CHAPTER VII. THE BANKS OF THE BRENTA-VENICE. THE river looks like a canal between high banks, and is not easily distinguished from one or two artificial streams, equally large, that intersect the Paduan flats. Innumerable villas, and now and then a gondola, announce the approach to the capital. A little beyond the post town of Dolo, the road, a noble work of the French government,* leaves the banks of the river, and leads to Mestre, the principal port on the Great Lagune. Here, late in a November evening (in 1816), we got into a large gondola, and pushed off for Venice. We had just light enough to see on our left the fortifications raised by Napoleon, and having delivered up our passports at a guard house, and after being stopped by a Custom House boat, we rowed on between low embankments, and long lines of stakes, for nearly an hour and a half, until we found ourselves amongst the lights which we had, for some time, seen at a distance; and, through the loopholes of our black cabin, we discerned * I traversed, in 1845, this tract by the railroad, which has rendered this work useless-I mean the road, and perhaps might add the description of it. that we were gliding under lofty buildings, by the side of long quays. The echoes of our oars told us we were under a bridge, and one of our boatmen exclaimed "THE RIALTO!" We soon landed. Our hotel was a palace in decay (Mr. Simond has given a plan of it), with a magnificent marble staircase, a vast saloon, and numerous apartments, of faded frescoes, dusky gilding, and silk hangings in tatters. Similar symptoms of the recent ruin of this extraordinary state were, as we afterwards found, to be seen in every quarter of the city. The pictures of Venice which represent the Piazzetta or any of the great quays do not convey a correct idea of the details or even of the general appearance of this singular city. I found myself mistaken in supposing there were footways on the sides of all the canals. You may, from the back of most houses, and sometimes from the front, step from the hall door into your boat at once, and may row through the city almost the whole day without suspecting there are any streets in it; or you may wander through innumerable lanes and narrow alleys like the courts of communication between some of our great London thoroughfares, without coming upon a single canal or seeing the water once. The view from the great belfry does not show any of the water streets, for so they may be called-they are not canals. The arcaded square of St. Mark, and the mosque-like cathedral, and the palace of the Doge, and the tall belfry, and the long red flag staffs stripped of the ensigns of the three tributary kingdoms, the Athenian columns, and the Quay of the Piazzetta-these are known by a thousand pictures, which render them almost as familiar to our imagination as to a native resident. But no pencil can paint the scene, which I have so often beheld from the shores of the Lido, when the sun pours his last rays upon innumerable domes, and palaces, and towers, floating, as it were, on the bosom of the water, and long after he has sunk behind the cupola of St. George, leaves his cold purple light upon the distant snow-alps and far seen promontories of Istria. VENICE. I remained in Venice from November to December, 1816, rejoined Lord Byron at his villa of La Mira on the banks of the Brenta in July, 1817, and thence, after some weeks, removed to Venice, where I remained until February, 1818. I revisited Venice in 1826 and 1845, and I subjoin some notices either collected during those visits, or suggested by references to authors who have treated of the same subject. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.-THE POZZI.* The communication between the Ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered * Of this my account of the prisons, the contributor to Murray's 'Handbook of Northern Italy' is pleased to say that the Pozzi "correspond with the well-known and accurate description given by Lord Byron." The great poet did not write any of the notes to the 4th canto of Childe Harold, except three or four short ones. gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called "Pozzi," or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner when taken out to die was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs. The Pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been con * fined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may perhaps owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows: 1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI 1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RE- * He was a murderer. Mr. Simond, who was in Italy in 1817, but whose book was published only in 1828, tells a strange story of this man's liberation. He was alarmed, and, it seems, angry at his removal; was caressed by the French; paraded through the city; but endured his painful freedom only four days, for he then died of fresh air. This is very like the story told in Goldsmith's Essays. (1858.) |