burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it
magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat
moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet,
upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of
rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the
shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so
adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent;
when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the
gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's
Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the
mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of
the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the
boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of
silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its
sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,
[Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that
the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene
so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its
history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her
existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the
fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the
mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that
all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as
the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to