"Shylock and the Moor And Pierre cannot be swept or worn away,"
says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling everywhere in these romantic countries. You cannot separate them from the characters with which poetry or history once peopled them.
At sunset we mounted into the tower of San Marc, to get a general view of the city. The gold-dust atmosphere, so common in Italy at this hour, was all over the broad lagunes and the far stretching city; and she lay beneath us, in the midst of a sea of light, an island far out into the ocean, crowned with towers and churches, and heaped up with all the splendors of architecture. The Friuli mountains rose in the north with the deep blue dyes of distance, breaking up the else level horizon; the shore of Italy lay like a low line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sunset. About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down the Giudecca, and away off in the lagunes, were sprinkled the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay the wide Adriatic. The floor of San Marc's vast square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored marbles with promenaders, its _cafés_ swarmed by the sitters outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of my pleasantest hours in Venice was passed here.
PALACES--PALAZZO GRIMANI--OLD STATUARY--MALE AND FEMALE CHERUBS--THE BATH OF CLEOPATRA--TITIAN'S PALACE--UNFINISHED PICTURE OF THE GREAT MASTER--HIS MAGDALEN AND BUST--HIS DAUGHTER IN THE ARMS OF A SATYR--BEAUTIFUL FEMALE HEADS--THE CHURCHES OF VENICE--BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DOGES--TOMB OF CANOVA--DEPARTURE FOR VERONA, ETC.
We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the _Palazzo Grimani_, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the canal. The court and staircase were ornamented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two _female_ cherubs, the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Venice was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, _the bath of Cleopatra_. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost all the private galleries of Venice.