Venetian Life | Page 2

writers who have
described it in romances, poems, and hurried books of travel, nor help
seeing from my point of observation the sham and cheapness with
which Venice is usually brought out, if I may so speak, in literature. At

the same time, it has never lost for me its claim upon constant surprise
and regard, nor the fascination of its excellent beauty, its peerless
picturesqueness, its sole and wondrous grandeur. It is true that the
streets in Venice are canals; and yet you can walk to any part of the city,
and need not take boat whenever you go out of doors, as I once fondly
thought you must. But after all, though I find dry land enough in it, I do
not find the place less unique, less a mystery, or less a charm. By day,
the canals are still the main thoroughfares; and if these avenues are not
so full of light and color as some would have us believe, they, at least,
do not smell so offensively as others pretend. And by night, they are
still as dark and silent as when the secret vengeance of the Republic
plunged its victims into the ungossiping depths of the Canalazzo!
Did the vengeance of the Republic ever do any such thing?
Possibly. In Venice one learns not quite to question 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
Republican 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 Darù, and of the historians who
follow him. But I still hope that he will be pleased with the Venice he
sees; and will think with me that the place loses little in the illusion
removed; and--to take leave of our theatrical metaphor--I promise to
fatigue him with no affairs of my own, except as allusion to them may
go to illustrate Life in Venice; and positively he shall suffer no
annoyance from the fleas and bugs which, in Latin countries, so often
get from travelers' beds into their books.
Let us mention here at the beginning some of the sentimental errors

concerning the place, with which we need not trouble ourselves
hereafter, but which no doubt form a large part of every one's
associations with the name of Venice. Let us take, for example, that
pathetic swindle, the Bridge of Sighs. There are few, I fancy, who will
hear it mentioned without connecting its mystery and secrecy with the
taciturn justice of the Three, or some other cruel machinery of the
Serenest Republic's policy. When I entered it the 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 excellent
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 assemblage which I then conjured up was composed
entirely of honest rogues, who might indeed have given as graceful and
ingenious excuses for being in misfortune 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. [Footnote: The reader will remember
that