From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

And then its history is as strange and marvellous as any tale of the Arabian Nights. It is the wildest romance turned into reality. Venice is the oldest State in Europe. The proudest modern empires are but of yesterday compared with it. When Britain was a howling wilderness, when London and Paris were insignificant towns, the Queen of the Adriatic was in the height of its glory. Macaulay says the Republic of Venice came next in antiquity to the Church of Rome. Thus he places it before all the kingdoms of Europe, being antedated only by that hoary Ecclesiastical Dominion, which (as he writes so eloquently in his celebrated review of Ranke's History of the Popes) began to live before all the nations, and may endure till that famous New Zealander "shall take his stand, in the midst of a vast solitude, on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the nuns of St. Paul's."

And this history, dating so far back, is connected with monuments still standing, which recall it vividly to the modern traveller. The church of St. Mark is a whole volume in itself. It is one of the oldest churches in the world, boasting of having under its altar the very bones of St. Mark, and behind it alabaster columns from the Temple of Solomon, while over its ancient portal the four bronze horses still stand proudly erect, which date at least from the time of Nero, and are perhaps the work of a Grecian sculptor who lived before the birth of Christ. And the Palace of the Doges – is it not a history of centuries written in stone? What grand spectacles it has witnessed in the days of Venetian splendor! What pomp and glory have been gathered within its walls! And what deliberations have been carried on in its council chambers; what deeds of patriotism have been there conceived, and also what conspiracies and what crimes! And the Prison behind it, with the Bridge of Sighs leading to it, does not every stone in that gloomy pile seem to have a history written in blood and tears?

But the part of Venice in European history was not only a leading one for more than a thousand years, but a noble one; it took the foremost place in European civilization, which it preserved after the barbarians had overrun the Roman Empire. The Middle Ages would have been Dark Ages indeed, but for the light thrown into them by the Italian Republics. It was after the Roman empire had fallen under the battle-axes of the German barbarians that the ancient Veneti took refuge on these low-lying islands, finding a defence in the surrounding waters, and here began to build a city in the sea. Its position at the head of the Adriatic was favorable for commerce, and it soon drew to itself the rich trade of the East. It sent out its ships to all parts of the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And so, century after century, it grew in power and splendor, till it was the greatest maritime city in the world. It was the lord of the waves, and in sign of its supremacy, it was married to the sea with great pomp and magnificence. In the Arsenal is shown the model of the Bucentaur, that gilded barge in which the Doge and the Senate were every year carried down the harbor, and dropping a ring of gold and gems (large as one of those huge doorknockers that in former days gave dignity to the portals of great mansions) into the waves, signified the marriage of Venice to the sea.3 It was the contrast of this display of power and dominion with the later decline of Venetian commerce, that suggested the melancholy line,

"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord."

But then Venice was as much mistress of the sea as England is to-day. She sat at the gates of the Orient, and

"The gorgeous East with richest handShowered upon her barbaric pearl and gold."

Then arose on all her islands and her waters those structures which are to this day the wonder of Europe. The Grand Canal, which is nearly two miles long, is lined with palaces, such as no modern capital can approach in costliness and splendor.

And Venice used her power for a defence to Christendom and to civilization, the former against the Turks, and the latter against Northern barbarians. When Frederick Barbarossa came down with his hordes upon Italy, he found his most stubborn enemy in the Republic of Venice, which kept up the contest for more than twenty years, till the fierce old Emperor acknowledged a power that was invincible, and here in Venice, in the church of St. Mark, knelt before the Pope Alexander III. (who represented, not Rome against Protestantism, but Italian independence against German oppression), and gave his humble submission, and made peace with the States of Italy which, thanks to the heroic resistance of Venice, he could not conquer.

Hardly was this long contest ended before the power of Venice was turned against the Turks in the East. Venetians, aided by French crusaders, and led by a warrior whose courage neither age nor blindness could restrain ("Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!"), captured Constantinople, and Venetian ships sailing up and down the Bosphorus kept the conquerors of Western Asia from crossing into Europe. The Turks finally passed the straits and took Constantinople; but the struggle of the Cross and the Crescent, as in Spain between the Spaniard and the Moor, was kept up over a hundred years longer, and was not ended till the battle of Lepanto in 1571. In the Arsenal they still preserve the flag of the Turkish admiral captured on that great day, with its motto in Arabic, "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." We can hardly realize, now that the danger is so long past, how great a victory, both for Christendom and for civilization, was won on that day when the scattered wrecks of the Turkish Armada sank in the blood-dyed waters of the Gulf of Corinth.

These are glorious memories for Venice, which fully justify the praises of historians, and make the splendid eulogy of Byron as true to history as it is beautiful in poetry. In Venice, as on the Rhine, I have found Childe Harold the best guide-book, as the poet paints a picture in a few immortal lines. Never was Venice painted, even by Canaletto, more to the eye than in these few strokes, which bring the whole scene before us:

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,A palace and a prison on each hand,I saw from out the waves her structures rise,As by the stroke of the enchanter's wand,A thousand years their cloudy wings expandAround me, and a dying glory smilesO'er the far times when many a subject landLooked to the winged lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

But poets are apt to look at things only in a poetical light, and to admire and to celebrate, or to mourn, according to their own royal fancies, rather than according to the sober prose of history. The picture of the magnificence of Venice is true to the letter, for indeed no language can surpass the splendid reality. But when the poet goes farther and laments the loss of its independence, as if it were a loss to liberty and to the world, the honest student of history will differ from him. That he should mourn its subjection, or that of any part of Italy, to a foreign power, whether Austria or France, we can well understand. And this was perhaps his only real sorrow – a manly and patriotic grief – but at times he seems to go farther, and to regret the old gorgeous mediæval state. Here we cannot follow him. Poetry is well, and romance is well, but truth is better; and the truth, as history records it, must be confessed, that Venice, though in name a republic, was as great a despotism as any in the Middle Ages. The people had no power whatever. It was all in the hands of the nobles, some five hundred of whom composed the Senate, and elected the famous Council of Ten, by which, with the Senate, was chosen the Council of Three, who were the real masters of Venice. The Doge, who was generally an old man, was a mere puppet in their hands, a venerable figure-head of the State, to hide what was done by younger and more resolute wills. The Council of Three were the real Dictators of the Republic, and the Tribunal of the Inquisition itself was not more mysterious or more terrible. By some secret mode of election the names of those who composed this council were not known even to their associates in the Senate or in the Council of Ten. They were a secret and therefore wholly irresponsible tribunal. Their names were concealed, so that they could act in the dark, and at their will strike down the loftiest head. Once indeed their vengeance struck the Doge himself. I have had in my hands the very sword which cut off the head of Marino Faliero more than five hundred years ago. It is a tremendous weapon, and took both hands to lift it, and must have fallen upon that princely neck like an axe upon the block. But commonly their power fell on meaner victims. The whole system of government was one of terror, kept up by a secret espionage which penetrated every man's household, and struck mortal fear into every heart. The government invited accusations. The "lion's mouth" – an aperture in the palace of the Doges – was always open, and if a charge against one was thrown into it, instantly he was arrested and brought before this secret tribunal, by which he might be tried, condemned, sentenced, and executed, without his family knowing what had become of him, with only horrible suspicions to account for his mysterious disappearance.

In going through the Palace of the Doges one is struck with the gorgeousness of the old Venetian State. All that is magnificent in architecture; and all that is splendid in decoration, carving, and gilding, spread with lavish hand over walls and doors and ceiling; with every open space or panel illumined by paintings by Titian or some other of the old Venetian masters – are combined to render this more than a "royal house," since it is richer than the palaces of kings.

But before any young enthusiast allows his imagination to run away with him, let him explore this Palace of the Doges a little farther. Let him go into the Hall of the Council of Three, and observe how it connects conveniently by a little stair with the Hall of Torture, where innocent persons could soon be persuaded to accuse themselves of deadly crimes; and how it opens into a narrow passage, through which the condemned passed to swift execution. Then let him go down into the dungeons, worse than death, where the accused were buried in a living tomb. Byron himself, in a note to Childe Harold, has given the best answer to his own lamentation over the fall of the Republic of Venice.4

We shall therefore waste no tears over the fall of the old Republic of Venice, even though it had existed for thirteen hundred years. In its day it had acted a great part in European history, and had often served the cause of progress, when it preserved Christendom from the Turks, and civilization from the Barbarians. But it had accomplished its end, and its time had come to die; and though the poet so musically mourns that

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,And silent rows the songless gondolier,

yet in the changes which have come, we cannot but recognize the passing away of an old state of things, to be succeeded by a better. Even the spirit of Byron would be satisfied, could he open his eyes now, and see Venice rid at last of a foreign yoke, and restored to her rightful place, as a part of free and united Italy.

Though Venice is a city which does not change in its external appearance, and looks just as it did when I was here seventeen years ago, I observe one difference; the flag that is flying from all the public buildings is not the same. Then the black eagles of Austria hovered over the Square of St. Mark; and as we sat there in the summer evening, Austrian officers were around us, in front of the cafés, and the music was by an Austrian band. Now there is music still, and on summer nights the old Piazza is thronged as ever; but I hear another language in the groups – the hated foreigner, with his bayonets, is not here. The change is every way for the better. The people breathe freely, and political and national life revives in the air of liberty.

Venice is beginning to have also a return of its commercial prosperity. Of course it can never again be the mistress of the sea, as other great commercial states have sprung up beyond the Mediterranean. The glory of Venice culminated about the year 1500. Eight years before that date, an Italian sailor – though not a Venetian, but a Genoese – had discovered, lying beyond the western main, a New World. In less than four centuries, the commerce which had flourished on the Adriatic was to pass to England, and that other English Empire still more remote. Venice can never regain her former supremacy. Civilization has passed, and left her standing in the sea. But though she can never again take the lead of other nations, she may still have a happy and a prosperous future. There is the commerce of the Mediterranean, for which, as before, she holds a commanding position at the head of the Adriatic. For some days has been lying in the Grand Canal, in front of our hotel, a large steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, the Delhi, and on Friday she sailed for Alexandria and Bombay! The transference of these ships to Venice as a point of departure, will help its commerce with the East and with India.

One thing we may be allowed to hope, as a friend of Venice and of Italy – that its policy will be one of peace. In the Arsenal we found models of ironclads and other ships of war, built or building; but I confess I felt rather glad to hear the naval officer who showed them to us confess (though he did it with a tone of regret) that their navy was not large compared with other European navies, and that the Government was not doing much to increase it, though it is building dry docks here in Venice, and occasionally adds a ship to the fleet. Yet what does Italy want of a great navy? or a great army? They eat up the substance of the country; and it has no money to waste on needless armaments. Besides, Italy has no enemy to fear, for both France and Germany are friendly; to France she owes the deliverance of Lombardy, and to Germany that of Venice. And even Austria is reconciled. Last April the Emperor made a visit to Venice, and was received by Victor Emmanuel, and was rowed up the Grand Canal with a state which recalled the pomp of her ancient days of glory.

The future therefore of Venice and of Italy is not in war, but in peace. Venice has had enough of war in former centuries – enough of conflicts on land and sea. She can now afford to live on this rich inheritance of glory. Let her cherish the memory of the heroic days of old, but let her not tempt fortune by venturing again into the smoke of battle. Let her keep in her Arsenal the captured flags taken from the Turks at Lepanto; let the three tall masts of cedar, erected in the Square of St. Mark three hundred and seventy years ago, to commemorate the conquest of Cyprus, Candia, and Morea, still stand as historical mementoes of the past; but it is no sacrifice of pride that they no longer bear the banners of conquered provinces, since from their lofty and graceful heads now floats a far prouder ensign – the flag of one undivided Italy.

If I were to choose an emblem of what the future of this country should be, I would that the arms of Venice might be henceforth, not the winged lion of St. Mark, but the doves of St. Mark: for these equally belong to Venice, and form not only one of its prettiest sights, but one connected with historical associations, that make them fit emblems both of peace and of victory. The story is that at the siege of Candia, in the beginning of the Thirteenth century, Admiral Dandolo had intelligence brought to him by carrier-pigeons which helped him to take the island, and that he used the same swift-winged heralds to send the news to Venice. And so from that day to this they have been protected, and thus they have been the pets of Venice for six hundred years. They seem perfectly at home, and build their nests on the roofs and under the eaves of the houses, even on the Doge's Palace and the Church of St. Mark. Not the swallow, but the dove hath found a nest for herself on the house of the Lord. I see them nestling together on the Bridge of Sighs, thinking not of all the broken hearts that have passed along that gloomy arch. A favorite perch at evening is the heavy cross-bars of the prison windows; there they sleep peacefully, where lonely captives have looked up to the dim light, and sighed in vain for liberty. From all these nooks and corners they flock into the great square in the day-time, and walk about quite undisturbed. It has been one of our pleasures to go there with bread in our pockets, to feed them. At the first sign of the scattered crumbs, they come fluttering down from the buildings around, running over each other in their eagerness, coming up to my feet, and eating out of my hand. Let these beautiful creatures – the emblems of peace and the messengers of victory – be wrought as an armorial bearing on the flag of the new Italy – white doves on a blue ground, as if flying over the sea – their outspread wings the fit emblems of those sails of commerce, which, we trust, are again to go forth from Venice and from Genoa, not only to all parts of the Mediterranean, but to the most distant shores!

CHAPTER XX.

MILAN AND GENOA. – A RIDE OVER THE CORNICHE ROAD

Genoa, September 20th.

The new life of Italy is apparent in its cities more than in the country. A change of government does not change the face of nature. The hills that bear the olive and the vine, were as fresh and green under the rule of Austria as they are now under that of Victor Emmanuel. But in the cities and large towns I see a marked change, both in the places themselves, and in the manner and spirit of the people. Then there was an universal lethargy. Everything was fixed in a stagnation, like that of China. There was no improvement, and no attempt at any. The incubus of a foreign yoke weighed like lead on the hearts of the people. Their depression showed itself in their very countenances, which had a hopeless and sullen look. Now this is gone. The Austrians have retired behind the mountains of the Tyrol, and Italy at last is free from the Alps to the Adriatic. The moral effect of such a political change is seen in the rebound from a state of despair to one of animation and hope. When a people are free, they have courage to attempt works of improvement, knowing that what they do is not for the benefit of foreign masters, but for themselves and their children. Hence the new life which I see in the very streets of Milan and Genoa. Everywhere improvements are going on. They are tearing down old houses, and building new ones; opening new streets and squares, and levelling old walls, that wide boulevards may take their place. In Milan I found them clearing away blocks of houses in front of the Duomo, to form an open square, sufficient to give an ample foreground for the Cathedral. And they were just finishing a grand Arcade, with an arched roof of iron and glass, like the Crystal Palace, beneath which are long rows of shops, as well as wide open spaces, where the people may gather in crowds, secure both from heat and cold, protected alike from the rains of summer and the snows of winter. The Emperor of Germany, who is about to pay a visit to Italy, will find in Milan a city not so large indeed, but certainly not less beautiful, than his own northern capital.

One beauty it has which Berlin can never have – its Cathedral. If I had not exhausted my epithets of admiration on the Cathedrals of Strasburg and Cologne, I might attempt a description of that of Milan; but indeed all words seem feeble beside the reality. One contrast to the German Cathedrals is its lighter exterior. It is built of marble, which under an Italian sky has preserved its whiteness, and hence it has not the cold gray of those Northern Minsters blackened by time. Nor has it any such lofty towers soaring into the sky. The impression at first, therefore, is one of beauty rather than of grandeur. In place of one or two such towers, standing solitary and sublime, its buttresses along the sides shoot up into as many separate pinnacles, surmounted by statues, which, as they gleam in the last rays of sunset, or under the full moon, seem like angelic sentinels ranged along the heavenly battlements. These details of the exterior draw away the eye from the vastness of the structure as a whole, which only bursts upon us as we enter within. There we recognize its immensity in the remoteness of objects. A man looks very small at the other end of the church. Service may be going on at half a dozen side chapels without attracting attention, except as we hear chanting in the distance; and the eye swims in looking up at the vaulted roof. Behind the choir, three lofty windows of rich stained glass cast a soft light on the vast interior. If I lived in Milan, I should haunt that Cathedral, since it is a spot where one may always be alone, as if he were in the depths of the forest, and may indulge his meditations undisturbed.

But there is another church, of much more humble proportions, which has a great historical interest, that of St. Ambrose, the author of the Te Deum, through which he has led the worship of all the generations since his day, and whose majestic anthem "We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord," will continue to resound in the earthly temples till it is caught up by voices around the throne. St. Ambrose gave another immortal gift to the Church in the conversion of St. Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers, whose massive theology has been the study alike of Catholics and Protestants – of Bossuet and Luther and Calvin.

Near the church of St. Ambrose one may still see the mutilated remains of the great work of Leonardo da Vinci – the Last Supper – painted, as everybody knows, on the walls of the refectory of an old monastery, where it has had all sorts of bad usage till it has been battered out of shape, but where still Christ sits in the midst of His disciples, looking with tender and loving eyes around on that circle which He should not meet again till He had passed through His great agony. The mutilation of such a work is a loss to the world, but it is partly repaired by the many excellent copies, and by the admirable engravings, in which it has been reproduced.

From Milan to Genoa is only a ride of five hours, and we are once more by the sea. One must be a dull and emotionless traveller who does not feel a thrill as he emerges from a long tunnel and sees before him the Mediterranean. There it lies – the Mare Magnum of the ancients, which to those who knew not the oceans as we know them, seemed vast and measureless; "the great and wide sea," of which the Psalmist wrote; towards which the prophet looked from Mount Carmel, till he descried rising out of it a cloud like a man's hand; the sea "whose shores are empires," around which the civilization of the world has revolved for thousands of years, passing from Egypt to Greece, to Rome, to France and Spain, but always lingering, whether on the side of Europe or Africa, somewhere along that enchanted coast.

Here is Genoa – Genoa Superba, as they named her centuries ago – and that still sits like a queen upon the waters, as she looks down so proudly from her amphitheatre of hills upon the bay at her feet. Genoa with Venice divided the maritime supremacy of the Middle Ages, when her prows were seen in all parts of the Mediterranean. The glory of those days is departed, but, like Venice, her prosperity is reviving under the influence of liberty. To Americans Genoa will always have a special interest as the city of Christopher Columbus. It was pleasant, in emerging from the station, to see in the very first public square a monument worthy of his great name, to the discoverer of the New World.

Genoa is a convenient point from which to take an excursion over the Corniche road – one of the most famous roads in Europe, running along the Riviera, or the coast of the Mediterranean, as far west as Nice. A railroad now follows the same route, but as it passes through a hundred tunnels, more or less, the traveller is half the time buried in the earth. The only way to see the full beauty of this road is to take a carriage and drive over it, so as to get all the best points of view. The whole excursion would take several days. To economize our time we went by rail from Genoa to San Remo, where the most picturesque part of the road begins, and from there took a basket carriage with two spirited ponies to drive to Nice, a good day's journey over the mountains. The day was fair, not too hot nor too cool. The morning air was exhilarating, as we began our ride along the shore, winding in and out of all the little bays, sweeping around the promontories that jut into the sea, and then climbing high up on the spurs of the mountains, which here slope quite down to the coast, from which they take the name of the Maritime Alps. The special beauty of this Riviera is that it lies between the mountains and the sea. The hills, which rise from the very shore, are covered not with vines but with olives – a tree which with its pale yellow leaves, somewhat like the willow is not very attractive to the eye, especially when, as now withered by the fierce summer's heat, and covered with the summer's dust. There has been no rain for two months, and the whole land is burnt like a furnace. The leaves are scorched as with the breath of a sirocco. But when the autumn rains descend, we can well believe that all this barrenness is turned into beauty, as these slopes are then green, both with olive and with orange groves.