here much 
 better than I had found it elsewhere in Venice. 
 
 The equality of all classes in church is a noticeable 
 thing always in Italy, but on this Christmas Eve it 
 was unusually evident. The rags of the beggar brushed 
 the silks of luxury, as the wearers knelt side by side 
 on the marble floor; and on the night when God was 
 born to poverty on earth, the rich seemed to feel that 
 they drew nearer Him in the neighborhood of the poor. 
 In these costly temples of the eldest Christianity, the 
 | poor seem to enter upon their inheritance of the future, 
 for it is they who frequent them most and possess 
 them with the deepest sense of ownership. The 
 
2 70 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 withered old woman, who creeps into St. Mark’s with 
 her scaldino in her hand, takes visible possession of its 
 magnificence as God’s and hers, and Catholic wealth 
 and rank would hardly, if challenged, dispute her claim. 
 
 Even the longest mass comes to an end at last, 
 and those of our party who could credit themselves 
 with no gain of masses against the morrow, received 
 the benediction at San Mois6 with peculiar unction. 
 We all issued forth, and passing through the lines of 
 young men who draw themselves up on either side 
 of the doors of public places in Venice, to look at the 
 young ladies as they come out, we entered the Place 
 of St. Mark. The Piazza was more gloriously beauti¬ 
 ful than ever I saw it before, and the church had a 
 saintly loveliness. The moon was full, and snowed 
 down the mellowest light on the gray domes, which in 
 their soft, elusive outlines, and strange effect of far- 
 withdrawal, rhymed like faint-heard refrains to the 
 bright and vivid arches of the fagade. And if the 
 bronze horses had been minded to quit their station be¬ 
 fore the great window over the central arch, they might 
 have paced around the night’s whole half-world, and 
 found no fairer resting-place. 
 
 As for Christmas Day in Venice, it amounted to 
 very little; every thing was closed, and whatever merry¬ 
 making went on was all within doors. Although the 
 shops and the places of amusement were opened the 
 day following, the city entered very sparingly on the 
 pleasures of Carnival, and Christmas week passed off 
 in every-day fashion. It will be remembered that on 
 St. Stephen’s Day—the first of Carnival—one of the 
 five annual banquets took place at the Ducal Palace in 
 the time of the Republic. A certain number of 
 
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. 
 
 271 
 
 patricians received invitations to the dinner, and those 
 for whom there was no room were presented with fish 
 and poultry by the Doge. The populace were admitted 
 to look on during the first course, and then, having 
 sated their appetites with this savory observance, were 
 invited to withdraw. The patriotic Giustina Renier- 
 Michiel of course makes much of the courtesy thus ex¬ 
 tended to the people by the State, but I cannot help 
 thinking it must have been hard to bear. The banquet, 
 however, has passed away with the Republic which 
 gave it, and the only savor of dinner which Venetian 
 poverty now inhales on St. Stephen’s Day, is that which 
 arises from its own proper pot of broth. 
 
 New Year’s is the carnival of the beggars in Venice. 
 Their business is carried on briskly throughout the 
 year, but on this day it is pursued with an unusual 
 degree of perseverance, and an enterprise worthy of all 
 disinterested admiration. At every corner, on every 
 bridge, under every door-way, hideous shapes of poverty, 
 mutilation, and deformity stand waiting, and thrust out 
 palms, plates, and pans, and advance good wishes and 
 blessings to all who pass. It is an immemorial custom, 
 and it is one in which all but the quite comfortable 
 classes participate. The facchini in every square take 
 up their collections; the gondoliers have their plates 
 prepared for contribution at every ferry; at every caffe 
 and restaurant begging-boxes appeal to charity. Who¬ 
 ever has lifted hand in your service in any way during 
 the past year expects a reward on New Year’s for the 
 complaisance, and in some cases the shop-keepers send 
 to wish you a bel capo cTanno, with the same practical 
 end in view. On New Year’s Eve and morning bands 
 of facchini and gondoliers go about howling vivas under 
 
27 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 charitable windows till they open and drop alms. The 
 Piazza is invaded by the legions of beggary, and held 
 in overpowering numbers against all comers; and to 
 traverse it is like a progress through a lazar-house. 
 
 Beyond encouraging so gross an abuse as this, I 
 do not know that Venice celebrates New Year’s in a 
 peculiar manner. It is a festa , and there are masses, 
 of course. Presents are exchanged, which consist 
 chiefly of books—printed for the season, and brilliant 
 outside and dull within, like all annuals. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING; BAPTISMS AND BURIALS. 
 
 The Venetians have had a practical and strictly 
 business-like way of arranging marriages from the 
 earliest times. The shrewdest provision has always 
 been made for the dower and for the good of the 
 State; private and public interest being consulted, the 
 small matters of affections have been left to the chances 
 of association; and it does not seem that Venetian 
 society has ever dealt severely with husbands or wives 
 whom incompatibilities forced to seek consolation out¬ 
 side of matrimony. Herodotus relates that the Illyrian 
 Veneti sold their daughters at auction to the highest 
 bidder; and the fair being thus comfortably placed in 
 life, the hard-favored were given to whomsoever would 
 take them, with such dower as might be considered a 
 reasonable compensation. The auction was discontinued 
 in Christian times, but marriage contracts still partook 
 of the form of a public and half-mercantile transaction. 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 2? 3 
 
 At a comparatively late period Venetian fathers went 
 with their daughters to a great annual matrimonial fair 
 at San Pietro di Castello Olivolo, and the youth of the 
 lagoons repaired thither to choose wives from the 
 number of the maidens. These were all dressed in 
 white, with hair loose about the neck, and each bore 
 her dower in a little box, slung over her shoulder by 
 a ribbon. It is to be supposed that there was com¬ 
 monly a previous understanding between each damsel 
 and some youth in the crowd: as soon as all had 
 paired off, the bishop gave them a sermon and his 
 benediction, and the young men gathered up their 
 brides and boxes, and went away wedded. It was on 
 one of these occasions, in the year 944, that the 
 Triestine pirates stole the Brides of Venice with their 
 dowers, and gave occasion to the Festa delle Marie, 
 already described, and to Roger’s poem, which every 
 body pretends to have read. 
 
 This going to San Pietro’s, selecting a wife and 
 marrying her on the spot, out of hand, could only have 
 been the contrivance of a straightforward, practical 
 race. Among the common people betrothals were 
 managed with even greater ease and dispatch, till a 
 very late day in history; and in the record of a certain 
 trial which took place in 1443 there is an account of 
 one of these brief and unceremonious courtships. 
 Donna Catarussa, who gives evidence, and whom I 
 take to have been a worthless, idle gossip, was one 
 day sitting at her door, when Pieiso di Trento passed, 
 selling brooms, and said to her, “Madonna, find me 
 some nice girl.” To which Donna Catarussa replied, 
 “Ugly fool! do you take me for a go-between?” “No,” 
 said Piero, “not that; I mean a girl to be my wife,” 
 
 Venetian Life . 18 
 
274 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 And as Donna Catarussa thought at once of a suitable 
 match, she said, “In faith of God, I know one for you. 
 Come again to-morrow.” So they both met next day, 
 and the woman chosen by Donna Catarussa being 
 asked, “ Would st thou like to have Piero for thy hus¬ 
 band, as God commands and holy Church?” she an¬ 
 swered, “Yes.” And Peter being asked the like ques¬ 
 tion, answered, “Why, yes, certainly.” And they went 
 off and had the wedding feast. A number of these 
 betrothals takes place in the last scene of Goldoni’s 
 “Baruffe Chiozzotte,” where the belligerent women and 
 their lovers take hands in the public streets, and salut¬ 
 ing each other as man and wife, are affianced, and get 
 married as quickly as possible:— 
 
 “ Checa (to Tofolo). Take my hand. 
 
 “ Tofolo. Wife! 
 
 “ Checa. Husband! 
 
 “ Tofolo. Hurra! ” 
 
 The betrothals of the Venetian nobles were cele¬ 
 brated with as much pomp and ceremony as could 
 possibly distinguish them froni those of the people, 
 and there was much more polite indifference to the 
 inclinations of the parties immediately concerned. The 
 contract was often concluded before the betrothed had 
 seen each other, by means of a third person, when the 
 amount of the dower was fixed. The bridegroom elect 
 having verbally agreed with the parents of the bride, 
 repaired at an early day to the court-yard of the Ducal 
 Palace, where the match was published, and where he 
 shook hands with his kinsmen and friends. On the 
 day fixed for signing the contract the bride’s father 
 invited to his house the bridegroom and all his friends, 
 and hither came the high officers of state to compli- 
 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 2 75 
 
 ment the future husband. He, with the father of his 
 betrothed, met the guests at the door of the palace, 
 and conducted them to the grand saloon, which no 
 woman was allowed (si figuri!) at this time to enter. 
 When the company was seated, the bride, clad in 
 white, was led from her rooms and presented. She 
 wore a crown of pearls and brilliants on her head, 
 and her hair, mixed with long threads of gold, fell 
 loose about her shoulders, as you may see it in Car¬ 
 paccio’s pictures of the Espousals of St. Ursula. Her 
 ear-rings were pendants of three pearls set in gold; 
 her neck and throat were bare but for a collar of lace 
 and gems, from which slid a fine jeweled chain into 
 her bosom. Over her breast she wore a stomacher of 
 cloth of gold, to which were attached her sleeves, 
 open from the elbow to the hand. The formal words 
 of espousal being pronounced, the bride paced slowly 
 round the hall to the music of fifes and trumpets, and 
 made a gentle inclination to each of the guests; and 
 then returned to her chamber, from which she issued 
 again on the arrival of any tardy friend, and repeated 
 the ceremony. After all this, she descended to the 
 court-yard, where she was received by gentlewomen, 
 her friends, and placed on a raised seat (which was 
 covered with rich stuffs) in an open gondola, and thus, 
 followed by a fleet of attendant gondolas, went to visit 
 all the convents in which there were kinspeople of 
 herself or her betrothed. The excessive publicity of 
 these ceremonies was supposed to strengthen the 
 validity of the marriage contract. At an early day 
 after the espousals the betrothed, preceded by musi¬ 
 cians and followed by relatives and friends, went at 
 dawn to be married in the church,—the bridegroom 
 
 18* 
 
27 6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 wearing a toga, and the bride a dress of white silk or 
 crimson velvet, with jewels in her hair, and pearls 
 embroidered on her robes. Visits of congratulation 
 followed, and on the same day a public feast was 
 given in honor of the wedding, to which at least three 
 hundred persons were always invited, and at which 
 the number, quality, and cost of the dishes were care¬ 
 fully regulated by the Republic’s laws. On this oc¬ 
 casion, one or more persons were chosen as governors 
 of the feast, and after the tables were removed, a 
 mock-heroic character appeared, and recounted with 
 absurd exaggeration the deeds of the ancestors of the 
 bride and groom. The next morning ristorativi of 
 sweetmeats and confectionery were presented to the 
 happy couple, by whom the presents were returned in 
 kind. 
 
 A splendor so exceptional, even in the most 
 splendid age of the most splendid city, as that which 
 marked the nuptial feasts of the unhappy Jacopo 
 Foscari, could not be left unnoticed in this place. He 
 espoused Lucrezia, daughter of Lionardo Contarini, a 
 noble as rich and magnificent as Jacopo’s own father, 
 the Doge; and, on the 29th of January, 1441, the 
 noble Eustachio Balbi being chosen lord of the feasts, 
 the bridegroom, the bride’s brother, and eighteen 
 other patrician youths, assembled in the Palazzo Ealbi, 
 whence they went on horseback to conduct Lucrezia 
 to the Ducal Palace. They were all sumptuously 
 dressed in crimson velvet and silver brocade of 
 Alexandria, and rode chargers superbly caparisoned. 
 Other noble friends attended them; musicians went 
 before; a troop of soldiers brought up the rear. They 
 thus proceeded to the court-yard of the Ducal Palace, 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 
 
 2 77 
 
 3,nd then, returning, traversed the Piazza, and thread¬ 
 ing the devious little streets to the Campo San Samuele, 
 there crossed the Grand Canal upon a bridge of boats, 
 to San Barnaba opposite, where the Contarini lived. 
 On their arrival at this place the bride, supported by 
 two Procuratori di San Marco, and attended by sixty 
 ladies, descended to the church and heard mass, after 
 which an oration was delivered in Campo San Barnaba 
 before the Doge, the ambassadors, and a multitude of 
 nobles and people, in praise of the spouses and their 
 families. The bride then returned to her father’s 
 house, and jousts took place in the campos of Santa 
 Maria Formosa and San Polo (the largest in the city), 
 and in the Piazza San Marco. The Doge gave a great 
 banquet, and at its close one hundred and fifty ladies 
 proceeded to the bride’s palace in the Bucintoro, where 
 one hundred other ladies joined them, together with 
 Lucrezia, who, seated between Francesco Sforza (then 
 General-in-chief of the Republic’s armies) and the 
 Florentine ambassador, was conducted, amid the shouts 
 of the people and the sound of trumpets, to the Ducal 
 Palace. The Doge received her at the riva of the 
 Piazzetta, and, with Sforza and Balbi led her to the 
 foot of the palace stairs, where the Dogaressa, with 
 sixty ladies, welcomed her. A state supper ended this 
 day’s rejoicings, and on the following day a tournament 
 took place in the Piazza, for a prize of cloth of gold, 
 which was offered by Sforza. Forty knights contested 
 the prize and supped afterward with the Doge. On 
 the next day there were processions of boats with 
 music on the Grand Canal; on the fourth and last 
 day there were other jousts for prizes offered by the 
 jewelers and Florentine merchants; and every night 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 2 * 1 % 
 
 there were dancing and feasting in the Ducal Palace. 
 The Doge was himself the giver of the last tourna¬ 
 ment, and with this the festivities came to an end. 
 
 I have read an account by an old-fashioned English 
 traveler of a Venetian marriage which he saw, sixty 
 or seventy years ago, at the church of San Giorgio 
 Maggiore: “After a crowd of nobles,” he says, “in 
 their usual black robes, had been some time in atten¬ 
 dance, the gondolas appearing, exhibited a fine show, 
 though all of them were painted of a sable hue, in 
 consequence of a sumptuary law, which is very neces¬ 
 sary in this place, to prevent an expense which many 
 who could not bear it would incur; nevertheless the 
 barcarioli, or boatmen, were dressed in handsome 
 liveries; the gondolas followed one another in a line, 
 each carrying two ladies, who were likewise dressed in 
 black. As they landed they arranged themselves in 
 order, forming a line from the gate to the great altar. 
 At length the bride, arrayed in white as the symbol of 
 innocence, led by the bridesman, ascended the stairs 
 of the landing-place. There she received the compli¬ 
 ments of the bridegroom, in his black toga, who walked 
 at her right hand to the altar, where they and all the 
 company kneeled. I was often afraid the poor young 
 creature would have sunk upon the ground before she 
 arrived, for she trembled with great agitation, while 
 she made her low courtesies from side to side: how¬ 
 ever, the ceremony was no sooner performed than she 
 seemed to recover her spirits, and looked matrimony 
 in the face with a determined smile. Indeed, in all 
 appearance she had nothing to fear from her husband, 
 whose age and aspect were not at all formidable; ac¬ 
 cordingly she tripped back to the gondola with great 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 279 
 
 activity and resolution, and the procession ended as it 
 began. Though there was something attractive in this 
 aquatic parade, the black hue of the boats and the 
 company presented to a stranger, like me, the idea of 
 a funeral rather than a wedding. My expectation was 
 raised too high by the previous description of the 
 Italians, who are much given to hyperbole, who gave 
 me to understand that this procession would far ex¬ 
 ceed any thing I had ever seen. When I reflect upon 
 this rhodomontade,” disdainfully adds Mr. Drummond, 
 “I cannot help comparing, in my memory, the paltry 
 procession of the Venetian marriage with a very august 
 occurrence of which I was eye-witness in Sweden,” 
 and which being the reception of their Swedish 
 Majesties by the British fleet, I am sure the reader 
 will not ask me to quote. 
 
 With change of government, changes of civilization 
 following the revolutions, and the decay of wealth 
 among the Venetian nobles, almost all their splendid 
 customs have passed away, and the habit of making 
 wedding presents of sweetmeats and confectionery is 
 perhaps the only relic which has descended from the 
 picturesque past to the present time. These gifts are 
 still exchanged not only by nobles, but by all com¬ 
 moners according to their means, and are sometimes a 
 source of very profuse outlay. It is the habit to send 
 the candies in the elegant and costly paper caskets 
 which the confectioners sell, and the sum of a thou¬ 
 sand florins scarcely suffices to pass the courtesy round 
 a moderately large circle of friends. 
 
 With the nobility and with the richest commoners 
 marriage is still greatly a matter of contract, and is 
 arranged without much reference to the principals, 
 
28 o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 though it is now scarcely probable in any case that 
 they have not seen each other. But with all other 
 classes, except the poorest, who cannot and do not 
 seclude the youth of either sex from each other, and 
 with whom, consequently, romantic contrivance and 
 subterfuge would be superfluous, love is made to-day 
 in Venice as in the capa y espada comedies of the 
 Spaniards, and the business is carried on with all the 
 cumbrous machinery of confidants, billets-doux, and 
 stolen interviews. 
 
 Let us take our nominal friends, Marco and Todaro, 
 and attend them in their solemn promenade under the 
 arcades of the Procuratie, or upon the Molo, whither 
 they go every evening to taste the air and to look at 
 the ladies, while the Austrians and the other foreigners 
 listen to the military music in the Piazza. They are 
 both young, our friends; they have both glossy silk 
 hats; they have both light canes and an innocent 
 swagger. Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in 
 their talk indescribably small and commonplace. 
 
 They look at the ladies, and suddenly Todaro feels 
 the consuming ardors of love. 
 
 Todaro (to Marco). Here, dear! Behold this 
 beautiful blonde here! Beautiful as an angel! But 
 what loveliness! 
 
 Marco. But where? 
 
 Todaro. It is enough. Let us go. I follow her. 
 
 Such is the force of the passion in southern hearts. 
 They follow that beautiful blonde, who, marching 
 demurely in front of the gray-moustached papa and 
 the fat mamma, after the fashion in Venice, is elec¬ 
 trically conscious of pursuit. They follow her during 
 the whole evening, and, at a distance, softly follow 
 
LOVE-MAKING ANQ MARRYING. 
 
 281 
 
 her home, where the burning Todaro photographs the 
 number of the house upon the sensitized tablets of his 
 soul. 
 
 This is the first great step in love: he has seen his 
 adored one, and he knows that he loves her with an 
 inextinguishable ardor. The next advance is to be 
 decided between himself and the faithful Marco, and 
 is to be debated over many cups of black coffee, not 
 to name glasses of sugar-and-water and the like ex¬ 
 citing beverages. The friends may now find out the 
 cafib which the Biondina frequents with her parents, 
 and to which Todaro may go every evening and feast 
 his eyes upon her loveliness, never making his regard 
 known by any word, till some night, when he has 
 followed her home, he steals speech with her as he 
 stands in the street under her balcony,—and looks 
 sufficiently sheepish as people detect him on their 
 late return from the theatre.* Or, if the friends do 
 not take this course in their courtship (for they are 
 both engaged in the wooing), they decide that To¬ 
 daro, after walking back and forth a sufficient number 
 of times in the street where the Biondina lives, shall 
 write her a tender letter, to demand if she be dis¬ 
 posed to correspond his love. This billet must al¬ 
 ways be conveyed to her by her serving-maid, who 
 must be bribed by Marco for the purpose. At every 
 juncture Marco must be consulted, and acquainted 
 with every step of progress; and no doubt the Bion¬ 
 dina has some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom 
 she confides her part of the love-affair in all its in¬ 
 tricacy. 
 
 * The love-making scenes in Goldoni’s comedy of II Bugiardo 
 are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice. 
 
282 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 It may likewise happen that Todaro shall go to 
 see the Biondina in church, whither, but for her pre¬ 
 sence, he would hardly go, and that there, though he 
 may not have speech with her, he shall still fan the 
 ardors of her curiosity and pity by persistent sighs. 
 It must be confessed that if the Biondina is not 
 pleased with his looks, his devotion must assume the 
 character of an intolerable bore to her; and that to 
 see him everywhere at her heels—to behold him lean¬ 
 ing against the pillar near which she kneels at church, 
 the head of his stick in his mouth, and his attitude 
 carefully taken with a view to captivation—to be 
 always in deadly fear lest she shall meet him in 
 promenade, or, turning round at the caffb encounter 
 his pleading gaze—that all this must drive the Bion¬ 
 dina to a state bordering upon blasphemy and finger¬ 
 nails. Ma, come si fa? Ci vuol pazienza! This is 
 the sole course open to ingenous youth in Venice, 
 where confessed and unashamed acquaintance between 
 young people is extremely difficult; and so this blind 
 pursuit must go on, till the Biondina’s inclinations are 
 at last laboriously ascertained. 
 
 Suppose the Biondina consents to be loved? Then 
 Todaro has just and proper inquiries to make concern¬ 
 ing her dower, and if her fortune is as pleasing as 
 herself, he has only to demand her in marriage of her 
 father, and after that to make her acquaintance. 
 
 One day a Venetian friend of mine, who spoke a 
 little English, came to me with a joyous air and said: 
 
 “I am in lofe.” 
 
 The recipient of repeated confidences of this kind 
 from the same person, I listened with tempered 
 effusion. 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 
 
 283 
 
 “It is a blonde again?” 
 
 “Yes, you have right; blonde again.” 
 
 “And pretty?” 
 
 “Oh, but beautiful! I lofe her —come si dice ;— 
 immensamente .” 
 
 “And where did you see her? Where did you 
 make her acquaintance?” 
 
 “I have not make the acquaintance. I see her 
 pass with his fazer every night on Rialto Bridge. We 
 did not spoke yet—only with the eyes. The lady is 
 not of Venice. She has four thousand florins. It is 
 not much—no. But!” 
 
 Is not this love at first sight almost idyllic? Is 
 it not also a sublime prudence to know the lady’s 
 fortune better than herself, before herself? These 
 passionate, headlong Italians look well to the main 
 chance before they leap into matrimony, and you 
 may be sure Todaro knows, in black and white, what 
 the Biondina has to her fortune before he weds her. 
 After that may come the marriage, and the sonnet 
 written by the next of friendship, and printed to 
 hang up in all the shop-windows, celebrating the 
 auspicious event. If he be rich, or can write nobile 
 after his Christian name, perhaps some abbate, elegantly 
 addicted to verses and alive to grateful consequences, 
 may publish a poem, elegantly printed by the match¬ 
 less printers at Rovigo, and send it to all the bride¬ 
 groom’s friends. It is not the only event which the 
 facile Venetian Muse shall sing for him. If his child 
 is brought happily through the measles by Dottor 
 Cavasangue, the Nine shall celebrate the fact. If he 
 takes any public honor or scholastic degree, it is 
 equal occasion for verses; and when he dies the 
 
284 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 mortuary rhyme shall follow him. Indeed, almost 
 every occurrence—a boy’s success at school, an ad¬ 
 vocate’s triumphal passage of the perils of examina¬ 
 tion at Padua, a priest’s first mass, a nun’s novitiate, 
 a birth, an amputation—is the subject of tuneful 
 effusion, and no less the occasion of a visit from the 
 facchini of the neighboring campo, who assemble with 
 blare of trumpets and tumult of voices around the 
 victim’s door, and proclaim his skill or good fortune, 
 and break into vivas that never end till he bribes 
 their enthusiasm into silence. The naive common¬ 
 placeness of feeling in all matrimonial transactions, in 
 spite of the gloss which the operatic methods of court¬ 
 ship threw about them, was a source of endless amuse¬ 
 ment, as it stole out in different ways. “You know 
 my friend Marco?” asked an acquaintance one day. 
 “Well, we are looking out a wife for him. He doesn’t 
 want to marry, but his father insists; and he has 
 begged us to find somebody. There are three of us 
 on the look-out. But he hates women, and is very 
 hard to suit. Ben! Ci vuol pazienza!” 
 
 It rarely happens now that the religious part of 
 the marriage ceremony is not performed in church, 
 though it may be performed at the house of the 
 bride. In this case, it usually takes place in the 
 evening, and the spouses attend five o’clock mass next 
 morning. But if the marriage takes place at church, 
 it must be between five and eleven in the morning, 
 and the blessing is commonly pronounced about six 
 o’clock. Civil marriage is still unknown among the 
 Venetians. It is entirely the affair of the Church, in 
 which the bans are published beforehand, and which 
 exacts from the candidates a preliminary visit to their 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 
 
 parish priest, for examination in their catechism, and 
 for instruction in religion when they are defective in 
 knowledge of the kind. There is no longer any civil 
 publication of the betrothals, and the hand-shaking 
 in the court of the Ducal Palace has long been dis¬ 
 used. I cannot help thinking that the ceremony must 
 have been a great affliction, and that, in the Re¬ 
 publican times at Venice, a bridegroom must have 
 fared nearly as hard as a President elect in our times 
 at home. 
 
 There was a curious display on occasion of births 
 among the nobility in former times. The room of 
 the young mother was decorated with a profusion of 
 paintings, sculpture, and jewelry; and, while yet in 
 bed, she received the congratulations of her friends, 
 and regaled them with sweetmeats served in vases of 
 gold and silver. 
 
 The child of noble parents had always at least 
 two godfathers, and sometimes as many as a hundred 
 and fifty; but in order that the relationship of god¬ 
 father (which is the same according to the canonical 
 law as a tie of consanguinity) should not prevent 
 desirable matrimony between nobles, no patrician was 
 allowed to be godfather to another’s child. Con¬ 
 sequently the compare was usually a client of the 
 noble parent, and was not expected to make any pre¬ 
 sent to the godchild, whose father, on the day follow¬ 
 ing the baptism, sent him a piece of marchpane, in 
 acknowledgment of their relationship. No women 
 were present at the baptism except those who had 
 charge of the babe. After the fall of the Republic 
 the French custom of baptism in the parents’ house 
 was introduced, as well as the custom, on the god- 
 
286 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 father’s part, of giving a present,—usually of sugar¬ 
 plums and silver toys. But I think that most baptisms 
 still take place in church, if I may judge from the 
 numbers of tight little glass cases I have noticed,— 
 half bed and half coffin,—containing little eight-day- 
 old Venetians, closely swathed in mummy-like ban¬ 
 dages, and borne to and from the churches by mys¬ 
 terious old women. The ceremony of baptism itself 
 does not apparently differ from that in other Catholic 
 countries, and is performed, like all religious services 
 in Italy, without a ray of religious feeling or solemnity 
 of any kind. 
 
 For many centuries funeral services in Venice 
 have been conducted by the Scuole del Sacramento , 
 instituted for that purpose. To one of these societies 
 the friends of the defunct pay a certain sum, and the 
 association engages to inter the dead, and bear all the 
 expenses of the ceremony, the dignity of which is 
 regulated by the priest of the parish in which the 
 deceased lived. The rite is now most generally under¬ 
 taken by the Scuola di San Rocco. The funeral train 
 is of ten or twenty facchini, wearing tunics of white, 
 with caps and capes of red, and bearing the society’s 
 long, gilded candlesticks of wood with lighted tapers. 
 Priests follow them chanting prayers, and then comes 
 the bier,—with a gilt crown lying on the coffin, if 
 the dead be a babe, to indicate the triumph of in¬ 
 nocence. Formerly, hired mourners attended, and a 
 candle, weighing a pound, was given to any one who 
 chose to carry it in the procession. 
 
 Anciently there was great show of mourning in 
 Venice for the dead, when, according to Mutinelli, 
 the friends and kinsmen of the deceased, having seen 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 
 
 287 
 
 his body deposited in the church, “fell to weeping 
 and howling, tore their hair and rent their clothes, 
 and withdrew forever from that church, thenceforth 
 become for them a place of abomination.” Decenter 
 customs prevailed in after-times, and there was a 
 pathetic dignity in the ceremony of condolence among 
 patricians: the mourners, on the day following the 
 interment, repaired to the porticos of Rialto and the 
 court of the Ducal Palace, and their friends came, one 
 after one, and expressed their sympathy by a mute 
 pressure of the hand. 
 
 Death, however, is hushed up as much as possible 
 in modern Venice. The corpse is hurried from the 
 house of mourning to the parish church, where the 
 friends, after the funeral service, take leave of it. 
 Then it is placed in a boat and carried to the burial- 
 ground, where it is quickly interred. I was fortunate, 
 therefore, in witnessing a cheerful funeral at which I 
 one day casually assisted at San Michele. There was 
 a church on this island as early as the tenth century, 
 and in the thirteenth century it fell into the posses¬ 
 sion of the Comandulensen Friars. They built a 
 monastery on it, which became famous as a seat of 
 learning, and gave much erudite scholarship to the 
 world. In later times Pope Gregory XVI. carried his 
 j profound learning from San Michele to the Vatican. 
 The present church is in the Renaissance style, but 
 not very offensively so, and has some indifferent paint¬ 
 ings. The arcades and the courts around which it is 
 built contain funeral monuments as unutterably ugly 
 and tasteless as any thing of the kind I ever saw at 
 home; but the dead, for the most part, lie in graves 
 
288 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 marked merely by little iron crosses in the narrow 
 and roofless space walled in from the lagoon, which 
 laps sluggishly at the foot of the masonry with the 
 impulses of the tide. The old monastery was abolished 
 in 1810, and there is now a convent of Reformed 
 Benedictines on the island, who perform the last ser¬ 
 vice for the dead. 
 
 On the day of which I speak, I was taking a friend 
 to see the objects of interest at San Michele, which I 
 had seen before, and the funeral procession touched 
 at the riva of the church just as we arrived. The 
 procession was of one gondola only, and the pall¬ 
 bearers were four pleasant ruffians in scarlet robes of 
 cotton, hooded, and girdled at the waist. They were 
 accompanied by a priest of a broad and jolly coun¬ 
 tenance, two grinning boys, and finally the corpse it¬ 
 self, severely habited in an under-dress of black box, 
 but wearing an outer garment of red velvet, bordered 
 and tasseled gayly. The pleasant ruffians (who all 
 wore smoking-caps with some other name) placed this 
 holiday corpse upon a bier, and after a lively dispute 
 with our gondolier, in which the compliments of the 
 day were passed in the usual terms of Venetian chaff, 
 lifted the bier on shore and set it down. The priest 
 followed with the two boys, whom he rebuked for 
 levity, simultaneously tripping over the Latin of a 
 prayer, with his eyes fixed on our harmless little party 
 as if we were a funeral, and the dead in the black 
 box an indifferent spectator. Then he popped down 
 upon his knees, and made us a lively little supplica¬ 
 tion, while a blind beggar scuffled for a lost soldo 
 about his feet, and the gondoliers quarrelled volubly. 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 
 
 289 
 
 After which, he threw off his surplice with the air of 
 one who should say his day’s work was done, and pre¬ 
 ceded the coffin into the church. 
 
 We had hardly deposited the bier upon the floor 
 in the centre of the nave, when two pale young friars 
 appeared, throwing off their hooded cloaks of coarse 
 brown, as they passed to the sacristy, and reappearing 
 in their rope-girdled gowns. One of them bore a 
 lighted taper in his right hand and a book in his left; 
 the other had also a taper, but a pot of holy water 
 instead of the book. 
 
 They are very handsome young men, these monks, 
 with heavy, sad eyes, and graceful, slender figures, 
 which their monastic life will presently overload with 
 gross humanity full of coarse appetites. They go and 
 stand beside the bier, giving a curious touch of solemnity 
 to a scene composed of the four pleasant ruffians in 
 the loaferish postures which they have learned as fac- 
 chini waiting for jobs; of the two boys with inattentive 
 grins, and of the priest with wandering eyes, kneeling 
 behind them. 
 
 A weak, thin-voiced organ pipes huskily from its 
 damp loft: the monk hurries rapidly over the Latin 
 I text of the service, while 
 
 “His breath to heaven like vapor goes” 
 
 on the chilly, humid air; and the other monk makes 
 the responses, giving and taking the sprinkler, which 
 his chief shakes vaguely in the direction of the coffin. 
 They both bow their heads — shaven down to the 
 temples, to simulate His crown of thorns. Silence. The 
 organ is still, the priest has vanished; the tapers are 
 blown out; the pall-bearers lay hold of the bier, and 
 
 Venetian Life . 19 
 
29 o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 raise it to tlieir shoulders; the boys slouch into proces¬ 
 sion behind them; the monks glide softly and dispirit¬ 
 edly away. The soul is prepared for eternal life, and 
 the body for the grave. 
 
 The ruffians are expansively gay on reaching the 
 open air again. They laugh, they call “Cio!”* con¬ 
 tinually, and banter each other as they trot to the 
 grave. 
 
 The boys follow them, gamboling among the little 
 iron crosses, and trying if here and there one of them 
 may not be overthrown. 
 
 We two strangers follow the boys. 
 
 But here the pall-bearers become puzzled: on the 
 right is an open trench, on the left is an open trench. 
 “Presence of the Devil! To which grave does this 
 dead belong?” They discuss, they dispute, they 
 quarrel. 
 
 From the side of the wall, as if he rose from the 
 sea, appears the grave-digger, with his shovel on his 
 shoulder—slouching toward us. 
 
 “Ah heigh! Cio, the grave-digger! Where does 
 this dead belong?” 
 
 * Literally, That in Italian, and meaning in Venetian, You! 
 Heigh! To talk in Cib ciappa is to assume insolent familiarity or 
 unbounded good fellowship with the person addressed. A Venetian 
 says Cib a thousand times in a day, and hails every one but his 
 superior in that way. I think it is hardly the Italian pronoun, but 
 rather a contraction of Veccio (vecchio), Oldfellow! It is common 
 with all classes of the people: parents use it in speaking to their 
 children, and brothers and sisters call one another Cib. It is a 
 salutation between friends, who cry out, Cib! as they pass in the 
 street. Acquaintances, men who meet after separation, rush to¬ 
 gether with “Ah Cib!” Then they kiss on the right cheek, “Cib!” 
 on the left, “Cib!” on the lips, “ Cib! Bon di Cib!”, • 
 
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 2 QI 
 
 “Body of Bacchus, what potatoes! Here, in this 
 trench to the right.” 
 
 They set down the bier there, gladly. They strip 
 away the coffin’s gay upper garment; they leave but 
 the under-dress of black box, painted to that favor 
 with pitch. They shove it into the grave-digger’s arms, 
 where he stands in the trench, in the soft earth, rich 
 with bones. He lets it slide swiftly to the ground— 
 thump! Ecco fatto! 
 
 The two boys pick up the empty bier, and dance 
 merrily away with it to the riva-gate, feigning a little 
 play after the manner of children,—“Oh, what a beau¬ 
 tiful dead!” 
 
 The eldest of the pleasant ruffians is all the pleas¬ 
 anter for sciampagnin , and can hardly be persuaded to 
 go out at the right gate. 
 
 We strangers stay behind a little, to consult with 
 another spectator—Venetian, this. 
 
 “Who is the dead man, signore?” 
 
 “It is a woman, poor little thing! Dead in child¬ 
 bed. The baby is in there with her.” 
 
 It has been a cheerful funeral, and yet we are not 
 in great spirits as we go back to the city. 
 
 For my part, I do not think the cry of sea-gulls on 
 a gloomy day is a joyous sound; and the sight of those 
 theatrical angels, with their shameless, unfinished backs, 
 flying off the top of the rococo facade of the church of 
 the Jesuits, has always been a spectacle to fill me with 
 despondency and foreboding. 
 
 19 
 
VENETIAN LITE, 
 
 292 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 On a small canal, not far from the railroad station, 
 the gondoliers show you a house, by no means notable 
 (except for the noble statue of a knight, occupying a 
 niche in one corner), as the house of Othello. It was 
 once the palace of the patrician family Moro, a name 
 well known in the annals of the Republic, and one 
 which, it has been suggested, misled Shakespeare into 
 the invention of a Moor of Venice. Whether this is 
 possibly the fact, or whether there is any tradition of 
 a tragic incident in the history of the Moro family 
 similar to that upon which the play is founded, I do 
 not know; but it is certain that the story of Othello, 
 very nearly as Shakespeare tells it, is popularly known 
 in Venice; and the gondoliers have fixed upon the 
 Casa Moro in question as the edifice best calculated 
 to give satisfaction to strangers in search of the True 
 and the Memorable. The statue is happily darkened 
 by time, and thus serves admirably to represent 
 Othello’s complexion, and to place beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt the fact of his residence in the house. In¬ 
 deed, what can you say to the gondolier, who, in an¬ 
 swer to your cavils, points to the knight, with the con¬ 
 vincing argument, “There is his statue!” 
 
 One day I was taken to see this house, in company 
 with some friends, and when it had been victoriously 
 pointed out, as usual, we asked meekly, “Who was 
 Othello?” 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 293 
 
 “Othello, Signori,” answered the gondolier, “was a 
 general of the Republic, in the old times. He was an 
 African, and black; but nevertheless the State valued 
 him, and he beat the Turks in many battles. Well, 
 Signori, this general Othello had a very young and 
 beautiful wife, and his wife’s cousin (sic!) Cassio was 
 his major-domo, or, as some say, his lieutenant. But 
 after a while happens along (capita) another soldier of 
 Othello, who wants Cassio’s employment, and so ac¬ 
 cuses him to the general of corrupting his wife. Very 
 well, Signori! Without thinking an instant, Othello, 
 being made so, flew into a passion (si riscaldd la testa), 
 and killed his wife; and then when her innocence 
 came out, he killed himself and that liar; and the 
 State confiscated his goods, he being a very rich man. 
 There has been a tragedy written about all this, you 
 know.” 
 
 “But how is it called? Who wrote it?” 
 
 “Oh! in regard to that, then, I don’t know. Some 
 Englishman.” 
 
 “ Shakespeare?” 
 
 “I don’t know, Signori. But if you doubt what I 
 tell you, go to any bookseller, and say, ‘Favor me with 
 the tragedy of “Othello.” ’ He will give it you, and 
 there you will find it all written out just as I tell it.” 
 
 This gondolier confirmed the authenticity of his 
 story, by showing us the house of Cassio near the 
 Rialto Bridge, and I have no doubt he would also have 
 pointed out that of Iago if we had wished it. 
 
 But as a general thing, the lore of the gondoliers 
 is not rich nor very great. They are a loquacious and 
 a gossiping race, but they love better to have a quiet 
 chat at the tops of their voices, as they loaf idly at 
 
294 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the ferries, or to scream repartees across the Grand 
 Canal, than to tell stories. In all history that relates 
 to localities they are sufficiently versed to find the 
 notable places for strangers, but beyond this they 
 trouble themselves as little with the past as with the 
 future. Three tragic legends, however, they know, and 
 will tell with the most amusing effect, namely: Biasio, 
 luganegher; the Innocent Baker-Boy, and Veneranda 
 Porta. 
 
 The first of these legends is that of a sausage- 
 maker who flourished in Venice some centuries ago, 
 and who improved the quality of the broth which the 
 luganegheri make of their scraps and sell to the gon¬ 
 doliers, by cutting up into it now and then a child of 
 some neighbor. He was finally detected by a gondolier 
 who discovered a little finger in his broth, and being 
 brought to justice, was dragged through the city at the 
 heels of a wild horse. This most uncomfortable cha¬ 
 racter appears to be the first hero in the romance of 
 the gondoliers, and he certainly deserves to rank with 
 that long line of imaginary personages who have made 
 childhood so wretched and tractable. The second is 
 the Innocent Baker-Boy already named, who was put 
 to death on suspicion of having murdered a noble, be¬ 
 cause in the dead man’s heart was found a dagger 
 fitting a sheath which the baker had picked up in the 
 street, on the morning of the murder, and kept in his 
 possession. Many years afterwards, a malefactor who 
 died in Padua confessed the murder, and thereupon 
 two lamps were lighted before a shrine in the southern 
 facade of St. Mark’s Church,—one for the murdered 
 nobleman’s soul, and the other for that of the innocent 
 boy. Such is the gondoliers’ story, and the lamps still 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 2 Q 5 
 
 burn every night before the shrine from dark till dawn, 
 in witness of its truth. The fact of the murder and 
 its guiltless expiation is an incident of Venetian history, 
 and it is said that the Council of the Ten never pro¬ 
 nounced a sentence of death thereafter, till they had 
 been solemnly warned by one of their number with 
 “ Ricordatevi del povero Fornaretto!” (Remember the 
 poor Baker-Boy!) The poet Dali ’Ongaro has woven 
 the story into a beautiful and touching tragedy; but I 
 believe the poet is still to be born who shall take from 
 the gondoliers their Veneranda Porta, and place her 
 historic figure in dramatic literature. Veneranda Porta 
 was a lady of the days of the Republic, between whom 
 and her husband existed an incompatibility. This was 
 increased by the course of Signora Porta in taking a 
 lover, and it at last led to the assassination of the hus¬ 
 band by the paramours. The head of the murdered 
 man was found in one of the canals, and being ex¬ 
 posed, as the old custom was, upon the granite pedestal 
 at the corner of St. Mark’s Church, it was recognized 
 by his brother, who found among the papers on which 
 the long hair was curled fragments of a letter he had 
 written to the deceased. The crime was traced to the 
 paramours, and being brought before the Ten, they 
 were both condemned to be hanged between the co¬ 
 lumns of the Piazzetta. The gondoliers relate that 
 when the sentence was pronounced, Veneranda said to 
 the Chief of the Ten, “But as for me the sentence will 
 never be carried out. You cannot hang a woman. 
 Consider the impropriety!” The Venetian rulers were 
 wise men in their generation, and far from being balked 
 by this question of delicacy, the Chief replied, solving 
 it, “My dear, you shell be hanged in my breeches.” 
 
 
296 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 It is very coarse salt which keeps one of these 
 stories; another is remembered because it concerns 
 one of the people; and another for its abomination 
 and horror. The incidents of Venetian history which 
 take the fancy and touch the sensibility of the world 
 seem hardly known to the gondoliers, the most intel¬ 
 ligent and quick-witted of the populace, and them¬ 
 selves the very stuff that some romantic dreams of 
 Venice are made of. However sad the fact, it is un¬ 
 deniable that the stories of the sausage-maker whose 
 broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy 
 who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the 
 expense of the murderess, interest these people more 
 than the high-well-born sorrows of the Foscari, the 
 tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of Falier,— 
 which last they know partly, however, because of the 
 scandal about Falier’s wife. Yet after all, though the 
 gondoliers are not the gondoliers of imaginative litera¬ 
 ture, they have qualities which recommended them 
 to my liking, and I look back upon my acquaintance 
 with two or three of them in a very friendly spirit. 
 Compared with the truculent hackmen, who prey upon 
 the traveling public in all other cities of the civilized 
 world, they are eminently intelligent And amiable. 
 Rogues they are, of course, for small dishonesties are 
 the breath in the nostrils of common carriers by land 
 or water, everywhere; but the trickery of the gondoliers 
 is so good-natured and simple that it can hardly offend. 
 A very ordinary jocular sagacity defeats their pro- 
 foundest purposes of swindling, aad no one enjoys 
 their exposure half so much as themselves, while a 
 faint prospect of future employment purifies them of 
 every trait of dishonesty. I had only one troublesome 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 ■2 97 
 
 experience with them, and that was in the case of the 
 old gondolier who taught me to row. He, when I had 
 no longer need of his services, plunged into drunken¬ 
 ness, and came and dismissed me one day with every 
 mark of ignominy. But he afterwards forgave me, 
 and saluted me kindly when we met. 
 
 The immediate goal of every gondolier’s ambition 
 is to serve, no matter for how short a time, an Inglese, 
 by which generic title nearly all foreigners except 
 Germans are known to him. The Inglese, whether 
 he be English or American, is apt to make the tour 
 of the whole city in a gondola, and to give handsome 
 drink money at the end, whereas your Tedesco frugally 
 walks to every place accessible by land, or when, in a 
 party of six or eight, he takes a gondola, plants him¬ 
 self upon the letter of the tariff, and will give no more 
 than the rate fixed by law. The gondolier is there¬ 
 fore flowingly polite to the Inglese, and he is even 
 civil to the Tedesco; but he is not at all bound in 
 courtesy to that provincial Italian who comes from the 
 country to Venice, bargains furiously for his boat, and 
 commonly pays under the tariff. The Venetian who 
 does not himself keep a gondola seldom hires one, 
 and even on this rare occasion makes no lavish de¬ 
 mand such as “How much do you want for taking 
 me to the railway station?” Lest the fervid imagina¬ 
 tion of the gondolier rise to zwanzigers and florins, 
 and a tedious dispute ensue, he asks: “How many 
 centissimi do you want?” and the contract is made for 
 a number of soldi. 
 
 The number of private gondolas owned in Venice 
 is not very great. The custom is rather to hire a 
 gondolier with his boat. The exclusive use of the 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 298 
 
 gondola is thus secured, and the gondolier gives his 
 services as a domestic when off his special duty. He 
 waits at table, goes marketing, takes the children to 
 school, and serves the ladies as footman, for five francs 
 a day, himself paying the proprietor of the gondola 
 about a frank daily for the boat. In former times, 
 when Venice was rich and prosperous, many noble 
 families kept six or seven gondolas; and what with 
 this service, and the numerous gala-days of the Re¬ 
 public, when the whole city took boat for the Lido, 
 or the Giudecca, or Murano, and the gondoliers were 
 allowed to exact any pay they could, they were a 
 numerous and prosperous class. But these times have 
 passed from Venice forever, and though the gondoliers 
 are still, counting the boatmen of the Giudecca and 
 Lido, some thousands in number, there are compara¬ 
 tively few young men among them, and their gains 
 are meagre. 
 
 In the little fcity of Venice, where the dialect spoken 
 at Canareggio or Castello is a different tongue from 
 that heard under the Procuratie of St. Mark’s Place, 
 the boatmen of the several quarters of the city of 
 course vary greatly in character and appearance; and 
 the gondolier who lounges at the base of the columns 
 of the Piazzetta, and airily invites the Inglesi to tours 
 of the Grand Canal, is of quite a different type from 
 the weather-beaten barcaiuolo , who croaks “Barca!” 
 at the promenaders on the Zattere. But all, as I say, 
 are simple and harmless enough, and however loudly 
 they quarrel among themselves, they never pass from 
 the defamation of their female relatives to blows. As 
 for the game of knives, as it is said to be played at 
 Naples, and as About describes it at Rome, I doubt if 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 299 
 
 it is much known to the populace of Venice. Only 
 the doctors let blood there—though from their lancets 
 it flows pretty freely and constantly. 
 
 It is true that the gondolier loves best of every¬ 
 thing a clamorous quarrel, carried on with the canal 
 between him and his antagonist; but next to this, he 
 loves to spend his leisure at the ferry in talking of 
 eating and of money, and he does not differ from 
 many of his fellow-citizens in choice of topics. I have 
 seldom caught a casual expression from passers in the 
 streets of Venice which did not relate in some way to 
 gold Napoleons, zwanzigers, florins, or soldi, or else to 
 wine and polenta. I note this trait in the Venetians, 
 which Goldoni observed in the Milanese a hundred 
 years ago, and which I incline to believe is common 
 to all Italians. The gondoliers talk a great deal in 
 figure and hyperbole, and their jocose chaff is quite 
 inscrutable even to some classes of Venetians. With 
 foreigners, to whom the silence and easy progress of 
 the gondola gives them the opportunity to talk, they 
 are fond of using a word or two of French. They are 
 quick at repartee, and have a clever answer ready for 
 most occasions. I was one day bargaining for a boat 
 to the Lido, whither I refused to be taken in a shabby 
 gondola, or at a rate higher than seventy-five soldi for 
 the trip. At last the patience of the gondoliers was 
 exhausted, and one of them called out, “Somebody 
 fetch the Bucintoro, and take this gentleman to the 
 Lido for seventy-five soldi!” (The Bucintoro being 
 the magnificent barge in which the Doge went to wed 
 the Adriatic.) 
 
 The skill with which the gondoliers manage their 
 graceful craft is always admired by strangers, and is 
 
3oo 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE, 
 
 certainly remarkable. The gondola is very long and 
 slender, and rises high from the water at either end. 
 Both bow and stern are sharp, the former being orna¬ 
 mented with that deeply serrated blade of steel, which 
 it is the pride of the gondolier to keep bright as 
 silver, and the poop having a small platform, not far 
 behind the cabin, on which he stands when he rows. 
 The danger of collision has always obliged Venetian 
 boatmen to face the bow, and the stroke with the oar 
 (for the gondolier uses only a single oar) is made by 
 pushing, and not by pulling. No small degree of art 
 (as I learnt from experience) is thus required to keep 
 the gondola’s head straight, — all the strokes being 
 made on one side,—and the sculling return of the 
 oar-blade, preparatory for each new stroke, is extremely 
 difficult to effect. Under the hands of the gondolier, 
 however, the gondola seems a living thing, full of grace 
 and winning movement. The wood-work of the little 
 cabin is elaborately carved, and it is usually furnished 
 with mirrors and seats luxuriously cushioned. The 
 sensation of the gondola’s progress, felt by the occu¬ 
 pant of the cabin, as he falls back upon these cushions, 
 may be described, to the female apprehension at least, 
 as “ too divine.” The cabin is removable at pleasure, 
 and is generally taken off and replaced by awnings in 
 summer. But in the evening, when the fair Venetians 
 go out in their gondolas to take the air, even this 
 awning is dispensed with, and the long slender boat 
 glides darkly down the Grand Canal, bearing its daz¬ 
 zling freight of white tulle , pale-faced, black-eyed 
 beauty, and flashing jewels, in full view. 
 
 As for the singing of the gondoliers, they are the 
 only class of Venetians who have not good voices, 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 301 
 
 and I am scarcely inclined to regret the silence which 
 long ago fell upon them. I am quite satisfied with 
 the peculiar note of warning which they utter as they 
 approach the corner of a canal, and which meaning 
 simply, “To the Right,” or “To the Left,” is the 
 most pathetic and melancholy sound in the world. 
 If, putting aside my own comfort, I have sometimes 
 wished for the sake of a dear, sentimental old friend 
 at home, who loves such idle illusions with an ardor 
 unbecoming his years, that I might hear the voice 
 
 “of Adria’s gondolier, 
 
 By distance mellowed, o’er the waters sweep,” 
 
 I must still confess that I never did hear it under 
 similar circumstances, except in conversation across 
 half a mile of lagoon, when, as usual, the burden of 
 the lay was polenta or soldi. 
 
 A recent Venetian writer, describing the character 
 of the lower classes of Venice, says: “No one can deny 
 that our populace is loquacious and quick-witted; but, 
 on the other hand, no one can deny that it is regard¬ 
 less of improvement. Venice, a city exceptional in 
 its construction, its customs, and its habits, has also an 
 exceptional populace. It still feels, although sixty- 
 eight years have passed, the influence of the fallen 
 Republic, of that oligarchic government, which, afford¬ 
 ing almost every day some amusement to the people, 
 left them no time to think of their offended rights. . . . 
 Since 1859 Venice has resembled a sepulchre of the 
 living,—squalor and beggary gaining ground with each 
 day, and commerce, with few exceptions, converted 
 into monopoly; yet the populace remains attached to 
 its old habits, and will have its pleasure. If the 
 
302 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 earnings are little, what then? Must one die of ennui? 
 The caffe is depopulated: not so the drinking-house. 
 The last day before the drawing of the lottery, the 
 offices are thronged with fathers and mothers of 
 families, who stint their children of bread to buy dearly 
 a few hours of golden illusion. ... At the worst, there 
 is the Monte di Pieta, as a last resort.” 
 
 It is true, as this writer says, that the pleasure- 
 loving populace still looks back fondly to the old Re¬ 
 publican times of feasting and holidays; but there is 
 certainly no truth any more in the old idea that any 
 part of Italy is a place where people may be “idle 
 with impunity,” or make amusement the serious busi¬ 
 ness of life. I can remember that the book from 
 which I received my first impressions of geography 
 was illuminated with a picture professing to represent 
 Italian customs. The spirit of inquiry had long before 
 caused me to doubt the exact fidelity of this represen¬ 
 tation; but it cost me a pang to learn that the picture 
 was utterly delusive. It has been no part of my ex¬ 
 perience in Venice to see an Italian sitting upon the 
 ground, and strumming the guitar, while two gayly 
 dressed peasants danced to the music. Indeed, the 
 indolence of Venetians is listless and silent, not play¬ 
 ful or joyous; and as I learned to know their life 
 more intimately, I came to understand that in many 
 cases they are idle from despair of finding work, and 
 that indolence is as much their fate as their fault. 
 Any diligence of theirs is surprising to us of northern 
 and free lands, because their climate subdues and 
 enervates us, and because we can see before them no 
 career open to intelligent industry. With the poorest, 
 work is necessarily a hand-to-hand struggle against 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 303 
 
 hunger; with those who would not absolutely starve 
 without it, work is an inexplicable passion. 
 
 Partly because the ways of these people are so 
 childlike and simple in many things, and partly from 
 one’s own swindling tendency to take one’s self in (a 
 tendency really fatal to all sincerity of judgment, and 
 incalculably mischievous to such downfallen peoples 
 as have felt the baleful effects of the world’s senti¬ 
 mental, impotent sympathy), there is something pa¬ 
 thetic in the patient content with which Italians work. 
 They have naturally so large a capacity for enjoyment, 
 that the degree of self-denial involved in labor seems 
 exorbitant, and one feels that these children, so loved 
 of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt 
 with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt 
 there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if 
 there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to 
 credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least 
 work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and 
 not in commonplace, handy, modern fashion. Neither 
 the habits nor the implements of labor are changed 
 since the progress of the Republic ceased, and her 
 heart began to die within her. All sorts of mechanics’ 
 tools are clumsy and inconvenient: the turner’s lathe 
 moves by broken impulses; door-hinges are made to 
 order, and lift the door from the ground as it opens 
 upon them; all nails and tacks are hand-made; 
 
 1 window-sashes are contrived to be glazed without 
 
 I putty, and the panes are put in from the top, so that 
 to repair a broken glass the whole sash is taken apart; 
 cooking-stoves are unknown to the native cooks, who 
 work at an open fire, with crane and dangling pot- 
 hooks; furniture is put together with wooden pegs 
 
304 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 instead of screws; you do not buy a door-lock at a 
 hardware store,—you get a fabbro to make it, and he 
 comes with a leathern satchel full of tools to fit and 
 finish it on the door. The wheelbarrow of this civiliza¬ 
 tion is peculiarly wonderful in construction, with a 
 prodigious wooden wheel, and a ponderous, incapable 
 body. The canals are dredged with scoops mounted 
 on long poles, and manned each by three or four 
 « Chiozzotti. There never was a pile-driving machine 
 known in Venice; nor a steam-tug in all the channels 
 of the lagoons, through which the largest craft are 
 towed to and from the ports by row-boats. In the 
 model of the sea-going vessels there has apparently 
 been little change from the first. Yet in spite of all 
 this backwardness in invention, the city is full of 
 beautiful workmanship in every branch of artificing, 
 and the Venetians are still the best sailors in the 
 Adriatic. 
 
 I do not offer the idea as a contribution to statis¬ 
 tics, but it seems to me that the most active branch 
 of industry in Venice is plucking fowls. In summer 
 the people all work on their thresholds, and in their 
 windows, and as nearly out of doors as the narrowness 
 of the streets will let them,—and it is hard to pass 
 through any part of the city without coming to a 
 poulterer’s shop, in the door of which inevitably sits 
 a boy, tugging at the plumage of some wretched bird. 
 He is seldom to be seen except in that crisis of pluck¬ 
 ing when he seems to have all but finished; yet he 
 seems never to accomplish the fact perfectly. Per¬ 
 haps it is part of his hard fate that the feathers shall 
 grow again under his hand as fast as he plucks them 
 away: at the restaurants, I know, the quantity of 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 305 
 
 plumage one devours in consuming roast chicken is 
 surprising—at first. The birds are always very lean, 
 too, and have but a languid and weary look, in spite 
 of the ardent manner in which the boy clasps them 
 while at work. It may be that the Venetians do not 
 like fat poultry. Their turkeys, especially, are of that 
 emaciation which is attributed among ourselves only 
 to the turkey of Job; and as for the geese and ducks, 
 they can only interest anatomists. It is as if the long 
 ages of incursion and oppression which have im¬ 
 poverished and devastated Italy had at last taken 
 effect upon the poultry, and made it as poor as the 
 population. 
 
 I do not want to give too exclusive an impression 
 of Venetian industry, however, for now I remember 
 the Venetian lasagnoni , whom I never saw doing any 
 thing, and who certainly abound in respectable numbers. 
 
 The lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a 
 loafer, without the admixture of ruffianism, which 
 blemishes most loafers of northern race. He may be 
 quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot 
 be a rowdy,—that pleasing blossom on the nose of 
 our fast, high-fed, thick-blooded civilization. In Venice 
 he must not be confounded with other loiterers at the 
 caff£; not with the natty people who talk politics 
 interminably over little cups of black coffee; not with 
 those old habitues, who sit forever under the Pro- 
 curatie, their hands folded upon the tops of their 
 sticks, and staring at the ladies who pass with a curious 
 steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not 
 pleasing in the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last 
 persons who bear any likeness to the lasagnone are 
 the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces comically 
 
 Venetian Life . 20 
 
306 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 anglicized by leg-of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, 
 the lasagnone does not flourish in the best caffe; h$ 
 comes to perfection in cheaper resorts, for he is com¬ 
 monly not rich; It often happens that a glass of 
 water, flavored with a little anisette, is the order over 
 which he sits a whole evening. He knows the waiter 
 intimately, and does not call him “Shop!” (Bottega,) 
 as less familiar people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as the 
 waiter is pretty sure to be named. “Behold!” he 
 says, when the servant places his modest drink before 
 him, “who is that loveliest blonde there?” Or to his 
 fellow-lasagnone: “She regards me! I have broken 
 her the heart!” This is his sole business and mission, 
 the cruel lasagnone—to break ladies the heart. He 
 spares no condition,—neither rank nor wealth is any 
 defense against him. I often wonder what is in that 
 note he continually shows to his friend. The con¬ 
 fession of some broken heart, I think. When he has 
 folded it, and put it away, he chuckles “Ah, car a!” 
 and sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar. It is 
 unlighted, for fire consumes cigars. I never see him 
 read the papers,—neither the Italian papers nor the 
 Parisian journals, though if he can get “Galignani” he 
 is glad, and he likes to pretend to a knowledge of 
 English, uttering upon occasion, with great relish, such 
 distinctively English words as “Yes” and “Not,” and 
 to the waiter, “A-little-fire-if-you-please.” He sits very 
 late in the caffe, and he touches his hat—his curly 
 French hat—to the company as he goes out with a 
 mild swagger, his cane held lightly in his left hand, 
 his coat cut snugly to show his hips, and genteelly 
 swaying with the motion of his body. He is a dandy, 
 of course,—all Italians are dandies,—but his vanity is 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 307 
 
 perfectly harmless, and his heart is not bad. He 
 would go half an hour out of his way to put you in 
 the direction of the Piazza. A little thing can make 
 him happy,—to stand in the pit at the opera, and 
 gaze at the ladies in the lower boxes—to attend the 
 Marionette, or the Malibran Theatre, and imperil the 
 peace of pretty seamstresses and contadinas—to stand 
 at the church doors and ogle the fair saints as they 
 pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, to thy lodging in 
 some mysterious height, and break hearts if thou wilt. 
 They are quickly mended. 
 
 Of other vagabonds in Venice, if I had my choice, 
 I think I must select a certain ruffian who deals in 
 dog-flesh, as the nearest my ideal of what a vagabond 
 should be in all respects. He stands habitually under 
 the Old Procuratie, beside a basket of small puppies 
 in that snuffling and quivering state which appears to 
 be the favorite condition of very young dogs, and 
 occupies himself in conversation with an adjacent 
 dealer in grapes and peaches, or sometimes fastidiously 
 engages in trimming the hair upon the closely shaven 
 bodies of the dogs; for in Venice it is the ambition of 
 every dog to look as much like the Lion of St. Mark 
 as the nature of the case will permit. My vagabond 
 at times makes expeditions to the groups of travelers 
 always seated in summer before the Caffe Florian, ap¬ 
 pearing at such times with a very small puppy,—neatly 
 poised upon the palm of his hand, and winking 
 pensively,—which he advertises to the company as a 
 “Beautiful Beast,” or a “Lovely Babe,” according to 
 the inspiration of his light and pleasant fancy. I think 
 the latter term is used generally as a means of in¬ 
 gratiation with the ladies, to whom my vagabond 
 
 20 
 
3°8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 always shows a demeanor of agreeable gallantry. I 
 never saw him sell any of these dogs, nor ever in the 
 least cast down by his failure to do so. His air is 
 grave, but not severe; there is even, at times, a certain 
 playfulness in his manner, possibly attributable to 
 sciampagnin. His curling black locks, together with 
 his velveteen jacket and pantaloons, are oiled and 
 glossy, and his beard is cut in the French-imperial 
 mode. His personal presence is unwholesome, and 
 it is chiefly his moral perfection as a vagabond that 
 makes him fascinating. One is so confident, however, 
 of his fitness for his position and business, and of his 
 entire contentment with it, that it is impossible not to 
 exult in him. 
 
 He is not without self-respect. I doubt, it would 
 be hard to find any Venetian of any vocation, however 
 base, who forgets that he too is a man arid a brother. 
 There is enough servility in the language,—it is the 
 fashion of the Italian tongue, with its Tu for inferiors, 
 Voi for intimates and friendly equals, and Lei for 
 superiors,—but in the manner there is none, and there 
 is a sense of equality in the ordinary intercourse of 
 the Venetians, at once apparent to foreigners. 
 
 All ranks are orderly; the spirit of aggression 
 seems not to exist among them, and the very boys 
 and dogs in Venice are so well-behaved, that I have 
 never seen the slightest disposition in them to quarrel. 
 Of course, it is of the street-boy—the biricchino, the 
 boy in his natural, unreclaimed state—that I speak. 
 This state is here, in winter, marked by a clouded 
 countenance, bare head, tatters, and wooden-soled shoes 
 open at the heels; in summer by a preternatural purity 
 of person, by abandon to the amphibious pleasure of 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 309 
 
 leaping off the bridges into the canals, and by an in¬ 
 satiable appetite for polenta, fried minnows, and water¬ 
 melons. 
 
 When one of these boys takes to beggary, as a 
 great many of them do, out of a spirit of adventure 
 and wish to pass the time, he carries out the enterprise 
 with splendid daring. A favorite artifice is to approach 
 Charity with a slice of polenta in one hand, and, with 
 the other extended, implore a soldo to buy cheese to 
 eat with the polenta. The street-boys also often per¬ 
 form the duties of the gransieri , who draw your gon¬ 
 dola to shore, and keep it firm with a hook. To this 
 order of beggar I usually gave; but one day at the 
 railway station I had no soldi, and as I did not wish 
 to render my friend discontented with future alms by 
 giving silver, I deliberately apologized, praying him to 
 excuse me, and promising him for another time. I 
 cannot forget the lofty courtesy with which he returned, 
 — il S’accomodi pur, Signori” They have sometimes 
 a sense of humor, these poor swindlers, and can enjoy 
 the exposure of their own enormities. An amiable 
 rogue drew our gondola to land one evening when we 
 went too late to see the church of San Giorgio Mag- 
 giore. The sacristan made us free of a perfectly dark 
 church, and we rewarded him as if it had been noon¬ 
 day. On our return to the gondola, the same beggar 
 whom we had just feed held out his hat for another 
 alms. “But we have just paid you,” we cried in an 
 agony of grief and desperation. “*Sz, signori!” he ad¬ 
 mitted with an air of argument, “ Ivero . Ma , la chiesa !” 
 (Yes, gentlemen, it is true. But the church!) he added 
 with confidential insinuation, and a patronizing wave 
 of the hand toward the edifice, as if he had been San 
 
3 io 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 
 Giorgio himself, and held the church as a source of 
 revenue. This was too much, and we laughed him to 
 scorn; at which, beholding the amusing abomination of 
 his conduct, he himself joined in our laugh with a 
 cheerfulness that won our hearts. 
 
 Beggary is attended by no disgrace in Italy, and it 
 therefore comes that no mendicant is without a proper 
 degree of the self-respect common to all classes. In¬ 
 deed, the habit of taking gifts of money is so general 
 and shameless that the street beggars must be diffident 
 souls indeed if they hesitated to ask for it A per¬ 
 fectly well-dressed and well-mannered man will take 
 ten soldi from you for a trifling service, and not con¬ 
 sider himself in the least abased. The detestable custom 
 of largess, instead of wages, still obtains in so great 
 degree in Venice that a physician, when asked for his 
 account, replies: “What you please to give.” Knowing 
 these customs, I hope I have never acted discourteously 
 to the street beggars of Venice even when I gave 
 them nothing, and I know that only one of them ever 
 so far forgot himself as to curse me for not giving. 
 Him, however, I think to have been out of his right 
 mind at the time. 
 
 There were two mad beggars in the parish of San 
 Stefano, whom I should be sorry to leave unmentioned 
 here. One, who presided chiefly over the Campo San 
 Stefano, professed to be also a facchino, but I never 
 saw him employed, except in addressing select circles 
 of idlers whom a brawling noise always draws together 
 in Venice. He had been a soldier, and he sometimes 
 put himself at the head of a file of Croats passing 
 through the campo, and gave them the word of com¬ 
 mand, to the great amusement of those swarthy bar- 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 311 
 
 barians. He was a good deal in drink, and when in 
 this state was proud to go before any ladies who might 
 be passing, and clear away the boys and idlers, to 
 make room for them. When not occupied in any of 
 these ways, he commonly slept in the arcades of the 
 old convent. 
 
 But the mad beggar of Campo Sant’ Angelo seemed 
 to have a finer sense of what became him as a mad¬ 
 man and a beggar, and never made himself obnoxious 
 by his noise. He was, in fact, very fat and amiable, 
 and in the summer lay asleep, for the most part, at a 
 certain street corner which belonged to him. When 
 awake he was a man of extremely complaisant pre¬ 
 sence, and suffered no lady to go by without a compli¬ 
 ment to her complexion, her blond hair, or her beauti¬ 
 ful eyes, whichever it might be. He got money for 
 these attentions, and people paid him for any sort of 
 witticism. One day he said to the richest young dandy 
 of the city,—“Pah! you stomach me with your per¬ 
 fumes and fine airs;” for which he received half a 
 florin. His remarks to gentlemen had usually this 
 sarcastic flavor. I am sorry to say that so excellent a 
 madman was often drunk and unable to fulfill his 
 duties to society. 
 
 There are, of course, laws against mendicancy in 
 Venice, and they are, of course, never enforced. Beg¬ 
 gars abound everywhere, and nobody molests them. 
 There was long a troop of weird sisters in Campo San 
 Stefano, who picked up a livelihood from the foreigners 
 passing to and from the Academy of Fine Arts. They 
 addressed people with the title of Count, and no doubt 
 gained something by this sort of heraldry, though there 
 are counts in Venice almost as poor as themselves, and 
 
312 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 titles are not distinctions. The Venetian seldom gives 
 to beggars; he says deliberately, “No go” (I have no¬ 
 thing), or “ Quando ritornero ” (when I return), and 
 never comes back that way. I noticed that profes¬ 
 sional hunger and cold took this sort of denial very 
 patiently, as they did every other; but I confess I had 
 never the heart to practice it. In my walks to the 
 Public Gardens there was a venerable old man, with 
 the beard and bearing of a patriarch, whom I en¬ 
 countered on the last bridge of the Riva, and who 
 there asked alms of me. When I gave him a soldo, 
 he returned me a blessing which I would be ashamed 
 to take in the United States for half a dollar; and 
 when the soldo was in some inaccessible pocket, and I 
 begged him to await my coming back, he said sweetly, 
 —“Very well, Signor, I will be here.” And I must 
 say, to his credit, that he never broke his promise, nor 
 suffered me, for shame’s sake, to break mine. He was 
 quite a treasure to me in this respect, and assisted me 
 to form habits of punctuality. 
 
 That exuberance of manner which one notes, the 
 first thing, in his intercourse with Venetians, charac¬ 
 terizes all classes, but is most excessive and relishing 
 in the poor. There is a vast deal of ceremony with 
 every order, and one hardly knows what to do with 
 the numbers of compliments it is necessary to respond 
 to. A Venetian does not come to see you, he comes 
 to revere you; he not only asks if you be well when 
 he meets you, but he bids you remain well at parting, 
 and desires you to salute for him all common friends; 
 he reverences you at leave-taking; he will sometimes 
 consent to incommode you with a visit; he will relieve 
 you of the disturbance when he rises to go. All spon- 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 3 13 
 
 taneous wishes which must, with us, take original forms, 
 for lack of the complimentary phrase, are formally ex¬ 
 pressed by him,—good appetite to you, when you go 
 to dinner; much enjoyment, when you go to the theatre; 
 a pleasant walk, if you meet in promenade. He is 
 your servant at meeting and parting; he begs to be 
 commanded when he has misunderstood you. But 
 courtesy takes its highest flights, as I hinted, from the 
 poorest company. Acquaintances of this sort, when 
 not on the Cid ciappa footing, or that of the familiar 
 thee and thou, always address each other in Lei (lord- 
 ship), or Elo , as the Venetians have it; and their com¬ 
 pliment-making at encounter and separation is endless: 
 I salute you! Remain well! Master! Mistress! {Paronl 
 parona!) being repeated as long as the polite persons 
 are within hearing. 
 
 One day, as we passed through the crowded 
 Merceria, an old Venetian friend of mine, who trod 
 upon the dress of a young person before us, called 
 out, “ Scusate , lella giovane!” (Pardon, beautiful girl!) 
 She was not so fair nor so young as I have seen 
 women; but she half turned her face with a forgiving 
 smile, and seemed pleased with the accident that had 
 won her the amiable apology. The waiter of the caffe 
 frequented by the people, says to the ladies for whom 
 he places seats,—“Take this place, beautiful blonde;” 
 or, “Sit here, lovely brunette,” as it happens. 
 
 A Venetian who enters or leaves any place of 
 public resort touches his hat to the company, and one 
 day at the restaurant some ladies, who had been din¬ 
 ing there, said “ Complimenti!” on going out, with a 
 grace that went near to make the beefsteak tender. 
 It is this uncostly gentleness of bearing which gives a 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 3 H 
 
 winning impression of the whole people, whatever 
 selfishness or real discourtesy lie beneath it. At home 
 it sometimes seems that we are in such haste to live 
 and be done with it, we have no time to be polite. 
 Or is popular politeness merely a vice of servile 
 peoples? And is it altogether better to be rude? I 
 wish it were not. If you are lost in his city (and you 
 are pretty sure to be lost there, continually), a Vene¬ 
 tian will go with you wherever you wish. And he will 
 do this amiable little service out of what one may say 
 old civilization has established in place of goodness of 
 heart, but which is perhaps not so different from it. 
 
 You hear people in the streets bless each other in 
 the most dramatic fashion. I once caught these part¬ 
 ing words between an old man and a young girl; 
 
 Giovanetta. Revered sir! (Patron riverito!) 
 
 Vecchio. (With that peculiar backward wave and 
 beneficent wag of the hand, only possible to Italians.) 
 Blessed child! (Benedetta!) 
 
 It was in a crowd, but no one turned round at the 
 utterance of terms which Anglo-Saxons would scarcely 
 use in their most emotional moments. The old gentle¬ 
 man who sells boxes for the theatre in the Old Pro- 
 curatie always gave me his benediction when I took 
 a box. 
 
 There is equal exuberance of invective, and I have 
 heard many fine maledictions on the Venice streets, 
 but I recollect none more elaborate than that of a 
 gondolier who, after listening peacefully to a quarrel 
 between two other boatmen, suddenly took part against 
 one of them, and saluted him with,—“Ah! baptized 
 son of a dog! And if I had been present at thy bap- 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 315 
 
 tism, I would have dashed thy brains out against the 
 baptismal font!” 
 
 All the theatrical forms of passion were visible in 
 a scene I witnessed in a little street near San Samuele, 
 where I found the neighborhood assembled at doors 
 and windows in honor of a wordy battle between two 
 poor women. One of these had been forced in-doors 
 by her prudent husband, and the other upbraided her 
 across the marital barrier. The assailant was washing, 
 and twenty times she left her tub to revile the besieged, 
 who thrust her long arms out over those of her hus¬ 
 band, and turned each reproach back upon her who 
 uttered it, thus:— 
 
 Assailant. Beast! 
 
 Besieged. Thou! 
 
 A. Fool! 
 
 B. Thou! 
 
 A. Liar! 
 
 B. Thou! 
 
 E via in seguito! At last the assailant, beating her 
 breast with both hands, and tempestuously swaying 
 her person back and forth, wreaked her scorn in one 
 wild outburst of vituperation, and returned finally to 
 her tub, wisely saying, on the purple verge of asphyxia¬ 
 tion, “ O, non discorro piu con genteP 
 
 I returned half, an hour later, and she was laugh¬ 
 ing and playing sweetly with her babe. 
 
 It suits the passionate nature of the Italians to have 
 incredible ado about buying and selling, and a day’s 
 shopping is a sort of campaign, from which the shop¬ 
 per returns plundered and discomfited, or laden with 
 the spoil of vanquished shopmen. 
 
VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 316 
 
 The embattled commercial transaction is conducted 
 in this wise: 
 
 The shopper enters, and prices a given article. 
 The shopman names a sum of which only the fervid 
 imagination of the South could conceive as correspond¬ 
 ing to the value of the goods. 
 
 The purchaser instantly starts back with a wail of 
 horror and indignation, and the shopman throws him¬ 
 self forward over the counter with a protest that, far 
 from being dear, the article is ruinously cheap at the 
 price stated, though they may nevertheless agree for 
 something less. 
 
 What, then, is the very most ultimate price? 
 
 Properly, the very most ultimate price is so much. 
 (Say, the smallest trifle under the price first asked.) 
 
 The purchaser moves toward the door. He comes 
 back, and offers one third of the very most ultimate 
 price. 
 
 The shopman, with a gentle desperation, declares 
 that the thing cost him as much. He cannot really 
 take the offer. He regrets, but he cannot. That the 
 gentleman would say something more! So much— 
 for example. That he regard the stuff, its quality, 
 fashion, beauty. 
 
 The gentleman laughs him to scorn. Ah, heigh! 
 and, coming forward, he picks up the article and 
 reviles it. Out of the mode, old, fragile, ugly of its 
 kind. 
 
 The shopman defends his wares. There is not 
 such quantity and quality elsewhere in Venice. But 
 if the gentleman will give even so much (still some¬ 
 thing preposterous), he may have it, though truly its 
 sale for that money is utter ruin. 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 317 
 
 The shopper walks straight to the door. The shop¬ 
 man calls him back from the threshold, or sends his 
 boy to call him back from the street. 
 
 Let him accommodate himself—which is to say, 
 take the thing at his own price. 
 
 He takes it. 
 
 The shopman says cheerfully, “Servo suo!” 
 
 The purchaser responds, “Bon di! Patron!” (Good 
 day! my Master!) 
 
 Thus, as I said, every bargain is a battle, and 
 every purchase a triumph or a defeat. The whole 
 thing is understood; the opposing forces know per¬ 
 fectly well all that is to be done beforehand, and 
 retire after the contest, like the captured knights in 
 “ Morgante Maggiore” “calm as oil,” — however 
 furious and deadly their struggle may have appeared 
 to strangers. 
 
 Foreigners soon discern, however, that there is no 
 bloodshed in such encounters, and enter into them 
 with a zeal as great as that of natives, though with 
 less skill. I knew one American who prided himself 
 on such matters, and who haughtily closed a certain 
 bargain without words, as he called it. The shopman 
 offered several articles, for which he demanded prices 
 amounting in all to ninety-three francs. His wary 
 customer rapidly computed the total and replied 
 “Without words, now, I’ll give you a hundred francs 
 for the lot.” With a pensive elevation of the eye¬ 
 brows, and a reluctant shrug of the shoulders, the 
 shopman suffered him to take them. 
 
 Your Venetian is simpatico , if he is any thing. 
 He is always ready to feel and to express the deepest 
 
3i8 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 concern, and I rather think he likes to have his sensi¬ 
 bilities appealed to, as a pleasant and healthful exer¬ 
 cise for them. His sympathy begins at home, and he 
 generously pities himself as the victim of a combina¬ 
 tion of misfortunes, which leave him citizen of a country 
 without liberty, without commerce, without money, 
 without hope. He next pities his fellow-citizens, who 
 are as desperately situated as himself. Then he pities 
 the degradation, corruption, and despair into which 
 the city has fallen. And I think his compassion is 
 the most hopeless thing in his character. That alone 
 is touched; that alone is moved; and when its im¬ 
 pulse ceases he and every thing about him remain 
 just as before. 
 
 With the poor, this sensibility is amusingly mis¬ 
 chievous. They never speak of one of their own class 
 without adding some such ejaculation as “Poor fellow!” 
 or, “Poor little creature!” They pity all wretchedness, 
 no matter from what cause, and the greatest rogue has 
 their compassion when under a cloud. It is all but 
 impossible to punish thieves in Venice, where they are 
 very bold and numerous; for the police are too much 
 occupied with political surveillance to give due atten¬ 
 tion to mere cutpurses and housebreakers, and even 
 when they make an arrest, people can hardly be got 
 to bear witness against their unhappy prisoner. Povareto 
 anca lul There is no work and no money; people 
 must do something; so they steal. Ci vuol pazienzal 
 Bear witness against an ill-fated fellow-sufferer? God 
 forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar might run 
 from Rialto to San Marco, and not one compassionate 
 soul in the Merceria would do aught to arrest him— 
 povaj'eto! Thieves came to the house of a friend of 
 
VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 
 
 319 
 
 mine at noonday, when his servant was out. They 
 tied their boat to his landing, entered his house, filled 
 their boat yvith. plunder from it, and rowed out into 
 the canal. The neighbors on the floor above saw 
 them, and cried “Thieves! thieves!” It was in the 
 most frequented part of the Grand Canal, where 
 scores of boats passed and repassed; but no one 
 molested the thieves, and these povareti escaped with 
 their booty.* 
 
 One night, in a little street through which we 
 passed to our ferry, there came a wild rush before us, 
 of a woman screaming for help, and pursued by her 
 husband with a knife in his hand; their children, 
 shrieking piteously, came after them. The street was 
 crowded with people and soldiers, but no one put out 
 his hand; and the man presently overtook his wife and 
 stabbed her in the back. We only knew of the rush, 
 but what it all meant we could not tell, till we saw 
 the woman bleeding from the stab, which, happily, 
 was slight. Inquiry of the by-standers developed the 
 facts, but, singularly enough, scarcely a word of pity. 
 It was entirely a family affair, it seemed; the man, 
 poor little fellow, had a mistress, and his wife had 
 maddened him with reproaches. Come si fa? He had 
 to stab her. The woman’s case was not one that 
 appealed to popular compassion, and the only words 
 
 * The rogues, it must be confessed, are often very polite. This 
 same friend of mine one day found a man in the act of getting down 
 into a boat with his favorite singing bird in its cage. ‘ ‘ What are 
 you doing with that bird?” he thought himself authorized to inquire. 
 The thief looked about him a moment, and perceiving himself de¬ 
 tected, handed back the cage with a cool 11 La scusi /” (“Beg par¬ 
 don! ”) as if its removal had been a trifling inadvertence. 
 
320 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 of pity for her which I heard were expressed by 
 the wife of a fruiterer, whom her husband angrily 
 silenced. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 It was natural that the Venetians, whose State lay 
 upon the borders of the Greek Empire, and whose 
 greatest commerce was with the Orient, should be in¬ 
 fluenced by the Constantinopolitan civilization. Mutinelli 
 records that in the twelfth century they had many 
 religious offices and observances in common with the 
 Greeks, especially the homily or sermon, which formed 
 a very prominent part of the service of worship. At 
 this time, also, when the rupture of the Lombard 
 League had left other Italian cities to fall back into 
 incessant local wars, and barbarized their customs, the 
 people of Venice dressed richly and delicately, after 
 the Greek fashion. They combed and dressed their 
 hair, and wore the long, pointed Greek beard;* and 
 though these Byzantine modes fell, for the most part, 
 into disuse, in after-time, there is still a peculiarity of 
 dress among the women of the Venetian poor which 
 is said to have been inherited from the oriental costumes 
 of Constantinople; namely, that high-heeled, sharp-toed 
 slipper, or sandal, which covers the front of the foot, 
 and drops from the heel at every step, requiring no 
 slight art in the wearer to keep it on at all. 
 
 * A Foscarini, in 1687, was the last patrician who wore the 
 beard. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 321 
 
 The philosophic vision, accustomed to relate trifling 
 particulars to important generalities, may perhaps see 
 another relic of Byzantine civilization among the Vene¬ 
 tians, in that jealous restraint which they put upon all 
 the social movements of young girls, and the great 
 liberty which they allow to married women. It is true 
 that their damsels are now no longer imprisoned under 
 the parental roof, as they were in times when they 
 never left its shelter but to go, closely veiled, to com¬ 
 munion in the church, on Christmas and Easter; but 
 it is still quite impossible that any young lady should 
 go out alone. Indeed, she would scarcely be secure 
 from insult in broad day if she did so. She goes out 
 with her governess, and, even with this protection, she 
 cannot be too guarded and circumspect in her bearing; 
 for in Venice a woman has to encounter upon the 
 public street a rude license of glance, from men of all 
 ages and conditions, which falls little short of outrage. 
 They stare at her as she approaches; and I have seen 
 them turn and contemplate ladies as they passed 
 them, keeping a few paces in advance, with a leisurely 
 sidelong gait. Something of this insolence might be 
 forgiven to thoughtless, hot-blooded youth; but the 
 gross and knowing leer that the elders of the Piazza 
 and the caffe put on at the approach of a pretty girl 
 is an ordeal which few women, not as thoroughly 
 inured to it as the Venetians, would care to encounter. 
 However, as I never heard the trial complained of by 
 any but foreigners, I suppose it is not regarded by 
 Italians as intolerable; and it is certain that an audible 
 compliment, upon the street, to a pretty girl of the 
 poor, is by no means an affront. 
 
 The arts of pleasing and of coquetry come by na- 
 
 Venetian Life . 21 
 
322 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 ture to the gentler sex; and if in Italy they add to 
 them a habit of intrigue, I wonder how much they are 
 to blame, never being in anywise trusted? They do 
 not differ from persons of any age or sex in that 
 country, if the world has been as justly, as it has always 
 been firmly, persuaded that the people of Italy are 
 effete in point of good faith. I have seen much to 
 justify this opinion, and something also to confute it; 
 and as long as Garibaldi lives, I shall not let myself 
 believe that a race which could produce a man so 
 signally truthful and single-hearted is a race of liars 
 and cheats. I think the student of their character 
 should also be slow to upbraid Italians for their 
 duplicity, without admitting, in palliation of the fault, 
 facts of long ages of alien and domestic oppression, in 
 politics and religion, which must account for a vast 
 deal of every kind of evil in Italy. Yet after exception 
 and palliation has been duly made, it must be con¬ 
 fessed that in Italy it does not seem to be thought 
 shameful to tell lies, and that there the standard of 
 sincerity, compared with that of the English or American, 
 is low, as the Italian standard of morality in other 
 respects is also comparatively low. 
 
 With the women, bred in idleness and ignorance, 
 the imputed national untruthfulness takes the form 
 naturally to be expected, and contributes to a state 
 of things which must be examined with the greatest 
 caution and reservation by every one but the Italians 
 themselves. Goethe says that there is no society so 
 corrupt that a man may not live virtuously in it; and 
 I think the immorality of any people will not be 
 directly and wholly seen by the stranger who does not 
 seek it. Certainly, the experience and acquaintance 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 323 
 
 of a foreigner in Italy must have been most unfortu¬ 
 nate, if they confirm all the stories of corruption told 
 by Italians themselves. A little generous distrust is 
 best in matters of this kind; but while I strengthen 
 my incredulity concerning the utter depravation of 
 Venetian society in one respect, I am not disposed to 
 deal so leniently with it in others. The state of things 
 is bad in Venice, not because all women in society 
 are impure, but because the Italian theory of morals 
 does not admit the existence of opportunity without 
 sin. It is by rare chance that a young girl makes 
 acquaintance with young men in society; she seldom 
 talks with them at the parties to which she is some¬ 
 times taken by her mother, and they do not call upon 
 her at her home; while for her to walk alone with a 
 young man would be vastly more scandalous than much 
 worse things, and is, consequently, unheard of. The 
 Italians say freely they cannot trust their women as 
 northern women are trusted; and some Italian women 
 frankly confess that their sex would be worse if it 
 were trusted more. But the truth does not appear in 
 this shallow suspicion and this shallow self-conviction; 
 and one who cares to have a just estimate of this 
 matter must by no means believe all the evil he hears. 
 There may be much corruption in society, but there is 
 infinitely more wrong in the habits of idle gossip and 
 guilty scandal, which eat all sense of shame and pity 
 out of the heart of Venice. There is no parallel to 
 the prying, tattling, backbiting littleness of the place 
 elsewhere in the world. A small country village in 
 America or England has its meddlesomeness, but not 
 its wordly, wicked sharpness. Figure the meanness of 
 a chimney-corner gossip, added to the bitter shrewd- 
 
 21* 
 
3M 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE, 
 
 ness and witty penetration of a gifted roue, and you 
 have some idea of Venetian scandal. In that city, 
 where all the nobler organs of expression are closed 
 by political conditions, the viler channels run continual 
 filth and poison, and the people, shut out from public 
 and free discussion of religious and political themes, 
 occupy themselves with private slander, and rend each 
 other in their abject desperation. As it is part of the 
 existing political demonstration to avoid the opera and 
 theatre, the Venetians are deprived of these harmless 
 distractions; balls and evening parties, at which people, 
 in other countries, do nothing worse than bore each 
 other, are almost unknown, for the same reason; and 
 when persons meet in society, it is too often to retail 
 personalities, or Italian politics made as unintelligible 
 and as like local gossip as possible. The talk which 
 is small and noxious in private circles is the same 
 thing at the caff£, when the dread of spies does not 
 reduce the talkers to a dreary silence. Not permitted 
 to feel the currents of literature and the great world’s 
 thought in religion freshly and directly, they seldom 
 speak of these things, except in that tone of obsolete 
 superiority which Italians are still prone to affect, as 
 the monopolists of culture. As to Art, the Venetians 
 are insensible to it and ignorant of it, here in the very 
 atmosphere of Art, to a degree absolutely amusing. I 
 would as soon think of asking a fish’s opinion of water 
 as of asking a Venetian’s notion of architecture or 
 painting, unless he were himself a professed artist or 
 critic. 
 
 Admitting, however, that a great part of the cor¬ 
 ruption of society is imputed, there still remains, no 
 doubt, a great deal of real immorality to be accounted 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 325 
 
 for: This, I think, is often to be attributed to the bad 
 system of female education, and the habits of idleness 
 in which women are bred. Indeed, to Americans, the 
 whole system of Italian education seems calculated to 
 reduce women to a state of imbecile captivity before 
 marriage; and I have no fault to find with the Italians 
 that they are jealous in guarding those whom they 
 have unfitted to protect themselves, but have rather to 
 blame them that, after marriage, their women are 
 thrown at once upon society, when worse than helpless 
 against its temptations. Except with those people who 
 attempt to maintain a certain appearance in public 
 upon insufficient means (and there are too many of 
 these in Venice as everywhere else), and who spare in 
 every other way that they may spend on dress, it does 
 not often happen that Venetian ladies are housekeepers. 
 Servants are cheap and numerous, as they are un¬ 
 cleanly and untrustworthy, and the Venetians prefer 
 to keep them* rather than take part in housewifely 
 duties; and, since they must lavish upon dress and 
 show, to suffer from cold and hunger in their fireless 
 houses and at their meagre boards. In this way the 
 young girls, kept imprisoned from the world, instead of 
 learning cookery and other domestic arts, have the 
 grievous burden of idleness added to that of their 
 solitary confinement, not only among the rich and noble, 
 but among that large class which is neither and wishes 
 to appear both.** Their idle thoughts, not drilled by 
 
 * A clerk or employe with a salary of fifty cents a day keeps a 
 maid-servant, that his wife may fulfill to society the important duty 
 of doing nothing. 
 
 ** The poet Gray, genteelly making the grand tour in 1740, 
 wrote to his father from Florence: “The only thing the Italians 
 
326 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 study nor occupied with work, run upon the freedom 
 which marriage shall bring them, and form a distorted 
 image of the world, of which they know as little as of 
 their own undisciplined selves. Denied the just and 
 wholesome amusements of society during their girlhood, 
 it is scarcely a matter of surprise that they should 
 throw themselves into the giddiest whirl of its excite¬ 
 ment when marriage sets them free to do so. 
 
 I have said I do not think Venetians who give 
 each other bad names are always to be credited, and 
 I have no doubt that many a reputation in Venice is 
 stained while the victim remains without guilt. A 
 questioned reputation is, however, no great social 
 calamity. It forms no bar to society, and few people 
 are so cruel as to blame it, though all discuss it. And 
 it is here that the harshness of American and English 
 society toward the erring woman (harshness which is 
 not injustice, but half-justice only) contrasts visibly to 
 our advantage over the bad naivete and lenity of the 
 Italians. The carefully secluded Italian girl is ac- 
 
 shine in is their reception of strangers. At such times every thing 
 is magnificence: the more remarkable as in their ordinary course 
 of life they are parsimonious to a degree of nastiness. I saw in one 
 of the vastest palaces of Rome (that of the Prince Pamfilio), the 
 apartment which he himself inhabited, a bed that most servants in 
 England would disdain to lie in, and furniture much like that of a 
 soph at Cambridge. This man is worth 30,000/. a year.” Italian 
 nature has changed so little in a century, that all this would hold 
 admirably true of Italian life at this time. The goodly outside in 
 religion, in morals, in every thing is too much the ambition of Italy; 
 this achieved, she is content to endure any pang of self-denial, and 
 sell what little comfort she knows—it is mostly imported, like the 
 word, from England—to strangers at fabulous prices. In Italy the 
 luxuries of life are cheap, and the conveniences unknown or exces¬ 
 sively dear. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 3^7 
 
 customed to hear of things and speak of things which, 
 with us, parents strive in every way to keep from their 
 daughters’ knowledge; and while her sense of delicacy 
 is thus early blunted, while she is thus used to know 
 good and evil, she hears her father and mother com¬ 
 ment on the sinful errors of a friend or neighbor, who 
 visits them and meets them every day in society. How 
 can the impunity of the guilt which she believes to 
 exist around her but sometimes have its effect, and 
 ripen, with opportunity, into wrong? Nay, if the girl 
 reveres her parents at all, how can she think the sin, 
 which they caress in the sinner, is so very bad? If, 
 however, she escape all these early influences of de¬ 
 pravation; if her idleness, and solitude, and precocious 
 knowledge leave her unvitiated; if, when she goes into 
 society, it is by marriage with a man who is neither a 
 dotard nor a fortune-seeker, and who remains constant 
 and does not tempt her, by neglect, to forbode offense 
 and to inflict anticipative reprisals—yet her purity goes 
 uncredited, as her guilt would go unpunished; scandal 
 makes haste to blacken her name to the prevailing 
 hue; and whether she has sin or not, those with sin 
 will cast, not the stone that breaks and kills, but the 
 filth that sticks and stinks. The wife must continue 
 the long social exile of her girlhood if she would not 
 be the prey of scandal. The cavaliere servente no 
 longer exists, but gossip now attributes often more 
 than one lover in his place, and society has the cruel 
 clemency to wink at the license. Nothing is in worse 
 taste than jealousy, and, consequently, though intrigue 
 sometimes causes stabbing, and the like, among low 
 people, it is rarely noticed by persons of good breed¬ 
 ing. It seems to me that in Venetian society the re- 
 
328 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 form must begin, not with dissolute life, but with the 
 social toleration of the impure, and with the wanton 
 habits of scandal, which make all other life incredible, 
 and deny to virtue the triumph of fair fame. 
 
 I confess that what I saw of the innocent amuse¬ 
 ments of this society was not enough to convince me 
 of their brilliancy and attractiveness; but I doubt if a 
 foreigner can be a trustworthy judge of these things, 
 and perhaps a sketch drawn by an alien hand, in the 
 best faith, might have an air of caricature. I would 
 not, therefore, like to trust my own impression of social 
 diversions. They were, very probably, much more 
 lively and brilliant than I thought them. But Italians 
 assembled anywhere, except at the theatre or the caffe, 
 have a certain stiffness, all the more surprising, because 
 tradition has always led one to expect exactly the re¬ 
 verse of them. I have seen nothing equal to the 
 formality of this people, who deride colder nations for 
 inflexible manners; and I have certainly never seen 
 society in any small town in America so ill at ease as 
 I have seen society in Venice, writhing under self-im¬ 
 posed restraints. At a musical soiree, attended by the 
 class of people who at home would have been chatty 
 and sociable, given to making acquaintance and to 
 keeping up acquaintance,—the young men harmlessly 
 talking and walking with the young ladies, and the old 
 people listening together, while constant movement and 
 intercourse kept life in the assembly, and there was 
 some real pleasure felt amidst a good deal of un¬ 
 avoidable suffering,—I say, I found such a soiree in 
 Venice to be a spectacle of ladies planted in formal 
 rows of low-necks and white dresses around the four 
 sides of one room, and of gentlemen restively im- 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 329 
 
 prisoned in dress-coats and white gloves in another. 
 During the music all these devoted people listened at¬ 
 tentively, and at the end, the ladies lapsed back into 
 their chairs and fanned themselves, while the gentle¬ 
 men walked up and down the floor of their cell, and 
 stopped, two by two, at the door of the ladies’ room, 
 glanced mournfully athwart the moral barrier which 
 divided them, and sadly and dejectedly turned away. 
 Amazed at this singular species of social enjoyment, I 
 inquired afterward, of a Venetian lady, if evening 
 parties in Venice were usually such ordeals, and was 
 discouraged to learn that what I had seen was scarcely 
 an exaggeration of prevailing torments. Commonly 
 people do not know each other, and it is difficult for 
 the younger to procure introductions; and when there 
 is previous acquaintance, the presence of some com¬ 
 manding spirit is necessary to break the ice of pro¬ 
 priety, and substitute enjoyment for correctness of be¬ 
 havior. Even at dancing parties, where it would seem 
 that the poetry of motion might do something to soften 
 the rigid bosom of Venetian deportment, the poor 
 young people separate after each dance, and take each 
 sex its appointed prison, till the next quadrille offers 
 them a temporary liberation. For my own part, I 
 cannot wonder that young men fly these virtuous 
 scenes, and throng the rooms of those pleasant women 
 of the demi-monde , who only exact from them that they 
 shall be natural and agreeable; I cannot wonder that 
 their fair partners in wretchedness seize the first op¬ 
 portunity to revenge themselves upon the propriety 
 which has so cruelly used them. It is said that the 
 assemblies of the Jews, while quite as unexceptionable 
 in character, are far more sociable and lively than 
 
330 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 those of the Christians. The young Hebrews are fre¬ 
 quently intelligent, well-bred, and witty, with a savoir 
 faire which their Christian brethren lack. But, indeed, 
 the young Venetian is, at that age when all men are 
 owlish, ignorant, and vapid, the most owlish, ignorant, 
 and vapid man in the world. He talks, not milk-and- 
 water, but warm water alone, a little sweetened; and, 
 until he has grown wicked, has very little good in him. 
 
 Most ladies of fashion receive calls on a certain 
 day of each week, when it is made a matter of pride 
 to receive as many calls as possible. The number 
 sometimes reaches three hundred, when nobody sits 
 down, and few exchange more than a word with the 
 hostess. In winter, the stove is heated on these re¬ 
 ception days, and little cups of black coffee are passed 
 round to the company; in summer lemonade is sub¬ 
 stituted for the coffee; but in all seasons a thin, 
 waferish slice of toasted rusk (the Venetian baicolo ) is 
 offered to each guest with the drink. At receptions 
 where the sparsity of the company permits the lady of 
 the house to be seen, she is commonly visible on a 
 sofa, surrounded by visitors in a half-circle. Nobody 
 stays more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I have 
 sometimes found even this brief time of much greater 
 apparent length, and apt to produce a low state of 
 nerves, from which one seldom recovers before dinner. 
 Gentlemen, however, do not much frequent these re¬ 
 ceptions; and I assert again the diffidence I should 
 feel in offering this glance at Venetian social enjoy¬ 
 ment as conveying a just and full idea of it. There is 
 no doubt that the Venetians find delight in their as¬ 
 semblies, where a stranger seeks it in vain. I dare say 
 they would not think our own reunions brilliant, and 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 331 
 
 that, looking obliquely (as a foreigner must) on the 
 most sensible faces at one of our evening parties, they 
 might mistake the look of pathetic dejection, visible in 
 them, as the expression of people rather bored by 
 their pleasure than otherwise. 
 
 The conversazioni are of all sorts, from the con¬ 
 versazioni of the rigid proprietarians, where people sit 
 down to a kind of hopeless whist, at a soldo the point, 
 and say nothing, to the conversazioni of the demi¬ 
 monde where they say any thing. There are persons 
 in Venice, as well as everywhere else, of new-fashioned 
 modes of thinking, and these strive to give a greater 
 life and ease to their assemblies, by attracting as many 
 young men as possible; and in their families, gentle¬ 
 men are welcome to visit, and to talk with the young 
 ladies in the presence of their mothers. But though 
 such people are no more accused of impropriety than 
 the straitest of the old-fashioned, they are not regarded 
 with the greatest esteem, and their daughters do not 
 so readily find husbands. The Italians are fickle, the 
 women say; they get soon tired of their wives after 
 marriage, and when they see much of ladies before 
 marriage, they get tired of them then, and never make 
 them their wives. So it is much better to see nothing 
 of a possible husband till you actually have him. I 
 do not think conversazioni of any kind are popular 
 with young men, however; they like better to go to the 
 caffe, and the people you meet at private houses are 
 none the less interesting for being old, or middle-aged. 
 A great many of the best families, at present, receive 
 no company at all, and see their friends only in the 
 most private manner; though there are still cultivated 
 circles to which proper introduction gives the stranger 
 
332 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 (who has no Austrian acquaintance) access. But unless 
 he have thorough knowledge of Italian politics localized 
 to apply to Venice, an interest in the affairs, fortunes, 
 and misfortunes of his neighbors, and an acquaintance 
 with the Venetian dialect, I doubt if he will be able 
 to enjoy himself in the places so cautiously opened to 
 him. Even in the most cultivated society, the dialect 
 is habitually spoken; and if Italian is used, it is only 
 in compliment to some foreigner present, for whose 
 sake, also, topics of general interest are sometimes 
 chosen. 
 
 The best society is now composed of the families 
 of professional men, such as the advocates, the physi¬ 
 cians, and the richer sort of merchants. The shop¬ 
 keepers, master-artisans, and others, whom industry 
 and thrift distinguish from the populace, seem not to 
 have any social life, in the American sense. They are 
 wholly devoted to affairs, and partly from choice, and 
 partly from necessity, are sordid and grasping. It is 
 their class which has to fight hardest for life in Europe, 
 and they give no quarter to those above or below 
 them. The shop is their sole thought and interest, and 
 they never, never sink it. But, since they have habits 
 of diligence, and, as far as they are permitted, of 
 enterprise, they seem to be in great part the stuff from 
 which a prosperous State is to be rebuilt in Venice, if 
 ever the fallen edifice rise again. They have some¬ 
 times a certain independence of character, which a 
 better condition of things, and further education, would 
 perhaps lift into honesty; though as yet they seem not 
 to scruple to take any unfair advantage, and not to 
 know that commercial success can never rest perma¬ 
 nently on a system of bad faith. Below this class is 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 333 
 
 the populace, between which and the patrician order a 
 relation something like Roman clientage existed, con¬ 
 tributing greatly to the maintenance of exclusively 
 aristocratic power in the State. The greatest con¬ 
 spiracy (that of Marin Falier) which the commons ever 
 moved against the oligarchy was revealed to one of 
 the nobility by his plebeian creature, or client; and the 
 government rewarded by every species of indulgence a 
 class in which it had extinguished even the desire of 
 popular liberty. The heirs of the servile baseness 
 which such a system as this must create are not yet 
 extinct. There is still a helplessness in many of the 
 servant class, and a disposition to look for largess as 
 well as wages, which are the traits naturally resulting 
 from a state of voluntary submission to others. The 
 nobles, as the government, enervated and debauched 
 the character of the poor by public shows and count¬ 
 less holidays; as individuals, they taught them to de¬ 
 pend upon patrician favor, and not upon their own 
 plebeian industry, for support. The lesson was an evil 
 one, hard to be unlearned, and it is yet to be for¬ 
 gotten in Venice. Certain traits of soft and familiar 
 dependence give great charm to the populace; but 
 their existence makes the student doubtful of a future 
 to which the plebeians themselves look forward with 
 perfect hope and confidence. It may be that they are 
 right, and will really rise to the dignity of men, when 
 free government shall have taught them that the 
 laborer is worthy of his hire—after he has earned it. 
 This has been the result, to some degree, in the king¬ 
 dom of Italy, where the people have found that freedom, 
 like happiness, means work. 
 
334 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Undoubtedly the best people in the best society of 
 Venice are the advocates, an order of consequence 
 even in the times of the Republic, though then shut 
 out from participation in public affairs by a native 
 government, as now by a foreign one. Acquaintance 
 with several members of this profession impressed me 
 with a sense of its liberality of thought and feeling, 
 where all liberal thinking and feeling must be done 
 by stealth, and where the common intelligence of the 
 world sheds its light through multiplied barriers. 
 Daniele Manin, the President of the Republic of 1848, 
 was of this class, which, by virtue of its learning, 
 enlightenment, and talent, occupies a place in the 
 esteem and regard of the Venetian people far above 
 that held by the effete aristocracy. The better part 
 of the nobility, indeed, is merged in the professional 
 class, and some of the most historic names are novf 
 preceded by the learned titles of Doctor and Advocate, 
 rather than the cheap dignity of Count, offered by the 
 Austrian government to all the patricians who chose 
 to ask for it, when Austrian rule was extended over 
 their country. 
 
 The physicians rank next to the advocates, and 
 are usually men learned in their profession, however 
 erroneous and old-fashioned some of their theories of 
 practice may be. Like the advocates, they are often 
 men of letters: they write for the journals, and publish 
 little pamphlets on those topics of local history which 
 it is so much the fashion to treat in Venice. No one 
 makes a profession of authorship. The returns of an 
 author’s work would be too uncertain, and its re¬ 
 strictions and penalties would be too vexatious and 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 335 
 
 serious; and so literary topics are only occasionally 
 treated by those whose main energies are bent in 
 another direction. 
 
 The doctors are very numerous, and a considerable 
 number of them are Hebrews, who, even in the old 
 jealous times, exercised the noble art of medicine, 
 and who now rank very highly among their profes¬ 
 sional brethren. These physicians haunt the neat 
 and tasteful apothecary shops, where they sit upon 
 the benching that passes round the interior, read the 
 newspapers, and discuss the politics of Europe, Asia, 
 Africa, and America, with all the zest that you may 
 observe to characterize their discussions in Goldoni’s 
 plays. There they spend their evenings, and many 
 hours of every day, and thither the sick send to 
 call them,—each physician resorting to a particular 
 apothecary’s, and keeping his name inscribed on a 
 brass plate against the wall, above the head of the 
 druggist, who presides over the reunions of the doctors, 
 while his apprentice pestles away at their prescriptions. 
 
 In 1786 there were, what with priests, monks, 
 and nuns, a multitude of persons of ecclesiastical pro¬ 
 fession in Venice; and though many convents and 
 monasteries were abolished by Napoleon, the priests 
 are still very numerous, and some monastic establish¬ 
 ments have been revived under Austrian rule. The 
 high officers of the Church are, of course, well paid, 
 but most of the priesthood live miserably enough. 
 They receive from the government a daily stipend 
 of about thirty-five soldi, and they celebrate mass, 
 when they can get something to do in that way, for 
 forty soldi. Unless, then, they have private income 
 from their own family, or have pay for the education 
 
33& 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 of some rich man’s son or daughter, they must fare 
 slenderly. 
 
 There is much said, in and out of Venice, about 
 their influence in society; but this is greatly modified, 
 and I think is chiefly exercised upon the women of 
 the old-fashioned families. * I need hardly repeat 
 the well-known fact that all the moral power of the 
 Roman Church over the younger men is gone; these 
 seldom attend mass, and almost never go to confes¬ 
 sion, and the priests are their scorn and by-word. 
 Their example, in some degree, must be much fol¬ 
 lowed also by women; and though women must every¬ 
 where make more public professions of religion than 
 men, in order to retain social standing, I doubt if 
 the priests have a very firm hold upon the fears or 
 reverence of the sisters and wives of liberal Venetians. 
 
 If, however, they contribute in anywise to keep 
 down the people, they are themselves enslaved to their 
 superiors and to each other. No priest can leave the 
 city of Venice without permission of the Patriarch. 
 He is cut off as much as possible from his own kins- 
 people, and subjected to the constant surveillance of 
 his class. Obliged to maintain a respectable appear¬ 
 ance on twenty cents a day,—hampered and hindered 
 from all personal liberty and private friendship, and 
 hated by the great mass of the people,—I hardly 
 think the Venetian priest is to be envied in his life. 
 
 * It is no longer usual for girls to be educated in convents, and 
 most young ladies of the better classes, up to the age of thirteen or 
 fourteen years, receive their schooling in secular establishments, 
 whither they go every day for study, or where they sometimes live 
 as in our boarding-schools, and where they are taught the usual ac¬ 
 complishments, greater attention being paid to French and music 
 than to other things. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 33? 
 
 For my own part, knowing these things, I was not 
 able to cherish toward the priests those feelings of 
 scornful severity which swell many Protestant bosoms; 
 and so far as I made their acquaintance, I found them 
 kind and amiable. One ecclesiastic, at least, I may 
 describe as one of the most agreeable and cultivated 
 gentlemen I ever met. 
 
 Those who fare best among the priests are the 
 Jesuits, who returned from repeated banishment with 
 the Austrians in this century. Their influence is very 
 extended, and the confessional is their forte. Vene¬ 
 tians say that with the old and the old-fashioned these 
 crafty priests suggest remorse and impose penances; 
 that with the young men and the latter-day thinkers 
 they are men of the world, and pass off pleasant sins 
 as trifles. All the students of the government schools 
 are obliged by law to confess twice a month, and are 
 given printed certificates of confession, in blank, which 
 the confessor fills up and stamps with the seal of the 
 Church. Most of them go to confess at the church of 
 the Jesuits, who are glad to hear the cock-and-bull 
 story invented by the student, and to cultivate his 
 friendship by an easy penance and a liberal tone. 
 This ingenuous young man of course despises the con¬ 
 fessional. He goes to confess because the law obliges 
 him to do so; but the law cannot dictate what he 
 must confess. Therefore, he ventures as near down¬ 
 right burlesque as he dares, and (if the account he 
 gives of the matter be true) puts off his confessor 
 with some well-known fact, as that he has blasphemed. 
 Of course he has blasphemed, blasphemy being as 
 common as the forms of salutation in Venice. So the 
 priest, who wishes him to come again, and to found 
 
 Venetian Life . 22 
 
338 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 some sort of influence over him, says, — “Oh dear, 
 dear! This is very bad. Blasphemy is deadly sin. 
 If you must swear, swear by the heathen gods: say 
 Body of Diana, instead of Body of God; Presence of 
 the Devil, instead of Blood of Mary. Then there is 
 no harm done.” The students laugh over the pleasant 
 absurdity together, and usually agree upon the matter 
 of their semi-monthly confessions beforehand. 
 
 As I have hinted, the young men do not love the 
 government or the Church, and though I account for 
 the loss of much high hope and generous sympathy 
 in growth from youth to middle age, I cannot see 
 how, when they have replaced their fathers, the 
 present religious and political discontent is to be 
 modified. Nay, I believe it must become worse. 
 The middle-aged men of Venice grew up in times 
 of comparative quiet, when she did not so much care 
 who ruled over her, and negatively, at least, they 
 honored the Church. They may now hate the foreign 
 rule, but there are many considerations of timidity, 
 and many effects of education, to temper their hate. 
 They may dislike the priests, but they revere the 
 Church. The young men of to-day are bred in a 
 different school, and all their thoughts are of opposi¬ 
 tion to the government and of war upon the Church, 
 which they detest and ridicule. The fact that their 
 education is still in the hands of the priests in some 
 measure, does not render them more tractable. They 
 have no fears to be wrought upon by their clerical 
 professors, who seldom have sought to act upon their 
 nobler qualities. The influence of the priesthood is 
 again limited by the fact that the teachers in the 
 free schools of the city, to which the poor send their 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 339 
 
 children, are generally not priests; and ecclesiastics 
 are no longer so commonly the private tutors of the 
 children of the rich, as they once were when they 
 lived with the family, and exercised a direct and im¬ 
 portant influence on it. Express permission from the 
 pope is now necessary to the maintenance of a family 
 chaplain, and the office is nearly disused.* 
 
 The Republic was extremely jealous of the political 
 power of the priests, who could not hold secular office 
 in its time. A curious punishment was inflicted upon 
 the priest who proved false to his own vows of chastity, 
 and there is a most amusing old ballad—by no means 
 cleanly in its language—purporting to be the lament 
 of a priest suspended in the iron cage, appointed for 
 the purpose, from the belfry of the Campanile San 
 Marco, and enduring the jeers and insults of the mob 
 below. We may suppose that with advancing corrup¬ 
 tion (if corruption has indeed advanced from remote 
 to later times) this punishment was disused for want 
 of room to hang out the delinquents. In the last cen¬ 
 tury, especially, the nuns and monks led a pleasant 
 life. You may see in the old pictures of Pietro Longhi 
 and his school, how at the aristocratic and fashionable 
 convent of San Zaccaria, the lady nuns received their 
 friends and acquaintances of this world in the ante¬ 
 room, where the dames and their cavaliers flirted and 
 drank coffee, and the gentlemen coquetted with the 
 brides of heaven through their grated windows. 
 
 Among other privileges of the Church, abolished in 
 
 * In early days every noble Venetian family had its chaplain, 
 who, on the occasion of great dinners and suppers, remained in the 
 kitchen, and received as one of his perquisites the fragments that 
 game back from the table. 
 
340 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Venice long ago, was that ancient right of the monks 
 of St. Anthony, Abbot, by which their herds of swine 
 were made free of the whole city. These animals, 
 enveloped in an odor of sanctity, wandered here and 
 there, and were piously fed’by devout people, until 
 the year 1409, when, being found dangerous to chil¬ 
 dren and inconvenient to every body, they were made 
 the subject of a special decree, which deprived them 
 of their freedom of movement. The Republic was al¬ 
 ways limiting the privileges of the Church! It is known 
 how when the holy inquisition was established in its 
 dominions in 1249, the State stipulated that great part 
 of the process against heresy should be conducted by 
 secular functionaries, and that the sentence should rest 
 with the Doge and his councillors,—a kind of inquisi¬ 
 tion with claws clipped and teeth filed, as one may 
 say, and the only sort ever permitted in Venice. At 
 present there is no absolute disfavor shown to the 
 clergy; but, as we have seen, many a pleasant island, 
 which the monks of old reclaimed from the salty 
 marshes, and planted with gardens and vineyards, now 
 bears only the ruins of their convents, or else, con¬ 
 verted into a fortress or government depdt, is all thistly 
 with bayonets. Anciently, moreover, there were many 
 little groves in different parts of the city, where the 
 pleasant clergy, of what Mr. Ruskin would have us be¬ 
 lieve the pure and religious days of Venice, met and 
 made merry so riotously together by night that the 
 higher officers of the Church were forced to prohibit 
 their little soirees. 
 
 An old custom of rejoicing over the installation of 
 a new parish priest is still to be .seen in almost primi¬ 
 tive quaintness. The people of each parish—nobles. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 341 
 
 citizens, and plebeians alike—formerly elected their 
 own priest, and, till the year 1576, they used to per¬ 
 ambulate the city to the sound of drums, with banners 
 flying, after an election, and proclaim the name of their 
 favorite. On the day of the parroco’s induction his 
 portrait was placed over the church door, and after 
 the celebration of the morning mass, a breakfast was 
 given, which grew to be so splendid in time, that in 
 the fifteenth century a statute limited its profusion. In 
 the afternoon the new parroco, preceded by a band of 
 military music, visited all the streets and courts of his 
 parish, and then, as now, all the windows of the parish 
 were decorated with brilliant tapestries, and other gay- 
 colored cloths and pictures. In those times as in these, 
 there was an illumination at night, throngs of people 
 in the campo of the church, and booths for traffic in 
 cakes of flour and raisins,—fried in lard upon the 
 spot, and sold smoking hot, with immense uproar on 
 the part of the merchant; and for three days afterward 
 the parish bells were sounded in concert. 
 
 The difficulty of ascertaining any thing with cer¬ 
 tainty in Venice attends in a degree peculiarly great 
 the effort to learn exactly the present influence and 
 standing of the nobility as a class. One is tempted, 
 on observing the free and unembarrassed bearing of 
 all ranks of people toward each other, to say that no 
 sense of difference exists,—and I do not think there is 
 ever shown, among Italians, either the aggressive pride 
 or the abject meanness which marks the intercourse of 
 people and nobles elsewhere in Europe; and I have 
 not seen the distinction of rich and poor made so 
 brutally in Italy as sometimes in our own soi-disant 
 democratic society at home. There is, indeed, that 
 
342 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 equality in Italian fibre which I believe fits the nation 
 for democratic institutions better than any other, and 
 which is perhaps partly the result of their ancient 
 civilization. At any rate, it fascinates a stranger to 
 see people so mutually gentle and deferential; and 
 must often be a matter of surprise to the Anglo-Saxon, 
 in whose race, reclaimed from barbarism more recently, 
 the native wild-beast is still so strong as to sometimes 
 inform the manner. The uneducated Anglo-Saxon is 
 a savage; the Italian, though born to utter ignorance, 
 poverty, and depravity, is a civilized man. I do not 
 say that his civilization is of a high order, or that the 
 civilization of the most cultivated Italian is at all com¬ 
 parable to that of a gentleman among ourselves. The 
 Italian’s education, however profound, has left his 
 passions undisciplined, while it has carefully polished 
 his manner; he yields lightly to temptation, he loses 
 his self-control, he blasphemes habitually; his gentle¬ 
 ness is conventional, his civilization not individual. 
 With us the education of a gentleman (I do not mean 
 a person born to wealth or station, but any man who 
 has trained himself in morals or religion, in letters, 
 and in the world) disciplines the impulses, and leaves 
 the good manner to grow naturally out of habits of 
 self-command and consequent habitual self-respect. 
 
 The natural equality of the Italians is visible in 
 their community of good looks as well as good manners. 
 They have never, perhaps, that high beauty of sensi¬ 
 tive expression which is found among Englishmen and 
 Americans (preferably among the latter), but it very 
 rarely happens that they are brutally ugly; and the 
 man of low rank and mean vocation has often a beauty 
 of as fine sort as the man of education and refinement. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 343 
 
 If they changed clothes, and the poor man could be 
 persuaded to wash himself, they might successfully 
 masquerade, one for another. The plebeian Italian, 
 inspired by the national vanity, bears himself as proudly 
 as the noble, without at all aggressing in his manner. 
 His beauty, like that of the women of his class, is 
 world-old,—the beauty of the pictures and the statues: 
 the ideal types of loveliness are realized in Italy; the 
 saints and heroes, the madonnas and nymphs, come 
 true to the stranger at every encounter with living 
 faces. In Venice, particularly, the carriage of the 
 women, of whatever rank, is very free and noble, and 
 the servant is sometimes to be distinguished from the 
 mistress only by her dress and by her labor-coarsened 
 hands; certainly not always by her dirty finger-nails 
 and foul teeth, for though the clean shirt is now gener¬ 
 ally in Italy, some lesser virtues are still unknown: the 
 nail-brush and tooth-brush are of but infrequent use; 
 the four-pronged fork is still imperfectly understood, 
 and as a nation the Italians may be said to eat with 
 their knives. 
 
 The Venetian, then, seeing so little difference be¬ 
 tween himself and others, whatever his rank may be, 
 has, as I said, little temptation to arrogance or servility. 
 The effects of the old relationship of patron and client 
 are amusingly noticeable in the superior as well as the 
 inferior; a rich man’s dependents are perfectly free 
 ] with advice and comment, and it sometimes happens 
 that he likes to hear their lively talk, and at home se¬ 
 cretly consorts with his servants. The former social 
 differences between commoners and patricians (which, 
 I think, judging from the natural temper of the race, 
 must have been greatly modified at all times by con- 
 
344 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 cession and exception) may be said to have quite dis¬ 
 appeared in point of fact; the nobility is now almost 
 as effete socially as it is politically. There is still a 
 number of historic families, which are in a certain de¬ 
 gree exclusive; but rich parvenus have admission to 
 their friendship, and commoners in good circumstances 
 are permitted their acquaintance; the ladies of this 
 patrician society visit ladies of less rank, and receive 
 them at their great parties, though not at more sacred 
 assemblies, where they see only each other. 
 
 The Venetians have a habit of saying their best 
 families are in exile, but this is not meant to be taken 
 literally. Many of the best families are yet in the city, 
 living in perfect retirement, or very often merged in 
 the middle class, and become men of professions, and 
 active, useful lives. Of these nobles (they usually be¬ 
 long to the families which did not care to ask nobility 
 of Austria, and are therefore untitled)* the citizens are 
 affectionately proud, while I have heard from them 
 nothing but contempt and ridicule of the patricians 
 who, upon a wretched pension or meagre government 
 office, attempt to maintain patrician distinction. Such 
 nobles are usually Austriacanti in their politics, and 
 behind the age in every thing; while there are other 
 descendants of patrician families mingled at last with 
 the very populace, sharing their ignorance and degra¬ 
 dation, and feeling with them. These sometimes exer- 
 
 * The only title conferred on any patrician of Venice during 
 the Republic was Cavaliere, and this was conferred by a legislative 
 act in reward of distinguished service. The names of the nobility 
 were written in the Golden Book of the Republic, and they were 
 addressed as Illustrissimo or Eccellenza. They also signed them¬ 
 selves nobile, between the Christian name and surname, as it is still 
 the habit of the untitled nobility to do. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 345 
 
 else the most menial employments: I knew one noble 
 lord who had been a facchino, and I heard of another 
 who was a street-sweeper. Conte che non conta , non 
 conta niente * says the sneering Italian proverb; and it 
 would be little less than miraculous if a nobility like 
 that of modern Venice maintained superior state and 
 regard in the eyes of the quick-witted, intelligent, sar¬ 
 castic commonalty. 
 
 The few opulent patricians are by no means the 
 most violent of Italianissimi. They own lands and 
 houses, and as property is unsafe when revolutionary 
 feeling is rife, their patriotism is tempered. The wealth 
 amassed in early times by the vast and enterprising 
 commerce of the country was, when not dissipated in 
 riotous splendor, invested in real estate upon the main¬ 
 land as the Republic grew in territory, and the income 
 of the nobles is now from the rents of these lands. 
 They reside upon their estates during the season of 
 the villeggiatura , which includes the months of Sep¬ 
 tember and October, when every one who can possibly 
 leave the city goes into the country. Then the patri¬ 
 cians betake themselves to their villas near Padua, Vi¬ 
 cenza, Bassano, and Treviso, and people the sad-colored, 
 weather-worn stucco hermitages, where the mutilated 
 statues, swaggering above the gates, forlornly comme¬ 
 morate days when it was a far finer thing to be a 
 noble than it is now. I say the villas look dreary and 
 lonesome as places can be made to look in Italy, what 
 with their high garden walls, their long, low piles of 
 stabling, and the passee indecency of their nymphs and 
 fauns, foolishly strutting in the attitudes of the silly 
 
 * A count who doesn’t count (money) counts for nothing. 
 
346 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 and sinful old Past; and it must be but a dull life that 
 the noble proprietors lead there. 
 
 It is better, no doubt, on the banks of the Brenta, 
 where there are still so many villas as to form a street 
 of these seats of luxury, almost the whole length of the 
 canal, from Fusina to Padua. I am not certain that 
 they have a right to the place which they hold in 
 literature and sentiment, and yet there is something 
 very charming about them, with their gardens, and 
 chapels, and statues, and shaded walks. We went to 
 see them one day early in October, and found them 
 every one, when habitable, inhabited, and wearing a 
 cheerful look, that made their proximity to Venice in¬ 
 credible. As we returned home after dark, we saw 
 the ladies from the villas walking unattended along the 
 road, and giving the scene an air of homelike peace 
 and trustfulness which I had not found before in Italy; 
 while the windows of the houses were brilliantly lighted, 
 as if people lived in them; whereas, you seldom see a 
 light in Venetian palaces. I am not sure that I did 
 not like better, however, the villas that were empty and 
 ruinous, and the gardens that had run wild, and the 
 statues that had lost legs and arms. Some of the in¬ 
 genious proprietors had enterprisingly whitewashed 
 their statues, and there was a horrible primness about 
 certain of the well-kept gardens which offended me. 
 Most of the houses were not large, but there was here 
 and there a palace as grand as any in the city. Such 
 was the great villa of the Contarini of the Lions, which 
 was in every way superb, with two great lions of stone 
 guarding its portals, and a gravel walk, over-arched 
 with stately trees, stretching a quarter of a mile before 
 it. At the moment I was walking down this aisle I 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 347 
 
 met a clean-shaven old canonico, with red legs and 
 red-tasseled hat, and with a book under his arm, and 
 a meditative look, whom I here thank for being so 
 venerably picturesque. The palace itself was shut up, 
 and I wish I had known, when I saw it, that it had a 
 ghostly underground passage from its cellar to the 
 chapel,—wherein, when you get half way, your light 
 goes out, and you consequently never reach the chapel. 
 
 This is at Mira; but the greatest of all the villas 
 is the magnificent country-seat of the family Pisani 
 at Stra, which now, with scarcely any addition to its 
 splendor, serves for the residence of the abdicated 
 Emperor of Austria. There is such pride in the vast¬ 
 ness of this edifice and its gardens as impresses you 
 with the material greatness which found expression in 
 it, and never raises a regret that it has utterly passed 
 away. You wander around through the aisles of trim- 
 cut lime-trees, bullied and overborne by the insolent 
 statues, and expect at every turn to come upon in¬ 
 triguing spectres in bag-wigs, immense hoops and 
 patches. How can you feel sympathy for those dull 
 and wicked ghosts of eighteenth-century corruption? 
 There is rottenness enough in the world without digging 
 up old putridity and sentimentalizing on it; and I doubt 
 if you will care to know much of the way in which the 
 noble owner of such a villa ascended the Brenta at the 
 season of the villeggiatura in his great gilded barge, 
 all carven outside with the dumpling loves and loose 
 nymphs of the period, with fruits, and flowers, and 
 what not; and within, luxuriously cushioned and 
 furnished, and stocked with good things for pleasure 
 making in the gross old fashion* King Cole was not 
 * Mutinelli, Gli Ultimi Cinqtianf Anni della Repubblica di Venezia . 
 
348 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 a merrier old soul than Illustrissimo of that day; he 
 outspent princes; and his agent, while he harried the 
 tenants to supply his master’s demands, plundered 
 Illustrissimo frightfully. Illustrissimo never looked at 
 accounts. He said to his steward, “Caro veccio , fl vu. 
 Mi revieto a quel che fl vu.” (Old fellow, you attend 
 to it. I shall be satisfied with what you do.) So the 
 poor agent had no other course but to swindle him, 
 which he did; and Illustrissimo, when he died, died 
 poor and left his lordly debts and vices to his sons. 
 
 In Venice, the noble still lives sometimes in his 
 ancestral palace, dimly occupying the halls where his 
 forefathers flourished in so much splendor. I can con¬ 
 ceive, indeed, of no state of things more flattering to 
 human pride than that which surrounded the patrician 
 of the old aristocratic Republic. The house in which 
 he dwelt was the palace of a king, in luxury of ap¬ 
 pointment and magnificence of size. Troops of servants 
 that ministered to his state peopled its vast extent; 
 and the gondolas that carried his grandeur abroad 
 were moored in little fleets to the piles that rose be¬ 
 fore his palace, painted with the family arms and 
 colors. The palace itself stood usually on the Grand 
 Canal, and rose sheer from the water, giving the noble 
 that haughty inaccessibility which the lord of the main¬ 
 land achieved only by building lofty walls and multi¬ 
 plying gates. The architecture was as costly in its 
 ornament as wild Gothic fancy, or Renaissance luxury 
 of bad taste, could make it; and when the palace front 
 was not of sculptured marble, the painter’s pencil filled 
 it with the delight of color. The main-land noble’s 
 house was half a fortress, and formed his stronghold 
 in times of popular tumult or family fray; but at Venice 
 
Society. 
 
 349 
 
 the strong arm of St. Mark suppressed all turbulence 
 in a city secure from foreign war; and the peaceful 
 arts rejoiced in undisturbed possession of the palaces, 
 which rose in the most delicate and fantastic beauty, 
 and mirrored in the brine a dream of sea-deep strange¬ 
 ness and richness. You see much of the beauty yet, 
 but the pride and opulence which called it into being 
 are gone forever. 
 
 Most palaces, whether of the Gothic or classicistic 
 period, have the same internal arrangement of halls 
 and chambers, and are commonly built of two lofty 
 and two low stories. On the ground floor, or water 
 level, is a hall running back from the gate to a bit of 
 garden at the other side of the palace; and on either 
 side of this hall, which in old times was hung with the 
 family trophies of the chase and war, are the porter’s 
 lodge and gondoliers’ rooms. On the first and second 
 stories are the family apartments, opening on either 
 side from great halls, of the same extent as that below, 
 but with loftier roofs, of heavy rafters gilded or painted. 
 The fourth floor is of the same arrangement, but has a 
 lower roof, and was devoted to the better class of 
 servants. Of the two stories used by the family, the 
 third is the loftier and airier, and was occupied in 
 summer; the second was the winter apartment. On 
 either hand the rooms open in suites. 
 
 We have seen something of the ceremonies, public 
 and private, which gave peculiar gayety and brilliance 
 to the life of the Venetians of former days; but in his 
 political character the noble had yet greater consequence. 
 He was part of the proudest, strongest, and securest 
 system of his time. He was a king with the fellow¬ 
 ship of kings, flattered with the equality of an arista- 
 
350 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 cracy which was master of itself, and of its nominal 
 head. During the earlier times it was his office to go 
 daily to Rialto and instruct the people in their political 
 rights and duties for four hours; and even when the 
 duties became every thing and the rights nothing (after 
 the Serrar del Consiglio), the friendly habit of daily 
 intercourse between patricians and citizens was still kept 
 up at the same place. Once each week, and on every 
 holiday, the noble took his seat in the Grand Council 
 (the most august assembly in the world, without doubt), 
 or the Ten, or the Three, according to his office in 
 the State,—holding his place in the Council by right 
 of birth, and in the other bodies by election of his 
 peers. 
 
 Although the patricians were kept as one family 
 apart from the people, and jealously guarded in their 
 aristocratic purity by the State, they were only equals 
 of the poorest before the laws of their own creation, 
 and their condescension to the people was frequent 
 and great. Indeed, the Venetians of all classes are 
 social creatures, loving talk and gossip, and these con¬ 
 stant habits of intercourse must have done much to 
 produce that equality of manner now observable in 
 them. Their amusements were for a long time the 
 same, the nobles taking part in the public holidays, 
 and in the popular exercises of rowing and swimming. 
 In the earlier times, hunting in the lagoons was a 
 favorite diversion; but as the decay of the Republic 
 advanced, and the patrician blossomed into the fine 
 gentleman of the last century, these hearty sports were 
 relinquished, and every thing was voted vulgar but 
 masking in carnival, dancing and gaming at Ridotto, 
 and intriguing everywhere. 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 351 
 
 The accounts which Venetian writers give of Re¬ 
 publican society in the eighteenth century form a 
 chronique scandaleuse which need not be minutely 
 copied here. Much may be learned of Venetian man¬ 
 ners of this time from the comedies of Goldoni; and 
 the faithlessness of society may be argued from the 
 fact that in these plays, which contain nothing salacious 
 or indecent, there is scarcely a character of any rank 
 who scruples to tell lies; and the truth is not to be 
 found in works intended to school the public to virtue. 
 The ingenious old playwright’s memoirs are full of 
 gossip concerning that poor old Venice, which is now 
 no more; and the worthy autobiographer, Casanova, 
 also gives much information about things that had best 
 not be known. 
 
 As the Republic drew near its fall, in 1797, there 
 was little left in its dominant class worth saving, if we 
 may believe the testimony of Venetians which Mutinelli 
 brings to bear upon the point in his “Annali Urbani,” 
 and his “History of the Last Fifty Years of the Re¬ 
 public.” Long prosperity and prodigious opulence had 
 done their worst, and the patricians, and the lowest 
 orders of the people, their creatures and dependants, 
 were thoroughly corrupt; while the men of professions 
 began to assume that station which they now hold. 
 The days of a fashionable patrician of those times 
 began at a little before sunset, and ended with the 
 following dawn. Rising from his bed, he dressed him¬ 
 self in dainty linen, and placed himself in the hands 
 of the hair-dresser to be combed, oiled, perfumed, and 
 powdered; and then sallied forth for a stroll through 
 the Merceria, where this excellent husband and father 
 made tasteful purchases to be carried to the lady he 
 
35 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 served. At dinner, which he took about seven or eight, 
 his board was covered with the most tempting viands, 
 and surrounded by needy parasites, who detailed the 
 spicy scandals of the day in payment of their dinner, 
 while the children of the host were confided to the 
 care of the corrupt and negligent servants. After 
 dinner, the father went to the theatre, or to the casino , 
 and spent the night over cards and wine, in the society 
 of dissolute women; and renewed on the morrow the 
 routine of his useful existence. The education of the 
 children of the man of fashion was confided to a 
 priest, who lived in his family, and called himself an 
 abbate, after the mode of the abbes of French society; 
 he had winning manners with the ladies, indulgent 
 habits with his pupils, and dressed his elegant person 
 in silks of Lyons and English broadcloths. In the 
 pleasant old days he flitted from palace to villa, din¬ 
 ing and supping, and flattering the ladies, and tapping 
 the lid of his jeweled snuff-box in all fashionable com¬ 
 panies. He was the cadet of a patrician family (when 
 not the ambitious son of a low family), with a polite 
 taste for idleness and intrigue, for whom no secular 
 sinecure could be found in the State, and who obliged 
 the Church by accepting orders. Whether in the 
 palace on the Grand Canal, or the villa on the Brenta, 
 this gentle and engaging priest was surely the most 
 agreeable person to be met, and the most dangerous 
 to ladies’ hearts,—with his rich suit of black, and his 
 smug, clean-shaven face, and his jeweled hands, and 
 his sweet, seducing manners. Alas! the world is 
 changed! The priests whom you see playing tre-sette 
 now at the conversazioni are altogether different men, 
 find the delightful abbate is as much out of fashion as 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 353 
 
 the bag-wig or the queue. When in fashion he loved 
 the theatre, and often showed himself there at the side 
 of his noble patron’s wife. Nay, in that time the 
 theatre was so prized by the Church that a popular 
 preacher thought it becoming to declare from his pul¬ 
 pit that to compose well his hearers should study the 
 comedies of Goldoni,—and his hearers were the pos¬ 
 terity of that devout old aristocracy which never un¬ 
 dertook a journey without first receiving the holy sacra¬ 
 ment; which had built the churches and endowed them 
 from private wealth! 
 
 Ignorance, as well as vice, was the mode in those 
 elegant days, and it is related that a charming lady of 
 good society once addressed a foreign savant at her 
 conversazione, and begged him to favor the company 
 with a little music, because, having heard that he was 
 virtuous , she had no other association with the word 
 than its technical use in Italy to indicate a professional 
 singer as a virtuoso . A father of a family who kept 
 no abbate for the education of his children ingeniously 
 taught them himself. “Father,” asked one of his chil¬ 
 dren, “what are the stars?” “The stars are stars, and 
 little things that shine as thou seest.” “Then they are 
 candles, perhaps?” “Make thy account that they are 
 candles exactly.” “Of wax or tallow?” pursues the 
 boy. “What! tallow-candles in heaven? No, certainly 
 —wax, wax!” 
 
 These, and many other scandalous stories, the 
 Venetian writers recount of the last days of their Re¬ 
 public, and the picture they produce is one of the 
 most shameless ignorance, the most polite corruption, 
 the most unblushing baseness. I have no doubt that 
 the picture is full of national exaggeration. Indeed, 
 
 Venetian Life. 23 
 
354 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the method of Mutinelli (who I believe intends to tell 
 the truth) in writing social history is altogether too 
 credulous and incautious. It is well enough to study 
 contemporary comedy for light upon past society, but 
 satirical ballads and lampoons, and scurrilous letters, 
 cannot be accepted as historical authority. Still there 
 is no question but Venice was very corrupt. As you 
 read of her people in the last century, one by one the 
 ideas of family faith and domestic purity fade away; 
 one by one the beliefs in public virtue are dissipated; 
 until at last you are glad to fly the study, close the 
 filthy pages, and take refuge in doubt of the writers, 
 who declare that they must needs disgrace Venice with 
 facts since her children have dishonored her in their 
 lives. “Such as we see them,” they say, “were the 
 patricians, such the people of Venice, after the middle 
 of the eighteenth century. The Venetians might be 
 considered as extinguished; the marvelous city, the 
 pomp only of the Venetians, existed.” 
 
 Shall we believe this? Let each choose for him¬ 
 self. At that very time the taste and wealth of a 
 Venetian noble fostered the genius of Canova; and 
 then, when their captains starved the ragged soldiers 
 of the Republic to feed their own idleness and vice, 
 —when the soldiers dismantled her forts to sell the 
 guns to the Turk,—when her sailors rioted on shore 
 and her ships rotted in her ports, she had still military 
 virtue enough to produce that Emo, who beat back 
 the Algerine corsairs from the commerce of Christen¬ 
 dom, and attacked them in their stronghold, as of old 
 her galleys beat back the Turks. Alas! there was not 
 the virtue in her statesmen to respond to this great¬ 
 ness* in the hero. One of their last public acts was to 
 
SOCIETY. 
 
 355 
 
 break his heart with insult, and to crave peace of the 
 pirates whom he had cowed. It remained for the 
 helpless Doge and the abject patricians, terrified at a 
 threat of war, to declare the Republic at an end, and 
 San Marco was no more. 
 
 I love Republics too well to lament the fall of 
 Venice. And yet, Pax tibi , Marce! If I have been 
 slow to praise, I shall not hasten to condemn, a whole 
 nation. Indeed, so much occurs to me to qualify with 
 contrary sense what I have written concerning Venice, 
 that I wonder if, after all, I have not been treating 
 throughout less of the rule than of the exception. It 
 is a doubt which must force itself upon every fair and 
 temperate man who attempts to describe another 
 people’s life and character; and I confess that it 
 troubles me so sorely now, at the end of my work, 
 that I would fain pray the gentle reader to believe 
 much more good and much less evil of the Venetians 
 than I have said. I am glad that it remains for me 
 to express a faith and hope in them for the future, 
 founded upon their present political feeling, which, 
 however tainted with self-interest in the case of many, 
 is no doubt with the great majority a high and true 
 feeling of patriotism. And it is impossible to believe 
 that a people which can maintain the stern and un¬ 
 yielding attitude now maintained by the Venetians to¬ 
 ward an alien government disposed to make them any 
 concession short of freedom, in order to win them into 
 voluntary submission, can be wanting in the great 
 qualities which distinguish living peoples from those 
 passed hopelessly into history and sentiment. In truth, 
 glancing back over the whole career of the nation, I 
 can discern in it nothing so admirable, so dignified, so 
 
 23* 
 
356 
 
 VENETIAN LIFU. 
 
 steadfastly brave, as its present sacrifice of all that 
 makes life easy and joyous, to the attainment of a 
 good which shall make life noble. 
 
 The Venetians desire now, and .first of all things, 
 Liberty, knowing that in slavery men can learn no 
 virtues; and I think them fit, with all their errors and 
 defects, to be free now, because men are never fit to 
 be slaves. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 {As it seems Seven Years after.) 
 
 The last of four years which it was our fortune 
 to live in the city of Venice was passed under the 
 roof of one of her most beautiful and memorable 
 palaces, namely, the Palazzo Giustiniani, whither we 
 went, as has been told in an earlier chapter of this 
 book, to escape the encroaching nepotism of Giovanna, 
 the flower of serving-women. The experience now, in 
 Cambridge, Mass., refuses to consort with ordinary 
 remembrances, and has such a fantastic preference for 
 the company of rather vivid and circumstantial dreams, 
 that it is with no very strong hope of making it seem 
 real that I shall venture to speak of it. 
 
 The Giustiniani were a family of patricians very 
 famous during the times of a Republic that gave so 
 many splendid names to history, and the race was 
 preserved to the honor and service of Saint Mark by 
 one of the most romantic facts of his annals. During 
 a war with the Greek Emperor in the twelfth century 
 every known Giustiniani was slain, and the heroic 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 357 
 
 strain seemed lost forever. But the state that mourned 
 them bethought itself of a half forgotten monk of their 
 house, who was wasting his life in the Convent of San 
 Nicolo; he was drawn forth from this seclusion, and, 
 the permission of Rome being won, he was married to 
 the daughter of the reigning doge. From them de¬ 
 scended the Giustiniani of aftertimes, who still exist; 
 indeed, in the year 1865 there came one day a gentle¬ 
 man of the family, and tried to buy from our land¬ 
 lord that part of the palace which we so humbly and 
 insufficiently inhabited. It is said that as the un¬ 
 frocked friar and his wife declined in life they separated, 
 and, as if in doubt of what had been done for the 
 state through them, retired each into a convent, Gius¬ 
 tiniani going back to San Nicolo, and dying at last to 
 the murmur of the ■ Adriatic waves along the Lido’s 
 sands. 
 
 Next after this Giustiniani I like best to think of 
 that latest hero of the family, who had the sad for¬ 
 tune to live when the ancient Republic fell at a threat 
 of Napoleon, and who alone among her nobles had 
 the courage to meet with a manly spirit the insolent 
 menaces of the conqueror. The Giustiniani governed 
 Treviso for the Senate; he refused, when Napoleon 
 ordered him from his presence, to quit Treviso with¬ 
 out the command of the Senate; he flung back the 
 taunts of bad faith cast upon the Venetians; and when 
 Napoleon changed his tone from that of disdain to one 
 of compliment, and promised that in the general disaster 
 he was preparing for Venice, Giustiniani should be 
 spared, the latter generously replied that he had been 
 a friend of the French only because the Senate was 
 so; as to the immunity offered, all was lost to him in 
 
358 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the loss of his country, and he should blush for his 
 wealth if it remained intact amidst the ruin of his 
 countrymen. 
 
 The family grew in riches and renown from age 
 to age, and, some four centuries after the marriage of 
 the monk, they reared the three beautiful Gothic 
 palaces, in the noblest site on the Grand Canal, whence 
 on one hand you can look down to the Rialto Bridge, 
 and on the other far up towards the church of the 
 Salute, and the Basin of Saint Mark. The architects 
 were those Buoni, father and son, who did some of 
 the most beautiful work on the Ducal Palace, and who 
 wrought in an equal inspiration upon these homes of 
 the Giustiniani, building the delicate Gothic arches 
 of the windows, with their slender columns and their 
 graceful balconies, and crowning all with the airy 
 battlements. 
 
 The largest of the three palaces became later the 
 property of the Foscari family, and here dwelt with 
 his father that unhappy Jacopo Foscari, who after 
 thrice suffering torture by the state for a murder he 
 never did, at last died in exile; hither came the old 
 Doge Foscari, who had consented to this cruel error 
 of the state, and who after a life spent in its service 
 was deposed and disgraced before his death; and 
 hither when he lay dead, came remorseful Venice, and 
 claimed for sumptuous obsequies the dust which his 
 widow yielded with bitter reproaches. Here the 
 family faded away generation by generation, till (ac¬ 
 cording to the tale told us) early in this century, when 
 the ultimate male survivor of the line had died, under 
 a false name, in London, where he had been some 
 sort of obscure actor, there were but two old maiden 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 359 
 
 sisters left, who, lapsing into imbecility, were shown 
 to strangers by the rascal servants as the last of the 
 Foscari; and here in our time was quartered a regiment 
 of Austrian troops, whose neatly pipe-clayed belts 
 decorated the balconies on which the princely ladies 
 of the house had rested their jewelled arms in other 
 days. 
 
 The Foscari added a story to the palace to dis¬ 
 tinguish it from the two other palaces Giustiniani, but 
 these remain to the present day as they were originally 
 planned. That in which we lived was called Palazzo 
 Giustiniani of the Bishops, because one of the family 
 was the first patriarch of Venice. After his death he 
 was made a saint by the Pope; and it is related that he 
 was not only a very pious, but a very good man. In 
 his last hours he admitted his beloved people to his 
 chamber, where he meekly lay upon a pallet of straw, 
 and at the moment he expired, two monks in the 
 solitude of their cloister, heard an angelical harmony 
 in the air: the clergy performed his obsequies not in 
 black, funereal robes, but in white garments, and 
 crowned with laurel, and bearing gilded torches, and 
 although the patriarch had died of a malignant fever, 
 his body was miraculously preserved incorrupt during 
 the sixty-five days that the obsequies lasted. The 
 other branch of the family was called the Giustiniani 
 of the Jewels, from the splendor of their dress; but 
 neither palace now shelters any of their magnificent 
 race. The edifice on our right was exclusively oc¬ 
 cupied by a noble Viennese lady, who as we heard, 
 —vaguely, in the right Venetian fashion,—had been 
 a ballet-dancer in her youth, and who now in her 
 matronly days dwelt apart from her husband, the 
 
36 g 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 Russian count, and had gondoliers in blue silk, and 
 the finest gondola on the Grand Canal, but was a 
 plump, florid lady, looking long past beauty, even as 
 we saw her from our balcony. 
 
 Our own palace—as we absurdly grew to call it— 
 was owned and inhabited in a manner much more 
 proper to modem Venice, the proprietorship being 
 about equally divided between our own landlord and 
 a -very well known Venetian painter, son of a painter 
 still more famous. This artist was a very courteous 
 old gentleman, who went with Italian and clock-like 
 regularity every evening in summer to a certain caffe, 
 where he seemed to make it a point of conscience to 
 sip one sherbet, and to read the “Journal des Debats.” 
 In his coming and going we met him so often that 
 we became friends, and he asked us many times to 
 visit him, and see his father’s pictures, and some 
 famous frescos with which his part of the palace was 
 adorned. It was a characteristic trait of our life, that 
 though we constantly meant to avail ourselves of this 
 kindness, we never did so. But we continued in the 
 enjoyment of the beautiful garden, which this gentle¬ 
 man owned at the rear of the palace and on which 
 our chamber windows looked. It was full of oleanders 
 and roses, and other bright and odorous blooms, which 
 we could enjoy perfectly well without knowing their 
 names; and I could hardly say whether the garden 
 was more charming when it was in its summer glory, 
 or when, on some rare winter day, a breath from the 
 mountains had clothed its tender boughs and sprays 
 with a light and evanescent flowering of snow. At any 
 season the lofty palace walls rose over it, and shut it 
 in a pensive seclusion which was loved by the old 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 361 
 
 mother of the painter and by his elderly maiden sister. 
 These often walked on its moss-grown paths, silent as 
 the roses and oleanders to which one could have 
 fancied the blossom of their youth had flown; and 
 sometimes there came to them there, grave, black- 
 gowned priests,—for the painter’s was a devout family, 
 —and talked with them in tones almost as tranquil as 
 the silence was, save when one of the ecclesiastics 
 placidly took snuff,—it is a dogma of the Church for 
 priests to take snuff in Italy,—and thereafter, upon a 
 prolonged search for his handkerchief, blew a resound¬ 
 ing nose. So far as we knew, the garden walls circum¬ 
 scribed the whole life of these ladies; and I am afraid 
 that such topics of this world as they touched upon 
 with their priests must have been deplorably small. 
 
 Their kinsman owned part of the story under us, 
 and both of the stories above us; he had the advan¬ 
 tage of the garden over our landlord; but he had not 
 so grand a gondola-gate as we, and in some other re¬ 
 spects I incline to think that our part of the edifice 
 was the finer. It is certain that no mention is made 
 of any such beautiful hall in the property of the painter 
 as is noted in that of our landlord, by the historian of 
 a “Hundred Palaces of Venice,”—a work for which I 
 subscribed, and then for my merit was honored by a 
 visit from the author, who read aloud to me in a deep 
 and sonorous voice the annals of our temporary home. 
 This hall occupied half the space of the whole floor; 
 but it was altogether surrounded by rooms of various 
 shapes and sizes, except upon one side of its length, 
 where it gave through Gothic windows of vari-colored 
 glass, upon a small court below, — a green-mouldy 
 little court, further dampened by a cistern, which had 
 
36 2 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 the usual curb of a single carven block of marble. 
 The roof of this stately sala was traversed by a long 
 series of painted rafters, which in the halls of nearly 
 all Venetian palaces are left exposed, and painted or 
 carved and gilded. A suite of stately rooms closed 
 the hall from the Grand Canal, and one of these 
 formed our parlor; on the side opposite the Gothic 
 windows was a vast aristocratic kitchen, which, with 
 its rows of shining coppers, its great chimney-place 
 well advanced toward the middle of the floor, and its 
 tall gloomy windows, still affects my imagination as 
 one of the most patrician rooms which I ever saw; at 
 the back of the hall were those chambers of ours over¬ 
 looking the garden of which I have already spoken, 
 and another kitchen, less noble than the first, but still 
 sufficiently grandiose to make most New World kitchens 
 seem very meekly minute and unimpressive. Between 
 the two kitchens was another court, with another cistern, 
 from which the painter’s family drew water with a 
 bucket on a long rope, which, when let down from the 
 fourth story, appeared to be dropped from the clouds, 
 and descended with a noise little less alarming than 
 thunder. 
 
 Altogether the most surprising object in the great 
 sala was a sewing-machine, and we should have been 
 inconsolably outraged by its presence there amid so 
 much that was merely venerable and beautiful, but for 
 the fact that it was in a state of harmonious and hope¬ 
 less disrepair, and, from its general contrivance, gave 
 us the idea that it had never been of any use. It was, 
 in fact, kept as a sort of curiosity by the landlord, who 
 exhibited it to the admiration of his Venetian friends. 
 
 The reader will doubtless have imagined, from what 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 363 
 
 I have been saying, that the Palazzo Giustiniani had 
 not all that machinery which we know in our houses 
 here as modern improvements. It had nothing of the 
 kind, and life there was, as in most houses in Italy, a 
 kind of permanent camping out. When I remember 
 the small amount of carpeting, of furniture, and of up¬ 
 holstery we enjoyed, it appears to me pathetic; and 
 yet, I am not sure that it was not the wisest way to 
 live. I know that we had compensation in things not 
 purchasable here for money. If the furniture of the 
 principal bedroom was somewhat scanty, its dimensions 
 were unstinted: the ceiling was fifteen feet high, and 
 was divided into rich and heavy panels, adorned each 
 with a mighty rosette of carved and gilded wood, two 
 feet across. The parlor had not its original decorations 
 in our time, but it had once had so noble a carved 
 | ceiling that it was found worth while to take it down 
 and sell it into England; and it still had two grand 
 Venetian mirrors, a vast and very good painting of a 
 
 I miracle of St. Anthony, and imitation-antique tables 
 and arm-chairs. The last were frolicked all over with 
 carven nymphs and cupids; but they were of such frail 
 construction that they were not meant to be sat in, 
 much less to be removed from the wall against which 
 they stood; and more than one of our American visitors 
 was dismayed at having these proud articles of furni¬ 
 ture go to pieces upon his attempt to use them like 
 mere arm-chairs of ordinary life. Scarcely less im¬ 
 pressive or useless than these was a monumental plaster- 
 stove, surmounted by a bust of HCsculapius; when this 
 was broken by accident, we cheaply repaired the loss 
 with a bust of Homer (the dealer in the next campo 
 being out of ^Esculapiuses) which no one could have 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
3&4 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 told from the bust it replaced; and this and the other 
 artistic glories of the room made us quite forget all 
 possible blemishes and defects. And will the reader 
 mention any house with modern improvements in 
 America which has also windows, with pointed arches 
 of marble, opening upon balconies that overhang the 
 Grand Canal? 
 
 For our new apartment, which consisted of six 
 rooms furnished with every article necessary for 
 Venetian housekeeping, we paid one dollar a day, 
 which, in the innocence of our hearts we thought 
 rather dear, though we were somewhat consoled by re¬ 
 flecting that this extravagant outlay secured us the 
 finest position on the Grand Canal. We did not mean 
 to keep house as we had in Casa Falier, and perhaps 
 a sketch of our easier menage may not be out of place. 
 Breakfast was prepared in the house, for in that blessed 
 climate all you care for in the morning is a cup of 
 coffee, with a little bread and butter, a musk-melon, 
 and some clusters of white grapes, more or less. Then 
 we had our dinners sent in warm from a cook’s who 
 had learned his noble art in France; he furnished a 
 dinner of five courses for three persons at a cost of 
 about eighty cents; and they were dinners so happily 
 conceived and so justly executed, that I cannot accuse 
 myself of an excess of sentiment when I confess that I 
 sigh for them to this day. Then as for our immaterial ■ 
 tea, we always took that at the Caflh Florian in the 
 Piazza of Saint Mark, where we drank a cup of black I 
 coffee and ate an ice, while all the world promenaded i 
 by, and the Austrian bands made heavenly music. 
 
 Those bands no longer play in Venice, and I be- i 
 lieve that they are not the only charm which she has 
 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 365 
 
 lost in exchanging Austrian servitude for Italian freedom; 
 though I should be sorry to think that freedom was 
 not worth all other charms. The poor Venetians used 
 to be very rigorous (as I have elsewhere related), about 
 the music of their oppressors, and would not come into 
 the Piazza until it had ceased and the Austrian pro- 
 menaders had disappeared, when they sat down at 
 Florian’s, and listened to such bands of strolling singers 
 and minstrels as chose to give them a concord of sweet 
 sounds, without foreign admixture. We, in our neutra¬ 
 lity, were wont to sit out both entertainments, and then 
 go home well toward midnight, through the sleepy little 
 streets, and over the bridges that spanned the narrow 
 canals, dreaming in the shadows of the palaces. 
 
 We moved with half-conscious steps till we came 
 to the silver expanse of the Grand Canal, where, at 
 the ferry, darkled a little brood of black gondolas, 
 into one of which we got, and were rowed noiselessly 
 to the thither side, where we took our way toward 
 the land-gate of our palace through the narrow streets 
 of the parish of San Barnaba, and the campo before 
 the ugly facade of the church; or else we were rowed 
 directly to the water-gate, where we got out on the 
 steps worn by the feet of the Giustiniani of old, and 
 wandered upward through the darkness of the stair¬ 
 way, which gave them a far different welcome of ser¬ 
 vants and lights when they returned from an evening’s 
 pleasure in the Piazza. It seemed scarcely just; but 
 then, those Giustiniani were dead, and we w r ere alive, 
 and that was one advantage; and, besides, the loneli¬ 
 ness and desolation Of the palace had a peculiar 
 charm, and were at any rate cheaper than its former 
 splendor could have been. I am afraid that people 
 
366 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 who live abroad in the palaces of extinct nobles do 
 not keep this important fact sufficiently in mind; and 
 as the Palazzo Giustiniani is still let in furnished lodg¬ 
 ings, and it is quite possible that some of my readers 
 may be going to spend next summer in it, I venture 
 to remind them that if they have to draw somewhat 
 upon their fancy for patrician accommodations there, 
 it will cost them far less in money than it did the 
 original proprietors, who contributed to our selfish 
 pleasure by the very thought of their romantic ab¬ 
 sence and picturesque decay. In fact, the Past is 
 everywhere like the cake of proverb: you cannot enjoy 
 it and have it. 
 
 And here I am reminded of another pleasure of 
 modern dwellers in Venetian palaces, which could 
 hardly have been indulged by the patricians of old, 
 and which is hardly imaginable by people of this day, 
 whose front doors open upon dry land: I mean to say 
 the privilege of sea-bathing from one’s own threshold. 
 From the beginning of June till far into September all 
 the canals of Venice are populated by the amphibious 
 boys, who clamor about in the brine, or poise them¬ 
 selves for a leap from the tops of bridges, or show 
 their fine, statuesque figures, bronzed by the ardent 
 sun, against the facades of empty palaces, where they 
 hover among the marble sculptures, and meditate a 
 headlong plunge. It is only the Venetian ladies, in 
 fact, who do not share this healthful amusement. Fathers 
 of families, like so many plump, domestic drakes, lead 
 forth their aquatic broods, teaching the little ones to 
 swim by the aid of various floats, and delighting in 
 the gambols of the larger ducklings. When the tide 
 comes in fresh and strong from the sea the water in 
 
367 
 
 our la‘st year 
 
 IN VENICE. 
 
 the Grand Canal is pure and refreshing; and at these 
 times it is a singular pleasure to leap from one’s door¬ 
 step into the swift current, and spend a half-hour, very 
 informally, among one’s neighbors there. The Vene¬ 
 tian bathing-dress is a mere sketch of the pantaloons 
 of ordinary life; and when I used to stand upon our 
 balcony, and see some bearded head ducking me a 
 polite salutation from a pair of broad, brown shoulders 
 that showed above the water, I was not always able 
 to recognize my acquaintance, deprived of his factitious 
 identity of clothes. But I always knew a certain stately 
 consul-general by a vast expanse of baldness upon the 
 top of his head; and it must be owned, I think, that 
 this form of social assembly was, with all its disad¬ 
 vantages, a novel and vivacious spectacle. The Vene¬ 
 tian ladies, when they bathed, went to the Lido, or 
 else to the bath-houses in front of the Ducal Palace, 
 where they saturated themselves a good part of the 
 day, and drank coffee, and, possibly, gossiped. 
 
 I think that our balconies at Palazzo Giustiniani 
 were even better places to see the life of the Grand 
 Canal from than the balcony of Casa Falier, which we 
 had just left. Here at least we had a greater stretch 
 of the Canal, looking, as we could, up either side of 
 its angle. Here, too, we had more gondola stations 
 in sight, and as we were nearer the Rialto, there was 
 more picturesque passing of the market-boats. But if 
 we saw more of this life, we did not see it in greater 
 variety, for I think we had already exhausted this. 
 There was a movement all night long. If I woke at 
 three or four o’clock, and offered myself the novel 
 spectacle of the Canal at that hour, I saw the heavy- 
 laden barges go by to the Rialto, with now and then 
 
368 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 also a good-sized coasting schooner making lazily for 
 the lagoons, with its ruddy fire already kindled for 
 cooking the morning’s meal, and looking very enviably 
 cosey. After our own breakfast we began to watch 
 for the gondolas of the tourists of different nations, 
 whom we came to distinguish at a glance. Then the 
 boats of the various artisans went by, the carpenter’s, 
 the mason’s, the plasterer’s, with those that sold fuel, 
 and vegetables, and fruit, and fish, to any household 
 that arrested them. From noon till three or four 
 o’clock the Canal was comparatively deserted; but 
 before twilight it was thronged again by people riding 
 out in their open gondolas to take the air after the 
 day’s fervor. After nightfall they ceased, till only at 
 long intervals a solitary lamp, stealing over the dark 
 surface, gave token of the movement of some gondola 
 bent upon an errand that could not fail to seem mys¬ 
 terious or fail to be matter of fact. We never wearied 
 of this oft-repeated variety, nor of our balcony in any 
 way; and when the moon shone in through the lovely 
 arched window and sketched its exquisite outline on 
 the floor, we were as happy as moonshine could 
 make us. 
 
 Were we otherwise content? As concerns Venice, 
 it is very hard to say, and I do not know that I shall 
 ever be able to say with certainty. For all the enter¬ 
 tainment it afforded us, it was a very lonely life, and 
 we felt the sadness of the city in many fine and not 
 instantly recognizable ways. Englishmen who lived 
 there bade us beware of spending the whole year in 
 Venice, which they declared apt to result in a morbid 
 depression of the spirits. I believe they attributed 
 this to the air of the place, but I think it was more 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 369 
 
 than half owing to her mood, to her old, ghostly, 
 aimless life. She was, indeed, a phantom of the past, 
 haunting our modern world, — serene, inexpressibly 
 beautiful, yet inscrutably and unspeakably sad. Re¬ 
 membering the charm that was in her, we often sigh 
 for the renewal of our own vague life there, — a 
 shadow within the shadow; but remembering also her 
 deep melancholy, an involuntary shiver creeps over 
 us, and we are glad not to be there. Perhaps some 
 of you who have spent a summer day or a summer 
 week in Venice do not recognize this feeling; but if 
 you will remain there, not four years as we did, but 
 a year or six months even, it will ever afterwards be 
 only too plain. All changes, all events, were affected 
 by the inevitable local melancholy; the day was as 
 pensive amidst that populous silence as the night; 
 the winter not more pathetic than the long, tranquil, 
 lovely summer. We rarely sentimentalized consciously, 
 and still more seldom openly, about the present 
 state of Venice as contrasted with her past glory. 
 I am glad to say that we despised the conventional 
 poetastery about her; but I believe that we had so 
 far lived into sympathy with her, that, whether we 
 realized it or not, we took the tone of her dispirited¬ 
 ness, and assumed a part of the common experience 
 of loss and of hopelessness. History, if you live 
 where it was created, is a far subtler influence than 
 you suspect; and I would not say how much Vene¬ 
 tian history, amidst the monuments of her glory and 
 the witnesses of her fall, had to do in secret and 
 tacit ways with the prevailing sentiment of existence, 
 which I now distinctly recognize to have been a me¬ 
 lancholy one. No doubt this sentiment was deepened 
 
 Venetian Life . 24 
 
370 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 by every freshly added association with memorable 
 places; and each fact, each great name and career, 
 each strange tradition as it rose out of the past for 
 us and shed its pale lustre upon the present, touched 
 us with a pathos which we could neither trace nor 
 analyze. 
 
 I do not know how much the modern Venetians 
 had to do with this impression, but something I have 
 no question. They were then under Austrian rule; 
 and in spite of much that was puerile and theatrical 
 in it, there was something very affecting in their at¬ 
 titude of what may best be described as passive de¬ 
 fiance. This alone made them heroic, but it also 
 made them tedious. They rarely talked of anything 
 but politics; and as I have elsewhere said, they were 
 very jealous to have every one declare himself of their 
 opinion. Hemmed in by this jealousy on one side, 
 and by a heavy and rebellious sense of the wrongful 
 presence of the Austrian troops and the Austrian spies 
 on the other, we forever felt dimly constrained by 
 something, we could not say precisely what, and we 
 only knew what, when we went sometimes on a 
 journey into free Italy, and threw off the irksome cau¬ 
 tion we had maintained both as to patriotic and alien 
 tyrants. This political misery circumscribed our ac¬ 
 quaintance very much, and reduced the circle of our 
 friendship to three or four families, who were con¬ 
 tent to know our sympathies without exacting con¬ 
 stant expression of them. So we learned to depend 
 mainly upon passing Americans for our society; we 
 hailed with rapture the arrival of a gondola dis¬ 
 tinguished by the easy hats of our countrymen and 
 the pretty faces and pretty dresses of our country- 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 371 
 
 women. It was in the days of our war; and talking 
 together over its events, we felt a brotherhood with 
 every other American. 
 
 Of course, in these circumstances, we made thorough 
 acquaintance with the people about us in the palace. 
 The landlord had come somehow into a profitable 
 knowledge of Anglo-Saxon foibles and susceptibilities; 
 but his lodgings were charming, and I recognize the 
 principle that it is not for literature to make its prey 
 of any possibly conscious object. For this reason, I 
 am likewise mostly silent concerning a certain attache 
 of the palace, the right-hand man and intimate as¬ 
 sociate of the landlord. He was the descendant of 
 one of the most ancient and noble families of Italy, 
 —a family of popes and cardinals, of princes and 
 ministers, which in him was diminished and tarnished 
 in an almost inexplicable degree. He was not at all 
 worldly-wise, but he was a man of great learning, 
 and of a capacity for acquiring knowledge that I have 
 never seen surpassed. He possessed, I think, not 
 many shirts on earth; but he spoke three or four 
 languages, and wrote very pretty sonnets in Italian 
 and German. He was one of the friendliest and 
 willingest souls living, and as generous as utter destitu¬ 
 tion can make a man; yet he had a proper spirit, 
 and valued himself upon his name. Sometimes he 
 brought his great-grandfather to the palace; a brisk 
 old gentleman in his nineties, who had seen the 
 fall of the Republic and three other revolutions in 
 Venice, but had contrived to keep a government pen¬ 
 sion through all, and now smiled with unabated cheer¬ 
 fulness upon a world which he seemed likely never to 
 leave. 
 
 24 : 
 
37 2 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 The palace-servants were two, the gondolier and 
 a sort of housekeeper,—a handsome, swarthy woman, 
 with beautiful white teeth and liquid black eyes. She 
 was the mother of a pretty little boy, who was going 
 to bring himself up for a priest, and whose chief 
 amusement was saying mimic masses to an imaginary 
 congregation. She was perfectly statuesque and oblig¬ 
 ing, and we had no right, as lovers of the beautiful 
 or as lodgers, to complain of her, whatever her faults 
 might have been. As to the gondolier, who was a 
 very important personage in our palatial household, 
 he was a handsome, bashful, well-mannered fellow, 
 with a good-natured blue eye and a neatly waxed 
 mustache. He had been ten years a soldier in the 
 Austrian army, and was, from his own account and 
 from all I saw of him, one of the least courageous 
 men in the world; but then no part of the Austrian 
 system tends to make men brave, and I could easily 
 imagine that before it had done with one it might 
 give him reasons enough to be timid all the rest of 
 his life. Piero had not very much to do, and he 
 spent the greater part of his leisure in a sort of lazy 
 flirtation with the women about the kitchen-fire, or in 
 the gondola, in which he sometimes gave them the 
 air. We always liked him; I should have trusted him 
 in any sort of way, except one that involved danger. 
 It once happened that burglars attempted to enter 
 our rooms, and Piero declared to us that he knew the 
 men; but before the police, he swore that he knew 
 nothing about them. Afterwards he returned pri¬ 
 vately to his first assertion, and accounted for his 
 conduct by saying that if he had borne witness against 
 the burglars, he was afraid that their friends would 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 373 
 
 jump on his back (saltarmi adosso), as he phrased it, 
 in the dark; for by this sort of terrorism the poor 
 and the wicked have long been bound together in 
 Italy. Piero was a humorist in his dry way, and 
 made a jest of his own caution; but his favorite joke 
 was, when he dressed himself with particular care, to 
 tell the women that he was going to pay a visit to the 
 Princess Clary, then the star of Austrian society. This 
 mild pleasantry was repeated indefinitely with never- 
 failing effect. 
 
 More interesting to us than all the rest was our 
 own servant, Bettina, who came to us from a village 
 on the mainland. She was very dark, so dark and so 
 Southern in appearance as almost to verge upon the 
 negro type> yet she bore the English-sounding name of 
 Scarbro, and how she ever came by it remains a puzzle 
 to this day, for she was one of the most pure and 
 entire of Italians. I mean this was her maiden name; 
 she was married to a trumpeter in the Austrian ser¬ 
 vice, whose Bohemian name she was unable to pro¬ 
 nounce, and consequently never gave us. She was a 
 woman of very few ideas indeed, but perfectly honest 
 and good-hearted. She was pious, in her peasant 
 fashion, and in her walks about the city did not fail 
 to bless the baby before every picture of the Madonna. 
 She provided it with an engraved portrait of that 
 Holy Nail which was venerated in the neighboring 
 church of San Pantaleon; and she apparently aimed 
 to supply it with playthings of a religious and saving 
 character like that piece of ivory, which resembled a 
 small torso, and which Bettina described as “A bit of 
 the Lord, Signor,”—and it was, in fact, a fragment of 
 an ivory crucifix, which she had somewhere picked up. 
 
374 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 To Bettina’s mind, mankind broadly divided them¬ 
 selves into two races, Italians and Germans, to which 
 latter she held that we Americans in some sort be¬ 
 longed. She believed that America lay a little to the 
 south of Vienna, and in her heart I think she was 
 persuaded that the real national complexion was black, 
 and that the innumerable white Americans she saw at 
 our house were merely a multitude of exceptions. But 
 with all her ignorance, she had no superstitions of a 
 gloomy kind: the only ghost she seemed ever to have 
 heard of was the spectre of an American ship captain 
 which a friend of Piero’s had seen at the Lido. She 
 was perfectly kind and obedient, and was deeply at¬ 
 tached in an inarticulate way to the baby, which was 
 indeed the pet of the whole palace. This young lady 
 ruled arbitrarily over them all, and was forever being 
 kissed and adored. When Piero went out to the wine¬ 
 shop for a little temperate dissipation, he took her 
 with him on his shoulder, and exhibited her to the 
 admiring gondoliers of his acquaintance; there was no 
 puppet-show, no church festival, in that region to which 
 she was not carried; and when Bettina, and Giulia, 
 and all the idle women of the neighborhood assembled 
 on a Saturday afternoon in the narrow alley behind 
 the palace (where they dressed one another’s thick 
 black hair in fine braids soaked in milk, and built it 
 up to last the whole of the next week), the baby was 
 the cynosure of all hearts and eyes. But her supre¬ 
 macy was yet more distinguished when, late at night, 
 the household gave itself a feast of snails stewed in 
 oil and garlic, in the vast kitchen. There her anxious 
 parents have found her seated in the middle of the 
 table with the bowl of snails before her, and armed 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 375 
 
 with a great spoon, while her vassals sat round, and 
 grinned their fondness and delight in her small tyran¬ 
 nies; and the immense room, dimly lit, with the mys¬ 
 tical implements of cookery glimmering from the wall, 
 showed like some witch’s cavern, where a particularly 
 small sorceress was presiding over the concoction of 
 an evil potion or the weaving of a powerful spell. 
 
 From time to time we had fellow-lodgers, who 
 were always more or less interesting and mysterious. 
 Among the rest there was once a French lady, who 
 languished, during her stay, under the disfavor of the 
 police, and for whose sake there was a sentinel with a 
 fixed bayonet stationed day and night at the palace 
 gate. At last, one night, this French lady escaped by 
 a rope-ladder from her chamber window, and thus no 
 doubt satisfied alike the female instinct for intrigue 
 and elopement and the political agitator’s love of a 
 mysterious disappearance. It was understood dimly 
 that she was an author, and had written a book dis¬ 
 pleasing to the police. 
 
 Then there was the German baroness and her son 
 and daughter, the last very beautiful and much courted 
 by handsome Austrian officers; the son rather weak- 
 minded, and a great care to his sister and mother, 
 from his propensity to fall in love and marry below 
 his station; the mother very red-faced and fat, a good- 
 natured old creature who gambled the summer months 
 away at Hombourg and Baden, and in the winter 
 resorted to Venice to make a match for her pretty 
 daughter. 
 
 Then, moreover, there was that English family, be¬ 
 tween whom and ourselves there was the reluctance 
 and antipathy, personal and national, which exists be- 
 
37 & 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 tween all right-minded Englishmen and Americans. 
 No Italian can understand this just and natural con¬ 
 dition, and it was the constant aim of our landlord to 
 make us acquainted. So one day when he found a 
 member of each of these unfriendly families on the 
 neutral ground of the grand sala , he introduced them. 
 They had, happily, the piano-forte between them, and 
 I flatter myself that the insulting coldness and indif¬ 
 ference with which they received each other’s names 
 carried to our landlord’s bosom a dismay never before 
 felt by a good-natured and well-meaning man. 
 
 The piano-forte which I have mentioned belonged 
 to the landlord, who was fond of music and of all fine 
 and beautiful things; and now and then he gave a 
 musical soiree , which was attended, more or less sur¬ 
 reptitiously, by the young people of his acquaintance. 
 I do not think he was always quite candid in giving 
 his invitations, for on one occasion a certain count, 
 who had taken refuge from the glare of the sala in our 
 parlor for the purpose of concealing the very loud- 
 plaided pantaloons he wore, explained pathetically that 
 he had no idea it was a party, and that he had been 
 so long out of society, for patriotic reasons, that he 
 had no longer a dress suit. But to us they were very 
 delightful entertainments, no less from the great variety 
 of character they afforded than from the really charm¬ 
 ing and excellent music which the different amateurs 
 made; for we had airs from all the famous operas, 
 and the instrumentation was by a gifted young com¬ 
 poser. Besides, the gayety seemed to recall in some 
 degree the old, brilliant life of the palace, and at least 
 showed us how well it was adopted to social magni¬ 
 ficence and display. 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 377 
 
 We enjoyed our whole year in Palazzo Giustiniani, 
 though some of the days were too long and some too 
 short, as everywhere. From heat we hardly suffered 
 at all, so perfectly did the vast and lofty rooms answer 
 to the purpose of their builders in this respect. A cur¬ 
 rent of sea air drew through to the painter’s garden 
 by day; and by night there was scarcely a mosquito 
 of the myriads that infested some parts of Venice. In 
 winter it was not so well. Then we shuffled about in 
 wadded gowns and boots lined with sheep-skin,—the 
 woolly side in, as in the song. The passage of the 
 sala was something to be dreaded, and we shivered 
 as fleetly through it as we could, and were all the 
 colder for the deceitful warmth of the colors which 
 the sun cast upon the stone floor from the window 
 opening on the court. 
 
 I do not remember any one event of our life more 
 exciting than that attempted burglary of which I have 
 spoken. In a city where the police gave their best 
 attention to political offenders, there were naturally a 
 great many rogues, and the Venetian rogues, if not 
 distinguished for the more heroic crimes, were very 
 skillful in what I may call the genre branch of robbing 
 rooms through open windows, and committing all kinds 
 of safe domestic depredations. It was judged best to 
 acquaint Justice (as they call law in Latin countries) 
 with the attempt upon our property, and I found her 
 officers housed in a small room of the Doge’s Palace, 
 clerkly men in velvet skull-caps, driving loath quills 
 over the rough official paper of those regions. After 
 an exchange of diplomatic courtesies, the commissary 
 took my statement of the affair down in writing, per¬ 
 tinent to which were my father’s name, place, and 
 
378 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 business, with a full and satisfactory personal history 
 of myself down to the period of the attempted burglary. 
 This, I said, occurred one morning about daylight, 
 when I saw the head of the burglar peering above 
 the window-sill, and the hand of the burglar extended 
 to prey upon my wardrobe. 
 
 “Excuse me, Signor Console,” interrupted the com¬ 
 missary, “how could you see him?” 
 
 “Why, there was nothing in the world to prevent 
 me. The window was open.” 
 
 “The window was open!” gasped the commissary. 
 “Do you mean that you sleep with your windows 
 open?” 
 
 “Most certainly!” 
 
 “Pardon!” said the commissary, suspiciously. “Do 
 all Americans sleep with their windows open?” 
 
 “I may venture to say that they all do, in sum¬ 
 mer,” I answered; “at least, it’s the general custom.” 
 
 Such a thing as this indulgence in fresh air, seemed 
 altogether foreign to the commissary’s experience; and 
 but for my official dignity, I am sure that I should 
 have been effectually browbeaten by him. As it was, 
 he threw himself back in his armchair and stared at 
 me fixedly for some moments. Then he recovered 
 himself with another “Perdoni!” and, turning to his 
 clerk, said, “Write down that, according to the American 
 custom , they were sleeping with their windows open.” 
 But I know that the commissary, for all his politeness, 
 considered this habit a relic of the times when we 
 Americans all abode in wigwams; and I suppose it 
 paralyzed his energies in the effort to bring the 
 burglars to justice, for I have never heard anything of 
 them from that day to this. 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 379 
 
 The truth is, it was a very uneventful year; and I 
 am the better satisfied with it as an average Venetian 
 year on that account. We sometimes varied the pensive 
 monotony by a short visit to the cities of the main¬ 
 land; but we always came back to it willingly, and I 
 think we unconsciously abhorred any interruption of it. 
 The days, as they followed each other, were wonder¬ 
 fully alike, in every respect. For eight months of sum¬ 
 mer they were alike in their clear-skied, sweet-breathed 
 loveliness; in the autumn, there where the melancholy 
 of the falling leaf could not spread its contagion to 
 the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days were 
 alike in their sentiment and tranquil oblivion and 
 resignation, which was as autumnal as any aspect of 
 woods or fields could have been; in the winter they 
 were alike in their dreariness and discomfort. As I 
 remember, we spent by far the greater part of our 
 time in going to the Piazza, and we were devoted 
 Florianisti, as the Italians call those that lounge habitu¬ 
 ally at the Caffe Florian. We went every evening to 
 the Piazza as a matter of course; if the morning was 
 long, we went to the Piazza; if we did not know what 
 to do with the afternoon, we went to the Piazza; if we 
 had friends with us, we went to the Piazza; if we were 
 alone, we went to the Piazza; and there was no mood 
 or circumstances in which it did not seem a natural 
 and fitting thing to go to the Piazza. There were all 
 the prettiest shops; there were all the finest caffes; 
 there was the imcomparable Church of St. Mark; there 
 was the whole world of Venice. 
 
 Of course, we had other devices besides going to 
 the Piazza; and sometimes we spent entire weeks in 
 
a8o 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE, 
 
 visiting the churches, one after another, and studying 
 their artistic treasures, down to the smallest scrap of 
 an old master in their darkest chapel; their history, 
 their storied tombs, their fictitious associations. Very 
 few churches escaped, I believe, except such as had 
 been turned into barracks, and were guarded by an 
 incorruptible Austrian sentinel. For such churches as 
 did escape, we have a kind of envious longing to this 
 day, and should find it hard to like anybody who had 
 succeeded better in visiting them. There is, for ex¬ 
 ample, the church of San Giobbe, the doors of which 
 we haunted with more patience than that of the titulary 
 saint: now the sacristan was out; now the church was 
 shut up for repairs; now it was Holy Week and the 
 pictures were veiled; we had to leave Venice at last 
 without a sight of San Giobbe’s three Saints by 
 Bordone, and Madonna by Bellini, which, unseen, out¬ 
 value all the other Saints and Madonnas that we looked 
 at; and I am sure that life can never become so aim¬ 
 less, but we shall still have the desire of some day 
 going to see the church of San Giobbe. If we read 
 some famous episode of Venetian history, we made it 
 the immediate care of our lives to visit the scene of 
 its occurrence; if Ruskin told us of some recondite 
 beauty of sculpture hid away in some unthought-of 
 palace court, we invaded that palace at once; if in en¬ 
 tirely purposeless strolls through the city, we came 
 upon anything that touched the fancy or piqued 
 curiosity, there was no gate or bar proof against our 
 bribes. What strange old nests of ruin, what marvel¬ 
 lous homes of solitude and dilapidation, did we not 
 wander into! What boarded-up windows peer through, 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 38 l 
 
 what gloomy recesses penetrate! I have lumber enough 
 in my memory stored from such rambles to load the 
 nightmares of a generation, and stuff for the dreams 
 of a whole people. Does any gentleman or lady wish 
 to write a romance? Sir or madam, I know just the 
 mouldy and sunless alley for your villain to stab his 
 victim in, the canal in which to plunge his body, the 
 staircase and the hall for the subsequent wanderings 
 of his ghost; and all these scenes and localities I will 
 sell at half the cost price; as also, balconies for flirta¬ 
 tion, gondolas for intrigue and elopement, confessionals 
 for the betrayal of guilty secrets. I have an assortment 
 of bad and beautiful faces and picturesque attitudes 
 and effective tones of voice; and a large stock of sym¬ 
 pathetic sculptures and furniture and dresses, with 
 other articles too numerous to mention, all warranted 
 Venetian, and suitable to every style of romance. Who 
 bids? Nay, I cannot sell, nor you buy. Each memory, 
 as I hold it up for inspection, loses its subtle beauty 
 and value, and turns common and poor in my hawker’s 
 fingers. 
 
 Yet I must needs try to fix here the remembrance 
 of two or three palaces, of which our fancy took the 
 fondest hold, and to which it yet most fondly clings. 
 It cannot locate them all, and least of all can it place 
 that vast old palace, somewhere near Cannaregio, which 
 faced upon a campo, with lofty windows blinded by 
 rough boards, and empty from top to bottom. It was 
 of the later Renaissance in style, and we imagined it 
 built in the Republic’s declining years by some ruinous 
 noble, whose extravagance forbade his posterity to live 
 in it, for it had that peculiarly forlorn air which be- 
 
382 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 longs to a thing decayed without being worn out. We 
 entered its coolness and dampness, and wandered up 
 the wide marble staircase, past the vacant niches of 
 departed statuary, and came on the third floor to a 
 grand portal which was closed against us by a barrier 
 of lumber. But this could not hinder us from looking 
 within, and we were aware that we stood upon the 
 threshold of our ruinous noble’s great banqueting-hall, 
 where he used to give his magnificent feste da hallo. 
 Lustrissimo was long gone with all his guests; but there 
 in the roof were the amazing frescos of Tiepolo’s 
 school, which had smiled down on them, as now they 
 smiled on us; great piles of architecture, airy tops of 
 palaces, swimming in summer sky, and wantoned over 
 by a joyous populace of divinities of the lovelier sex 
 that had nothing but their loveliness to clothe them 
 and keep them afloat; the whole grandiose and superb 
 beyond the effect of words, and luminous with delicious 
 color. How it all rioted there with its inextinguishable 
 beauty in the solitude and silence, from day to day, 
 from year to year, while men died, and systems passed, 
 and nothing remained unchanged but the instincts of 
 youth and love that inspired it! It was music and wine 
 and wit; it was so warm and glowing that it made the 
 sunlight cold; and it seemed ever after a secret of 
 gladness and beauty that the sad old palace was keep¬ 
 ing its heart against the time to which Venice looks for¬ 
 ward when her splendor and opulence shall be inde¬ 
 structibly renewed. 
 
 There is a ball-room in the Palazzo Pisani, which 
 some of my readers may have passed through on their 
 way to the studio of the charming old Prussian painter, 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 383 
 
 Nerly; the frescos of this are dim and faded and dusty, 
 and impress you with a sense of irreparable decay, but 
 the noble proportions and the princely air of the place 
 are inalienable, while the palace stands. Here might 
 have danced that Contarini who, when his wife’s neck¬ 
 lace of pearls fell upon the floor in the way of her 
 partner, the King of Denmark, advanced and ground 
 it into powder with his foot that the king might not 
 be troubled to avoid treading on it; and here, doubt¬ 
 less, many a gorgeous masquerade had been in the 
 long Venetian carnival; and what passion and intrigue 
 and jealousy, who knows? Now the palace was let in 
 apartments, and was otherwise a barrack, and in the 
 great court, steadfast as any of the marble statues, 
 stood the Austrian sentinel. One of the statues was a 
 figure veiled from head to foot, at the base of which 
 it was hard not to imagine lovers, masked and hooded, 
 and forever hurriedly whispering their secrets in the 
 shadow cast in perpetual moonlight. 
 
 Yet another ball-room in yet another palace opens 
 to memory, but this is all bright and fresh with recent 
 decoration. In the blue vaulted roof shine stars of 
 gold; the walls are gay with dainty frescos; a gallery 
 encircles the whole, and from this drops a light stair¬ 
 way, slim-railed, and guarded at the foot by torch¬ 
 bearing statues of swarthy Eastern girls; through the 
 glass doors at the other side glimmers the green and 
 red of a garden. It was a place to be young in, to 
 dance in, dream in, make love in; but it was no more 
 a surprise than the whole palace to which it belonged, 
 and which there in that tattered and poverty-stricken 
 old Venice was a vision of untarnished splendor and 
 
384 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 prosperous fortune. It was richly furnished through¬ 
 out all its vast extent, adorned with every caprice and 
 delight of art, and appointed with every modern com¬ 
 fort. The foot was hushed by costly carpets, the eye 
 was flattered by a thousand beauties and prettinesses. 
 In the grates the fires were laid and ready to be 
 lighted; the candles stood upon the mantles; the toilet- 
 linen was arranged for instant use in the luxurious 
 chambers; but from basement to roof the palace was 
 a solitude; no guest came there, no one dwelt there 
 save the custodian; the eccentric lady of whose pos¬ 
 sessions it formed a part abode in a little house behind 
 the palace, and on her door-plate had written her 
 vanitas vanitatum in the sarcastic inscription, “John 
 Humdrum, Esquire.” 
 
 Of course she was Inglese; and that other lady, 
 who was selling off the furniture of her palace, and 
 was so amiable a guide to its wonders in her curious 
 broken English, was Hungarian. Her great pride and 
 joy, amidst the objects of vertu and the works of art, 
 w T as a set of “Punch,” which she made us admire, and 
 which she prized the more because she had always 
 been allowed to receive it when the government pro¬ 
 hibited it to everybody else. But we were Americans, 
 she said; and had we ever seen this book? She held 
 up the “The Potiphar Papers,” a volume which must 
 have been inexpressibly amused and bewildered to 
 find itself there, in that curious little old lady’s hand. 
 
 Shall I go on and tell of the palace in which our 
 
 strange friend Padre L-dwelt, and the rooms of 
 
 which he had filled up with the fruits of his passion 
 for the arts and sciences; the anteroom he had 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 385 
 
 frescoed to represent a grape-arbor with a multitude 
 of clusters overhead; the parlor with his oil-paintings 
 on the walls, and the piano and melodeon arranged so 
 
 that Padre L-could play upon them both at once; 
 
 the oratory turned forge, and harboring the most 
 alchemic-looking apparatus of all kinds; the other 
 rooms in which he had stored his inventions in portable 
 furniture, steam-propulsion, rifled cannon, and per¬ 
 petual motion; the attic with the camera by which 
 one could photograh one’s self,—shall I tell of this, 
 and yet other palaces? I think there is enough 
 already; and I have begun to doubt somewhat the 
 truth of my reminiscences, as I advise the reader 
 to do. 
 
 Besides, I feel that the words fail to give all the 
 truth that is in them; and if I cannot make them 
 serve my purpose as to the palaces, how should I 
 hope to impart through them my sense of the glory 
 and loveliness of Venetian art? I could not give the 
 imagination and the power of Tintoretto as we felt it, 
 nor the serene beauty, the gracious luxury of Titian, 
 nor the opulence, the worldly magnificence of Paolo 
 Veronese. There hang their mighty works forever, 
 high above the reach of any palaverer; they smile 
 their stately welcome from the altars and palace-walls, 
 upon whoever approaches them in the sincerity and 
 love of beauty that produced them; and thither you 
 must thus go if you would know them. Like fragments 
 of dreams, like the fleeting 
 
 “Images of glimmering dawn,” 
 
 I am from time to time aware, g,mid the work-day 
 
 Venetian Life. 2$ 
 
3^6 
 
 VENETIAN LIFE. 
 
 world, of some happiness from them, some face or 
 form, some drift of a princely robe or ethereal drapery, 
 some august shape of painted architecture, some un- 
 namable delight of color; but to describe them more 
 strictly and explicitly, how should I undertake? 
 
 There was the exhaustion following every form of 
 intense pleasure, in their contemplation, such a wear 
 of vision and thought, that I could not call the life we 
 led in looking at them an idle one, even if it had no 
 result in after times; so I will not say that it was to 
 severer occupation our minds turned more and more in 
 our growing desire to return home. For my own part 
 personally I felt keenly the fictitious and transitory 
 character of official life. I knew that if I had become 
 fit to serve the government by four years’ residence in 
 Venice, that was a good reason why the government, 
 according to our admirable system, should dismiss 
 me, and send some perfectly unqualified person to 
 take my place; and in my heart also I knew that there 
 was almost nothing for me to do where I was, and I 
 dreaded the easily formed habit of receiving a salary 
 for no service performed. I reminded myself that, 
 soon or late, I must go back to the old fashion of 
 earning money, and that it had better be sooner than 
 later. Therefore, though for some reasons it was the 
 saddest and strangest thing in the world to do, I was 
 on the whole rejoiced when a leave of absence came, 
 and we prepared to quit Venice. 
 
 Never had the city seemed so dream-like and un¬ 
 real as in this light of farewell,—this tearful glimmer 
 which our love and regret cast upon it. As in a maze, 
 we haunted once more and for the last time the scenes 
 
OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 
 
 387 
 
 we had known so long, and spent our final, phantasmal 
 evening in the Piazza; looked, through the moonlight, 
 our mute adieu to islands and lagoons, to church and 
 tower; and then returned to our own palace, and stood 
 long upon the balconies that overhung the Grand 
 Canal. There the future became as incredible and 
 improbable as the past; and if we had often felt the 
 incongruity of our coming to live in such a place, now, 
 with tenfold force, we felt the cruel absurdity of pro¬ 
 posing to live anywhere else. We had become part of 
 Venice; and how could such atoms of her fantastic 
 personality ever mingle with the alien and unsym¬ 
 pathetic world? 
 
 The next morning the whole palace household be¬ 
 stirred itself to accompany us to the station: the land¬ 
 lord in his best hat and coat, our noble friend in 
 phenomenal linen, Giulia and her little boy, Bettina 
 shedding bitter tears over the baby, and Piero, sad 
 but firm, bending over the oar and driving us swiftly 
 forward. The first turn of the Canal shut the Palazzo 
 Giustiniani from our lingering gaze, a few more curves 
 and windings brought us to the station. The tickets 
 were bought, the baggage was registered; the little 
 oddly assorted company drew itself up in a line, and 
 received with tears our husky adieux. I feared there 
 might be a remote purpose in the hearts of the land¬ 
 lord and his retainer to embrace and kiss me, after 
 the Italian manner, but if there was, by a final inspira¬ 
 tion they spared me the ordeal. Piero turned away to 
 his gondola; the two other men moved aside; Bettina 
 gave one long, hungering, devouring hug to the baby; 
 and as we hurried into the waiting-room, we saw her, 
 
 25* 
 
388 
 
 Venetian life. 
 
 as upon a stage, standing without the barrier, supported 
 and sobbing in the arms of Giulia. 
 
 It was well to be gone, but I cannot say we were 
 glad to be going. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbati, the, 352, 353. 
 
 Alexander III., Pope, 242. 
 
 Annual State Banquets, 244. 
 Armenian College, 179 to 182. 
 Armenian Literati and Literature, 
 156 to 178. 
 
 Attila’s Chair, 163. 
 
 Augustinian Convent, Court of the, 
 147 - 
 
 Baptisms, Patrician, 285, 286. 
 Barbarossa, 243. 
 
 Bembo, Cardinal, 161; his palace, 
 184. 
 
 Benedict III., Pope, 242. 
 
 Betrothals, Plebeian, 273, 274. 
 
 Bianca Cappello’s house, 208. 
 
 Bonnet of the Doge, 242. 
 
 Brides, Rape of the Venetian, 273. 
 Bridge of Sighs, n to 13. 
 
 Bucintoro, the, 247 tp 249. 
 
 Burattini, 68, 69. 
 
 Burial-ground at San Michele, 287 to 
 291; of the Jews on Lido, 155. 
 Byron, 156, 173; his house, 209. 
 Byzantine fashions and influence, 320. 
 
 Campi, the, 58. 
 
 Canova, 354. 
 
 Capuchins, Order of, founded, 169; 
 banished, 200. 
 
 Carmelites, Church of the, 143. 
 Carnival, 15, 21, 1x3. 
 
 Carraras, the, 14, 148. 
 
 Casa di Ricovero, 142. 
 
 Castellani and Nicolotti, 249. 
 
 Castle of Love, 232. 
 
 Chioggia, 167, 168; costume in, 169. 
 
 Chiozzotti, Famous, 168 to 170. 
 
 Christmas, 270; presents, 264, 265; 
 fairs, 265; masses, 267 to 270. 
 
 Clement V., Pope, 198. 
 
 Clock Tower, 50; Magi of the, 257. 
 
 Comitato Veneto, 18, 19. 
 
 Commedia a braccio, 70, 71. 
 
 Commerce, 210; with the Goths, 211; 
 with the Longobards, 212; in slaves, 
 212; with the Franks, 213; in the 
 Greek Empire, 214; with the East, 
 215; amount of, past and present, 
 220; in relics, 225; decline of, 225* 
 fall of, in the Orient, 226. 
 
 Corpus Christi, 252 to 256. 
 
 Dandolo, Enrico, 123, 214. 
 
 Doria, Andrea, 113, 246. 
 
 Ducal Palace, 13, 49, 50. 
 
 Ducal State Visits, 242, 243. 
 
 Emo, 354. 
 
 Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, 239. 
 
 Espousals of the Sea, 246 to 249. 
 
 Excommunication of Ferrara, 198,199. 
 
 Falier, Marin, 13, 14, 89, 90, 252. 
 
 Fenice, Theatre, 63. 
 
39° 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fish Market, 267. 
 
 Florian, Caff£, 22, 52, 126. 
 
 Foscari, Jacopo, 14; his marriage, 276 
 to 278. 
 
 Fresco, the, 119. 
 
 Funeral rites, ancient and modern, 
 286, 287. 
 
 Gardens, the Public, 260; Mondays at 
 the, 260, 261. 
 
 Ghetto, the, 187 to 193. 
 
 Giant Sea-wall, the, 167. 
 
 Giant’s Stairs, 14. 
 
 Giudecca, Island of the, 154. 
 
 Goldoni, 70, 168, 299; house of, 208. 
 Gondoliers, 292 to 301. 
 
 Grand Canal, 26,42,84,114, 236 10239. 
 Grand Council, 350. 
 
 Gregory XVI., Pope, 287. 
 
 Hatred of Austria, 15 to 22. 
 
 Ice, Year of the, 44, 45. 
 
 Illustrissimo, 348. 
 
 Inquisition, 340. 
 
 Interdict of 1606, 198 to 203. 
 
 Jesuits, Church of the, 41; banished, 
 200; influence of, 337. 
 
 Jews, Exile and former disabilities of, 
 186 to 188; Cemetery of the, 193. 
 
 Law, Tomb of John, 269. 
 
 Lepanto, Fight of, celebrated, 234. 
 Lido^ Island of the, 155 to 157. 
 Luther, 148. 
 
 Malamocco, 156, 159, 234. 
 
 Malibran Theatre, 66, 67. 
 
 Manin, Daniele, 334. 
 
 Marco e Todaro, 4 s . 
 
 Marie, Festa delle, 246. 
 
 Marionette Theatre, 67 to 75. 
 Marriage customs, Early, 272; Cere¬ 
 monies, Modern, 284; Patrician, 274 
 to 276. 
 
 ^lastino della Scala, 234. 
 
 Mechithar, T72. 
 
 Merceria, 256. 
 
 Michiel, the Doge Domenico, 343; 
 
 Guistina Renier-Michiel, 246. 
 Mocenigo, Tommaso, 220. 
 
 Molo, 50. 
 
 Monte de Piet&, 104. 
 
 Murano, 160, t6i; 216, 220. 
 
 Musical Conservatories, 64, 65. 
 
 New Year’s Day, 271, 272. 
 
 Nobles, 20, 340 to 346. 
 
 Othello’s house, 292. 
 
 Otho, the Emperor, 214. 
 
 Palaces, 348, 349. 
 
 Palestrina, T70. 
 
 Paul V., Pope, 200. 
 
 Pepin, King, 234. 
 
 Petrarch, 113; his account of a joust 
 in the Piazza, 233, 234. 
 
 Piazza and Caffe, 49, 501054,113,126, 
 252, 253. 
 
 Piazzetta, 50. 
 
 Pigeons of St. Mark, 251. 
 
 Pigs of St. Anthony, 340. 
 
 Pisani, Vittore, 14. 
 
 Polo, Marco, 216. 
 
 Povegliesi, the, 250. 
 
 Pozzi, the, 13, 14. 
 
 Priests, 335 to 339. 
 
 Prisons, the Criminal, 12. 
 
 Procuratie, 50. 
 
 Redentore, Festa del, 154, 243, 244. 
 Regattas, the, 235 to 239. 
 
 Rialto, 82; market, T27. 
 
 Riva degli Schiavoni, 50, 6r, 258. 
 
 Salviati, Mosaic establishment of, 222 
 to 224. 
 
 San Bartolomeo, Campo, 58 to 61. 
 
 San Clemente, Island of, 153. 
 
 San Geminiano, Removal of the Chur ch 
 of, 240, 241. 
 
 San Giorgio Maggiore, Church of, 155, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 391 
 
 San Giovanni e Paolo, Church of, 145, 
 146. 
 
 San Lazzaro, Convent of, 43, 172. 
 
 San Moise, Church of, 269, 270. 
 
 San Nicold dei Tolentini, Church of, 
 144. 
 
 San Pietro di Castello, 245, 253, 254, 
 273 - 
 
 SanRocco, Seuola di, 286; theft of 
 body of, 243. 
 
 San Stefano, Church of, 147; Day of, 
 271, 272. 
 
 Santa Maria del Giglio, Church of, 
 125. 
 
 Santa Maria dell’ Orto, Church of, 188, 
 189. 
 
 Santa Maria della Salute, Church of, 
 142, 144, 145, 243, 244. 
 
 Santa Maria Fermosa, Church of, 245. 
 
 San Zaccaria, Church of, 242; convent 
 of, 339- 
 
 Sarpi, Paolo, 194 to 265. 
 
 Servite Convent, 194. 
 
 Sforza, Francesco, 277. 
 
 Sior Antonio Rioba, r88. 
 
 Soldini Masses, 141, 
 
 Sottomarina, 170. 
 
 Spanish Synagogue, 191. 
 
 Specchi, Caffe, 54. 
 
 St. Mark, Church of, 19,47, 50, 139 to 
 141, 295; Body of, 240, 241. 
 
 Suttil, Caffe, 54. 
 
 Tamerlane, 226. 
 
 Tana, Colony of, 215; Fall of, 226. 
 Theodoric, King of the Goths, 211. 
 Tiepolo, Bajamonte, 235, 252. 
 Tintoretto, Tomb of, 189; House of, 
 203. 
 
 Titian, House of, 205 to 207. 
 
 Torcello, 162 to 167. 
 
 Tradonico, Pietro, the Doge, 242. 
 
 Ulrich, Patriarch of Aquileja, 230. 
 
 Villa Pisani at Stra, 347. 
 
 Villas, 245; on the Brenta, 346, 347. 
 
 Zeno, Carlo, 14. 
 
 Ziani, the Doge, 232, 247. 
 
 THE END. 
 
PRINTINGOFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER. 
 
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