Italian Hours | Page 2

to enlighten the reader; I
pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I hold any writer
sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
I
Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after extracting
half a lifetime of pleasure and an immeasurable quantity of fame from
it. We all may do the same, after it has served our turn, which it
probably will not cease to do for many a year to come. Meantime it is
Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps us to enjoy. He has indeed lately
produced several aids to depression in the shape of certain little
humorous--ill-humorous-- pamphlets (the series of St. Mark's
Rest) which embody his latest reflections on the subject of our city

and describe the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are
numerous and deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have
spoiled Venice would be to admit that Venice may be spoiled--an
admission pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty. Fortunately one
reacts against the Ruskinian contagion, and one hour of the lagoon is
worth a hundred pages of demoralised prose. This queer late-coming
prose of Mr. Ruskin (including the revised and condensed issue of the
Stones of Venice, only one little volume of which has been
published, or perhaps ever will be) is all to be read, though much of it
appears addressed to children of tender age. It is pitched in the
nursery-key, and might be supposed to emanate from an angry
governess. It is, however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully
just. There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author has
spent his life in laying down the principles of form and scolding people
for departing from them; but it throbs and flashes with the love of his
subject--a love disconcerted and abjured, but which has still much of
the force of inspiration. Among the many strange things that have
befallen Venice, she has had the good fortune to become the object of a
passion to a man of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in
doing so has made her the world's. There is no better reading at Venice
therefore, as I say, than Ruskin, for every true Venice-lover can
separate the wheat from the chaff. The narrow theological spirit, the
moralism à tout propos, the queer provincialities and pruderies,
are mere wild weeds in a mountain of flowers. One may doubtless be
very happy in Venice without reading at all--without criticising or
analysing or thinking a strenuous thought. It is a city in which, I
suspect, there is very little strenuous thinking, and yet it is a city in
which there must be almost as much happiness as misery. The misery
of Venice stands there for all the world to see; it is part of the
spectacle--a thoroughgoing devotee of local colour might consistently
say it is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call
their own--little more than the bare privilege of leading their lives in
the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes
heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an
impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions
not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are
on better terms with it than many people who have made a better

bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear
bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an
eternal conversazione. It is not easy to say that one would have
them other than they are, and it certainly would make an immense
difference should they be better fed. The number of persons in Venice
who evidently never have enough to eat is painfully large; but it would
be more painful if we did not equally perceive that the rich Venetian
temperament may bloom upon a dog's allowance. Nature has been kind
to it, and sunshine and leisure and conversation and beautiful views
form the greater part of its sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a
successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a
handful of quick sensibility. The Italian people have at once the good
and the evil fortune to be conscious of few wants; so that if the
civilisation of a society is measured by the number of its needs, as
seems to be the common opinion to-day, it is to be feared that the
children of the lagoon would make but a poor figure in a set of
comparative tables. Not their misery, doubtless, but the way they elude
their misery, is what pleases the sentimental tourist, who is gratified by
the sight of a beautiful