Italian Hours | Page 4

though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so
disagreeable as the visitors. The conditions are peculiar, but your
intolerance of them evaporates before it has had time to become a
prejudice. When you have called for the bill to go, pay it and remain,
and you will find on the morrow that you are deeply attached to Venice.
It is by living there from day to day that you feel the fulness of her
charm; that you invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit.
The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when
you know all the aspects of her beauty. She has high spirits or low, she
is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to
the weather or the hour. She is always interesting and almost always
sad; but she has a thousand occasional graces and is always liable to
happy accidents. You become extraordinarily fond of these things; you
count upon them; they make part of your life. Tenderly fond you
become; there is something indefinable in those depths of personal
acquaintance that gradually establish themselves. The place seems to
personify itself, to become human and sentient and conscious of your
affection. You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it; and
finally a soft sense of possession grows up and your visit becomes a
perpetual love-affair. It is very true that if you go, as the author of these
lines on a certain occasion went, about the middle of March, a certain
amount of disappointment is possible. He had paid no visit for several
years, and in the interval the beautiful and helpless city had suffered an

increase of injury. The barbarians are in full possession and you
tremble for what they may do. You are reminded from the moment of
your arrival that Venice scarcely exists any more as a city at all; that
she exists only as a battered peep- show and bazaar. There was a horde
of savage Germans encamped in the Piazza, and they filled the Ducal
Palace and the Academy with their uproar. The English and Americans
came a little later. They came in good time, with a great many French,
who were discreet enough to make very long repasts at the Caffè
Quadri, during which they were out of the way. The months of April
and May of the year 1881 were not, as a general thing, a favourable
season for visiting the Ducal Palace and the Academy. The
valet-de- place had marked them for his own and held
triumphant possession of them. He celebrates his triumphs in a terrible
brassy voice, which resounds all over the place, and has, whatever
language he be speaking, the accent of some other idiom. During all the
spring months in Venice these gentry abound in the great resorts, and
they lead their helpless captives through churches and galleries in dense
irresponsible groups. They infest the Piazza; they pursue you along the
Riva; they hang about the bridges and the doors of the cafés. In saying
just now that I was disappointed at first, I had chiefly in mind the
impression that assails me to-day in the whole precinct of St. Mark's.
The condition of this ancient sanctuary is surely a great scandal. The
pedlars and commissioners ply their trade--often a very unclean one--at
the very door of the temple; they follow you across the threshold, into
the sacred dusk, and pull your sleeve, and hiss into your ear, scuffling
with each other for customers. There is a great deal of dishonour about
St. Mark's altogether, and if Venice, as I say, has become a great bazaar,
this exquisite edifice is now the biggest booth.
III
It is treated as a booth in all ways, and if it had not somehow a great
spirit of solemnity within it the traveller would soon have little warrant
for regarding it as a religious affair. The restoration of the outer walls,
which has lately been so much attacked and defended, is certainly a
great shock. Of the necessity of the work only an expert is, I suppose,
in a position to judge; but there is no doubt that, if a necessity it be, it is

one that is deeply to be regretted. To no more distressing necessity
have people of taste lately had to resign themselves. Wherever the hand
of the restorer has been laid all semblance of beauty has vanished;
which is a sad fact, considering that the external loveliness of St.
Mark's has been for ages less impressive only than that of the still
comparatively uninjured interior. I know not what is the measure of
necessity in such a case, and it appears indeed to be a very delicate
question.