Venetian Life: With a Portrait of the Author

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THE

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

PRESENTED BY

MRS. HENRY DRAPER

O lv 5

/

COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

VOL. 2132.
VENETIAN LIFE. BY W. D. HOWELLS.

IN ONE VOLUME.

TAUCHNTTZ EDITION.

. By the same Author,

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION i vol.

THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK . . . . i vol.

A MODERN DISTANCE 2 vols.

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 1 vol.

ITALIAN JOURNEYS 1 vol.

A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 1 vol.

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY 1 vol.

A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY, ETC. . . . 1 vol.

A WOMAN'S REASON 2 vols.

DR. BREEN*S PRACTICE 1 vol.

THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM 2 vols.

A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS x vol.

TJ! r , V~"' T Tr "^ T <
PUBLIC lU^&Y

ASTOR. LENOX
TILPEN FOUNDATIONS

m

/(^ry^^^i

VENETIAN LIFE.

BY

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS,

AUTHOR OF
'A MODERN INSTANCE," "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY," ETC,

AUTHORIZED EDIT/ON. '

WITH THE PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1883.

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

688678

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

R 19lo L

-I

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE SECOND (AMERICAN) EDITION.

In correcting this book for a 9econd 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 haye afipctd 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.

Page

CHAPTER I. Venice in Venice 9

— II. Arrival and first Days in Venice • • • *$

— III. The Winter in Venice 36

— IV. Cominda 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 . • • . us

— IX. A Day-Break Ramble 124

— X. The Mouse • • 129

— XI. Churches and Pictures 136

— XII. Some Islands of die Lagoons 15a

— XIII. The Armenians • . 17a

— XIV. The Ghetto and the Jews of Venice .... 183

— XV. Some memorable Places 194

— XVI. Commerce azo

* XVII. Venetian Holidays asa

8 CONTENTS.

Page

CHAPTER XVIII. Christmas Holiday* 36a

— XIX. Love-making and Marrying; Baptisms and

Burials 973

— XX. Venetian Traits and Characters . . . 092

— XXI. Society 3*>

— XXII. Our Last Year in Venice 356

INDEX 389

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 bad thought an

10 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 put, if I may so sp£ak, 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. 1 1

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 ho
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.:—

VENICE IN VENICE. 1 3

Political offenders were not confined in the "prison
on each hand" of the poet, but in the famous pozzt
(literally, wells) or dungeons under the Ducal Palace.,
And what fables concerning these cells have not been
uttered and believed 1 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 pozzt? 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.

14 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. 1 5

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 fa9ade 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

16 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. 1 7

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

l8 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. 1 9

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,

2*

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 Speech! ;
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; and 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 volta o Valira> 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 AMD FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 2$

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 gransieri, or crab-catchers; but as yet I did not

2b VENETIAN LIFE.

know the name or the purpose of this pwerino* 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 FIRS* DAYS fN VENICE. 2^

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 AND FIRST DAYS IN VENICE. 2g

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 y 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-aw,ay 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.

, 7 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 cafffc there, where you get an excellent caff I
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

"Toole 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 or 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-

38 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 caflfc, 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 /oaf 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 caffe. 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 ofPalladio'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

4^ 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 immenso affar!
Sora Pacqua camminarl

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

• Origin* delle Feste Veneuane, 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 deliriously 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 fajade, 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.

48 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 lie 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 Procurator* di San
Marco*

Venetian Life, 4

50 VENETIAN LIFE.

then opens southward with the name of Piazzetta, be-
tween the eastern facade 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 facade 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 liveliness 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 Schiavoni, 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 then-
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, "$! 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 Caff£ Specchi, frequented only by young Italians,
of an order less wealthy than those who go to Florian's.
Across from this caflfe 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
Caff& Suttil, rather Austrian, and frequented by Italian
coding 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 Caff& 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 caffe, 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 caffe,
and the soft midnight sees the same diligent idlers in
their place's. 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

COMENCIA FAR CALDO. 57

Gardens, and throng all the wider avenues and the
Eazza; 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.

"E la stagion che 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

58 VENETIAN LtfrE.

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 caffe, 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.

COMtNCIA FAfc 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-

60 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

COAflNClA FAR CALDO. 6 1

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. Now, at last,
you know why

"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 with
nearly the same outlay as that for the box, before
you can reach you* place. The pit is fitted up with
seats, of course, but you do not sit down there with-

64 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
z.p and/*.

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 dimostraziont 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 of
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 capellol 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 Bidotto,
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
tiling 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 braccio* 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;
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 sirieux, 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 nothings
and when the manager, in an excess of fury and dis-
appointment, calls out, "Ah I sons of dogs! I play no
more to you I" and closes the theatre, they quietly and
unresentfully disperse. Though, indeed, fioi de cam
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 Fig, is to wreak upon him the deadliest insult
which can be put into words.

In the commedia a braccio y 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 br actio. 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. 7 1

dividual traits axe 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 "Ciil" 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 caffi. 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 quaitro 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
'tity made invitations to dinner at private houses
rare, and superfluous among the courtesies offered to
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 I 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 Cafffc 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 sguassetto>
to the Caff& Florian. They all have names which 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

80 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 caflfe 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 ANt> DINERS. 8t

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 polenta (a thicker kind of mush or hasty-
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
the fascinating walls hang huge plates of bronzed
earthenware for a lavish and a hospitable show, and
for the representation of those scenes of Venetian story
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 sguassetto. 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 dish, 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 caflfc 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
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
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

84 VfeNETlAtf LlFfi.

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 xeV %
(Who is it?) But you do not answer with your name. Your reply,
"Amicil" (Friends 1) 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
"Amicil" with "No ghe ne xel" (Nobody here!) and lets down a
basket by a string outside the window, and fishes up your curd.

86 VENETIAN LtF£.

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.

In a bade 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 facade, 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 seguitoi 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. 8$

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 signorile,* — 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
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 secon4 or thir4 story of the palace is
S0ie4.

QO VfcNETtAK Lttfc.

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 pf 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. gx

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 ajways 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-creature^In Venice pro-
visions are bought by housekeepers <m 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,

96 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 1" —
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 of!er which I accepted with mistaken exultation,

Venetian Ufa 7

98 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, Jul" (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 wtodman 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 then-
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. > 9§

pleasantest sight of the morning streets of Venice, to
the stoniness of which they bring a sense of the country's
dovery pasturage, in the milk just drawn from the great
cream-colored cows.

Fishermen, also, come down the little colli — 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

7*

688678

tOO VENETIAN U*fi.

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. 1 01

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 bis personal resemblance to Time — I should

104 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 zs, petrolic.

HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. 103

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,
tutf altro, signorl

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 slender means and the pickings that
G. carefully carries him 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 "/ met 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 Keti., 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 ipade QUt 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*

t06 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 "Pettat peifa/" (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. toy

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
our paid servant. But a happy calamity which one
night carried off 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-!

I08 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 land
of hash skillfully flavored and baked in rolls pf a rncllqw com*
ptacion and fascinating appearance,

HOUSEKEEPING IN VENICE. tOQ

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
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
over us. But we trusted her implicitly, and I hardly
know how or when it was that we began to waver in
pur confidence. It is certain that with the lapse of

110 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. 1 1 1

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. Mai Come si fa? Ci vuol pazicnza!" 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.

112 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. Ilj

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, who

Venetian Life. $

1 14 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 half-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. 1 1 5

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 thetable-
d'hdte 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»

Il6 VENETIAN LIFE.

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. . 1 17

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

Il8 VENETIAN LIFE.

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. 1 1Q

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 n0 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 1 alta e con rabbiosa fame,
SI die 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 liest, 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

HIE 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. 125

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 Moise. 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.

126 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 Cafft 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

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
puny, scornful, and uncomfortable, and at the moment
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
since the statutes of the haughty Republic were read

THE MOUSE. 1 29

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 Life. 9

I30 VENETIAN UFE.

mouse he was, until the driver stopped to water Iris
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. 131

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 Pieti. 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'

13* 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. 133

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-
t 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 ortginalt, 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 XL
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

I38 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 tfie
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-

I4O 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. 14!

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
Redentori) 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
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 chaussitre, 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 RkwerO) 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 wiU for ninety of the inmates. The Secretary of the Casa went
through aU 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
Jittle mother!

CHURCHES AND PICTURES. 1 43

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.

144 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 Nicol6 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, mav 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 facade. 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 chopfallen
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

be has lost in that indefinable charm which belonged
chiefly to Bellini, and only to that brief age of transi •
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*

I48 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 the 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 priest9, 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. 1 49

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

150 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 Sehenswurdig-
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
fintrd mat quella guerra? Che sangue! ch$ or r or el"*
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
u summer isles of Eden" lying all about Venice, far
and near. The water forever trembles and changes,
with every 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, ail-but melancholy expanses. Beyond

SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 53

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

1 • Sonny 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 "Haiti Wer dal" 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 LUTE.

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 btrbanti matricolatj, 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 Redentore, which only the Madonnas of
Bellini in the sacristy make worthy to be seen, — though

SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS. 1 55

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, SanLazzaro,
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
glares down upon the sand and flat gravestones, and
it seems the most desolate place where one's bones
might be laid. The Protestants were once also in-
terred on the Lido, but now they rest (apart from the
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

1 56 VENETIAN UFE.

incredible good luck to hide himself from the sbirri
of the Republic; or to relate that it was the habit ol
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
Nicoli (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. 1 57

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

I58 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

l60 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, Hero
the gondolier and Giovanna improve us with a little
solemn pleasantry.

"It is a small place," says Hero, "but there is
room enough for all Venice in it"

"It is true," assents Giovanna, "and here we poor
folks become landholders at last"

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. l6l

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

1 62 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. 163

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 podesta
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 1 8 14, 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-
rum" 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-

I64 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 Tor cello, 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 TorcellanL 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 pur 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

1 66 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 fajade 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 OF 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 mta Veneziaf" (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

1 68 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 "Baruffe 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. 1 69

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

I70 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 naYvely
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-
tered upon the pavement in every direction, lay boys
asleep, with their heads upon their arms. As we
passed laughing through the midst of these slumberers,
they rose and followed us with cries of "Mi tiri zul
Mi tiri zuf" (Take me down! Take me down!) They
ran ahead, and fell asleep again in our path, and
round every corner we came upon a sleeping boy; and,
indeed, we never got out of that atmosphere of slumber
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 17 17 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 litde 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
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. 1 75

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, SanLazzaro 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 Bibliotheque
Royale. He became the first scholar of the age in his

I76 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 m 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

itt£ ARMENIANS. tyj

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 1 86 1 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. 12

X78 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 litde 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 mors. 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

13*

l80 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. l8l

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
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

l8i VENETIAN LIPE.

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 ANB THE JEWS OP VENICE. 1 83

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, " Cib Shylock! Bon
dlt Go piaser vederla;"* 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,"

184 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 Baccol 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 appartamento 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. 1 85

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 disr
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
with silver buttons, and ringing with silver bells. The
fine gentlemen of the period were not behind them in
extravagance; and the priests were peculiarly luxurious
in dress, wearing gay silken robes, with cowls of fur,
and girdles of gold and silver. Sumptuary laws were
vainly passed to repress the general license, and for-
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-
pressed nephews fly to pledge the wrecks of prosperity,
♦ GfVlUciolli, Mcmoric V^ntfe,

1 86 VENETIAN LIFE.

there was yet no Monte di Keti, 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
♦ Mutiixelli.

THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 1 87

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
* Dd Cotnmercio dti Vcneziani. Mutinelli.

l88 VENETIAN LIFE.

bell-pull, with the legend, Sior Antonio jRioba. 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. U E poi, che corn-
media vederli arrabiarsi! Che ridere/" 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 fajade 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 bade
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 bands were reverent, which I doubt). The

THE GHETTO AND THE JEWS OF VENICE. 1 89

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 the 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.

I9O VENETIAN LIFE.

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. KJT

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 walls 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 OP VENICE. 1 93

Veronese, or — what know I? — perhaps a Titian. "Si,
signora, originalissimof"

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 it$ 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

194 VENETIAN LIFE.

v 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
fajade 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 fajades. 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, zwtt, drei 9 — vorwarUl Etns, ewet\
drei, — rUckw&rtsI" 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,

i3 #

196 VENfcTtAN vmL

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 not 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. f 97

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

*9& VENETIAN LIFE.

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*
suit 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 o£ 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. I9Q

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! v

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 UFE.

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
interna! safety thus provided for, the Republic in-

SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. 201

trusted heir 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 y 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 jthe 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.

202 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
never 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—2& an
intolerable oppression. He could only tell me that cm
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 Fondamenta Nuove,
in a little court at the left of the church of the Jesuits;

£06 VENETIAN LIFE.

These unreasonable persons think it an intolerable borg
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: "Suont pure, O signoret Questa e la
famosa casa del gran pittore, rimmortale Tiziano, —
suom, signore!" (Ring, by all means, sir. This is the

SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. f07

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 oiiheAnnali Urbani y speaking of the friendship and frequent
meetings of Titian and Sansovino, says, "Vivevano . . • allora

2o8 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 Ticozsd makes
him proprietor of two.

SOME MEMORABLE PLACES. ' 20Q

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-
ter inan: 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
Vcnezia, 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
said he had known Byron, and who told me that he

Venetian Life. 14

2IO VENETIAN LIFE.

once swam with him from the Port of San Nicoli 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 XVL
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 1 1

presentative 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
resources; and long before this government was finally
established at Rialto, (the ancient sea-port of Padua,)
or Venice had become the capital of the young Re-
public, the Veneti had thriftily begun to turn the wild
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
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
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,
and with wines brought from Istria. The Goths viewed

212 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 Commcrcio dei Venetian*,

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 century, 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 d6pdts 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

COMMERCE. 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

2l6 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,
Nicoli, 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 readied 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

COMMERCE. 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.

2l8 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 duly 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

COMMERCE. 219

-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 1 38 1 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 141 4 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 ** 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

COMMERCE. 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 (4 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 Signer 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-

COMMERCE. 221

ing 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.

224 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

COMMERCE. 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 die
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, 1 5

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 1 27 1. 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 entrepdts 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 141 o, 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 I A thousand persons are said to have

COMMERCE. 227

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 CafFa, 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-

i5*

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-Michiers
Origin* delle Feste Venetian*, — "Siccome Fillustre Autrice ha vo-
luto applicare al suo lavoro il modesto titolo di Origin* dell* Fest*
Veneziane, e siccome questo potrebbe poigere un* idea assai diversa
dell' opera a chi non ne ha alcana 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 aweni-
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
of the information contained in this chapter.

2$0 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 1 162, 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 tbeir guild was allotted the honor of

VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 23 1

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 12 14,
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,

2$2 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 1 36 1 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 fajade 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

234 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 lie
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 Vetiesia.

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

* Fesie Venetian*.

VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 237

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,

* FesU Vencuant.

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, m 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

24O VENETIAN LIFE.

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. 2^1

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
buik 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. 1 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 HI., 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
anniversary of the day when Pope Alexander EL, in

VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. 243

1 177, 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 Artistka e
Storica di Venezta, say that the pope merely lodged in the monastery
on the day when he signed the treaty of peace with Barbarossa.

16*

244 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 EI. 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 Lotnbardo-Veneto , of
a conversation with the author of Feste Vene&iane. 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 faU 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
hs mast yet remains, and is to be seen in the museum of the Arsenal.

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 HI.
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 tforo,* 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-
spansamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominiu
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,

2$0 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 Decollato, 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 corners 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. 2$1

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 141 3. For the peace
of 1 5 16, 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
Christi 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
trom the schismatics. Up to that period the day of

VENETIAN HOLIDAYS. *53

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 crowd, 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. He 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 within
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, IJF

258 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 L 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 ferrd, — 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 modes.

>7*

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 Nicol6, 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 HOLED AYS. 2 6 1

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 Fimpera-
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.

262 VENETIAN LIFE.

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. 9 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 Mois6 is
in the highest style of the Renaissance art, which is,
I believe, the lowest style of any other. The richly
sculptured fajade 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 Moise 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 Moise. 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

270 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 Moise 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 facade. 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. 2JI

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 brotlL

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 a" anno, with the same practical
end in view. On New Year's Eve and morning bands
of facchini and gondoliers go about howling vivas under

2 J 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 z.festa y 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 Ulyrian
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 KtARRYING. 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
triad 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 Piero 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, 1%

274 VENETIAN UKE.

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, "Wouldst thou like to have Hero 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 from 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,
tod hither came the high officers of state to compli-

LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 275

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 figurif) 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*

276 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 Balbi,
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. ijj

and 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

2J& VENETIAN LIFE.

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. 2JQ

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,

280 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 AMD HARRYING. 28 1

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
cafe 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 // Bugiardo
are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice.

2&2 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 caflfe encounter
his pleading gaze — that all this must drive the Bion-
dina to a state bordering upon blasphemy and finger-
nails. Ma f come si fa? Ci vuol pazienzal 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 MAfcRYtNG. 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 naXve 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 pazienzal"

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. 285

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-
Ijerious 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 XVL carried his
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 AMD 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
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, J?

29O VENETIAN UFB.

raise it to their 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 "Ci6!"* 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! Ci6, the grave-digger! Where does
this dead belong?"

* Literally, That in Italian, and meaning in Venetian, You!
Height 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), Old fellow! 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 I as they pass in the
street. Acquaintances, men who meet after separation, rush to-
gether with "Ah Cib I" Then they kiss on the right cheek, " Ob!"
on the left, "Cib/" on the lips, "Cib! Bon d\ Cibl"

LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING. 2<)t

"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 fattol

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.

i9*

2Q2 VENETIAN LITE.

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 statuel"

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. 2 9J

"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 1 Without thinking an instant, Othello,
being made so, flew into a passion (si riscaldb 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 ail 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

2 94 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,
lugamgher; 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
£&9ade 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. 295

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 Fomarettol" (Remember the
poor Baker-Boy!) The poet Dall '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 shall 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-bcy
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, and 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. 297

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 thfr 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 2rwanzigers 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

298 VENETIAN UFE.

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
axe 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 litde city 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 "Barcaf"
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 C&AfeACT&kS. *<#

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

300 VENETIAN UFE.

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 movemejit 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 cafffe 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 Keta, 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;
window-sashes are contrived to be glazed without
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

3O4 VENETIAN LIFE.

instead of screws; you do not buy a door-lock at a
hardware store, — you get zfdtbro 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
cafffc; 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; he
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, cara!"
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 Frocuratie, 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-
gradation with the ladies, to whom my vagabond

20*

308 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 and 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 y 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,
— "S'accomodi pur, Signor!" 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. "Si, signoril" he ad-
mitted with an air of argument, "} vero. 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

310 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
teri 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

3 I 2 VENETIAN LIFE.

titles are not distinctions. The Venetian seldom gives
to beggars; he says deliberately, "No go" (I have no-
thing), or "Quando r it or nerd" (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 Cib 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! (Par on!
paronaf) 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, bella 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

314 VENETIAN LIFE.

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 riveritol)

Vecchio. (With that peculiar backward wave and
beneficent wag of the hand, only possible to Italians.)
Blessed child! (Benedettal)

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 I

A Fool!

B. Thou!

A. Liar!

B. Thou!

E via in seguiio! 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 Mscorro piii con genie"

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.

3l6 VENETIAN LIFE.

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. 3 1 7,

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 dl! Patron 1" (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

3l8 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. Povartto
anca lul There is no work and no money; people
must do something; so they steal. Ci vuol pazienza!
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 —
pwareto! 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 tC his landing, entered his house, filled
their boat with 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 "La scustl" ("Beg par-
don! ") as if its removal had been a trifling inadvertence.

3*0 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 caflfe 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-

Venctian Life* 31

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-comer gossip, added to the bitter shrewd-

21*

3M VENETIAN LEflE.

ness and witty penetration of a gifted rou6, 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 ^wrork, 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 na*vet6 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 coarse
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. 327

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 caoaliere servenie 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 caff&,
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 soirde, 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
/aire 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

SOCffiTV. 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 now
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 literaiy 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

336 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. 337

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

socumr. 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
came back from the table.

22 •

34-0 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,
.1 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 therfe 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 EcceUenza. They also signed them-
selves nobiUy between the Christian name and surname, as it is still
the habit of the untitled nobility to do.

society. 345

cise 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 conia> 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, andTreviso, 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 passie indecency of their nymphs and
fauns, foolishly strutting in the attitudes of the silly

♦ A count who doesn't count (money) counts for nothing.

34& 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 tilings for pleasure
making in the gross old fashion.* King Cole was not
• Mutinelli, GUUlHmi CinquanV Anni ddlaRepubblica di Venezia,

348 VENETIAN LIFE.

a merrier old soul than Ulustrissimo of that day; he
outspent princes; and his agent, while he harried the
tenants to supply his master's demands, plundered
Ulustrissimo frightfully. Ulustrissimo never looked at
accounts. He said to his steward, "Caro veccio y fl vu.
Mi remeto a quel che fe 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 Ulustrissimo, 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 ho 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 aristo-

35<> 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

352 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 abbis 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 I the world is
changed! The priests whom you see playing tre-sette
now at the conversazioni are altogether different men,
and 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, Marcel 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
<^ui discern in it nothing so admirable, so dignified, so

23 •

35& VENETIAN LIFE.

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
Nicol6; 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 Nicol6, and dying at last to s
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

35& 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

360 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 modern 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 cafife,
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. 36 1

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

362 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
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 ^Esculapius; 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 iEsculapiuses) which no one could have

364 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 Jias 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 tninage 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 Caffe Florian in the
Piazza of Saint Mark, where we drank a cup of black
coffee and ate an ice, while all the world promenaded
by, and the Austrian bands made heavenly music.

Those bands no longer play in Venice, and I be-
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 fajade 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 were 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 fajades 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

OUR LAST YEAR IN VENICE. 367

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. 36g

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 USE.

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. 37 1

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 attach*
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.

*4*

37* 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 Hero 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 (saltarmt 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. Hero 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-

376 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 soirie, 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 sola 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 1"

"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 "Perdonil" and, turning to his
clerk, said, "Write down that, according to tht 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.

OtJk LAS* Y£A& 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 Cafffc Plorian. 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

380 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 1

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»

S&2 VENETIAN LITE.

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 famished 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 vanitaium 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 vtriu and the works of art,
was 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 a^pove 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, amid the work-day

Venetian Life, 25

386 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 reioiced 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, 353, 353.
Alexander III., Pope, 242.
Annual State Banquets, 344.
Armenian College, 179 to 182.
Armenian Literati and Literature,

156 to 178.
Attila's Chair, 163.
Augustinian Convent, Court of the,

147.

Baptisms, Patrician, 385, 286.

Barbarossa, 343.

Bembo, Cardinal, 161; bis palace,

184.
Benedict III., Pope, 343.
Betrothals, Plebeian, 373, 374.
Bianca Cappello's house, 308.
Bonnet of the Doge, 343.
Brides, Rape of the Venetian, 373.
Bridge of Sighs, xi to 13.
Bucintoro, the, 347 to 349.
Burattini, 68, 69.
Burial-ground at San Michele, 387 to

391 ; of the Jews on Lido, 155.
Byron, 156, 173 ; his house, 309.
Byzantine fashions and influence, 330.

Campi, the, 58.

Canova, 354.

Capuchins, Order of, founded, 169;

banished, 300.
Carmelites, Church of the, 143.
Carnival, 15, sr, 1x3.

Carraras, the, 14, 248.

Casa di Ricovero, 142.

Castellani and Nicolotti, 349.

Castle of Love, 333.

Cbioggia, 167, 168; costume in, 169.

Chiozzotti, Famous, 168 to 170.

Christinas, 370; presents, 364, 365;
fairs, 365 ; masses, 367 to 370.

Clement V., Pope, 198.

Clock Tower, 50; Magi of the, 357.

Comitate Veneto, x8, 19.

Commedia a braccio, 70, 71.

Commerce, axo; with the Goths, 311 ,
with theLongobards, 313 ; in slaves,
aid ; with the Franks, 3x3 ; in the
Greek Empire, 3x4 ; with the East,
3x5 ; amount of, past and present,
330; in relics, 335; decline of, 335 *
fall of, in the Orient, 236.

Corpus Christi, 353 to 356.

Dandolo, Enrico, 133, 3x4.
Doria, Andrea, 1x3, 346.
Ducal Palace, 13, 49, 50.
Ducal State Visits, 342, 343.

Emo, 354.

Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, 239.
Espousals of the Sea, 246 to 349.
Excommunication of Ferrara, 198, 199.

Falier, Marin, 13, 14, 89, 90, 353.
Fenice, Theatre, 63.

39<>

INDEX.

Fish Market, 267.

Florian, Caffe, as, 53, xa6.

Foscari, Jacopo, 14; his marriage, 376

to 978.
Fresco, the, 1x9.
Funeral rites, ancient and modern,

386, 387.

Gardens, the Public, 960; Mondays at

the, 360, s6t.
Ghetto, the, 187 to 193.
Giant Sea-wall, the, 167.
Giant's Stairs, 14.
Giudecca, Island of the, 154.
Goldoni, 70, 168, 399; house of, 908.
Gondoliers, 393 to 301.
Grand Canal, 36, 43, 84, 1x4, 336 to 939.
Grand Council, 350.
Gregory XVI., Pope, 387.

Hatred of Austria, 15 to 39.

Ice, Year of the, 44, 45.
IUustrissimo, 348.
Inquisition, 340.
Interdict of x6o6, 198 to 303.

Jesuits, Church of the, 41; banished,

soo; influence of, 337.
Jews, Exile and former disabilities of,

186 to 188; Cemetery of the, 193.

Law, Tomb of John, 369.
Lepanto, Fight of, celebrated, 334.
Lido, Island of the, 155 to 157.
Luther, X48.

Malamocco, 156, 159, 334.

Malibran Theatre, 66, 67.

Manin, Daniele, 334.

Marco e Todaro, 48.

Marie, Festa delle, 346.

Marionette Theatre, 67 to 75.

Marriage customs, Early, 37s ; Cere-
monies, Modern, 384; Patrician, 374
to 376.

Mastino della Scala, 334.

Mechithar, 17a.

Merceria, 356.

Michiel, the Doge Domenico, 343;

Guistina Renier-Michiel, 346.
Mocenigo, Tommaso, aao.
Molo, 50.

Monte de Pietk, 104.
Murano, x6o, t6x; ax6, 330.
Musical Conservatories, 64, 65.

New Year's Day, 371, 373.
Nobles, 30, 340 to 346.

Othello's house, 399.
Otho, the Emperor, 9x4.

Palaces, 348, 349.

Palestrina, 170.

Paul V., Pope, 300.

Pepin, King, 334.

Petrarch, 1x3; his account of a joust

in die Piazza, 333, 334.
Piazza and Caixe, 49, 50 to 54, 1x3, 12C,

«53» 353-
Piazzetta, 50.
Pigeons of St. Mark, 951.
Pigs of St. Anthony, 340.
Pisani, Vittore, 14.
Polo, Marco, 3x6.
Povegliesi, the, 350.
Pozzi, the, 13, 14.
Priests, 335 to 339.
Prisons, the Criminal, ia.
Procuratie, 50.

Redentore, Festa del, 154, 943, 944.

Regattas, the, 335 to 339.

Rialto, 8a; market, 137.

Riva degli Schiavoxti, 50, 61, 358.

Sal via ti, Mosaic establishment of, 329

to 394.
San Bartolomeo, Campo, 58 to 6x.
San Qemente, Island of, 153.
San Geminiano, Removal of the Church.

of, 340, 941.
San Giorgio Maggiore, Church of, X55*

INDEX.

39»

San Giovanni e Paolo, Church of, 145,

146.
San Lazzaro, Convent of, 43, 17a.
San Moise, Church of, 369, 370.
San Nicol6 dei Tolentini, Church of,

144.
San Pietro di Castello, 945, 353, 354,

273.
SanRocco, Scuola di, aS6; theft of

body of, 343.
San Stefano, Church of, 147; Day of,

371, 373.
Santa Maria del Giglio, Church of,

135.
Santa Maria dell' Orto, Church of, 188,

189.
Santa Maria della Salute, Church of,

142, 144, 145, 343, 344.
Santa Maria Fermosa, Church of, 345.
San Zaccaria, Church of, 343; convent

of, 339-
Sarpi, Paolo, 194 to 305.
Servite Convent, 194.
Sforza, Francesco, 377.
Sior Antonio Rioba, 188.

Soldini Masses, 141.

Sottomarina, 170.

Spanish Synagogue, 191.

Specchi, Caffe, 54.

St. Mark, Church of, 19, 47* 5°> z 39 to

141, 295; Body of, 340, 341.
Suttil, Cafife, 54.

Tamerlane, 336.

Tana, Colony of, 315; Fall of, 336.
Theodoric, King of the Goths, six.
Tiepolo, Bajamonte, 335, 35s.
Tintoretto, Tomb of, 189; House of,.

305.
Titian, House of, 305 to 307.
Torcello, x6a to 167.
Tradonico, Pietro, the Doge, 34a.

Ulrich, Patriarch of Aquileja, 330.

Villa Pisani at Stra, 347.

Villas, 345; on the Brenta, 346, 347.

Zeno, Carlo, 14.

Ziani, the Doge, 333, 347.

THE END.

PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.

*>

w

*£

If CV ? •» 1945