Stones of Venice

Stones of Venice (Introductory
Chapters and Local Indices for
the Use of Travellers While
Staying in Venice and Verona)
[with accents]

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Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
Author: John Ruskin
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[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
STONES OF VENICE
BY JOHN RUSKIN

THE STONES OF VENICE:
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES (PRINTED
SEPARATELY) FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE
STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.

PREFACE.
This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a

permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at
first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the
principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been
modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and
present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of
plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of
other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader
shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the
publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of
forwardness.
The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter
out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index,
abridged and corrected.
BRANTWOOD,
_3rd May_, 1879.

CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. The Quarry
II. The Throne
III. Torcello
IV. St. Mark's
V. The Ducal Palace

THE STONES OF VENICE


CHAPTER I
.
[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
THE QUARRY.
SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the
ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its
sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these

great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the
Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be
led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a lovely
song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very
depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as
we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and the sea,
that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period
of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so quiet,--so
bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we
watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the
City, and which the Shadow.
I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
strange