The how they raised it, is matter of marvel. inner floor cannot be examined, as it is flooded several inches deep. Ferrara followed on Ravenna, and we stopped to see Tasso's Dungeon, where he was confined for seven long years. A more horrible record is in the gloomy castle, where a former duke put his wife and son to death. These cells are fearful things: the light did not reach Hugo's, till it had filtered through thirteen gratings of iron bars. Without lics the dark moat. What a father of his people was this duke! His own flesh and blood, if indeed guilty, he might have imprisoned for life, but where was the authority for putting them to death? Even on constructive "treason," why secretly? Why was Parisina executed in the dungeon? Did this man ever read the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel? At the end of the dungcon-passage protrudes the edge of a huge tower, reaching from the battlements to the depths of a fosse below the moat. This is now walled up. When first opened, human bones were found in heaps, confirming a fearful tale which had been whispered before. Through its upper orifice this same duke was wont to hurl headlong, in the course of a confidential walk on his battlements, those whom he had reasons for disliking. What an upright judge! Thank God! those days at least are over. VENICE. "There is a glorious city in the sea, The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, End of May. EVERY one quotes Rogers on Venice, and every one must, till descriptive lines as good shall be penned on the "city in the sea." He does not notice the crab and the rat, probably as not deeming them poetical: the former is on all the piles, and the latter running across the watery threshold of the stately palaces. The city is now entered by a railway line crossing the lagoons: this so far mars the romance of the thing; but, once in, all is novel, wondrous, witch-like. The effect of the grand canal is unique: a noble city flooded would pre sent an aspect of ruin; here it is a scene of calm repose. The width of the canal doubles, trebles that of almost any street in Christendom: exquisite palace-fronts line its sides, each with its semicircular flight of stone steps plunging down into the wave, and its ring of striped posts to protect the gondolas of the household. Gothic windows rise tier above tier, with tracery-work in stone, too rich for aught but the pencil to describe; shadowy blinds and curtains of gauze, through which the light plays upon gilded furniture within: here, a conservatory, with its bright geraniums and balsams; there, a breakfast table set out under the "venetian" on the cool balcony. Anon, a half ruined and quite deserted mansion, rich with the tints laid on by that shrewd colourist Time, but empty of its pristine mirth and splendour. As you advance, the fair cupola of Sa. Maria della Salute swells upon the sight, and then the glittering Palace of the Doges, with the spires and domes of St. Mark, is at your prow, and the enormous Campanile, where the golden angel on the summit flaps his wings, as if just alighting to greet the stately city. Meanwhile, no streets are visible; or rather, the canal is the street: instead of the jarring sound of wheels on a dusty pavement, noiseless gondolas skim around you in their black paint and black cloth canopy, the latter, the fruit of a government order long ago, when it was found that the Venetian nobles were ruining themselves in trappings of velvet and cloth of gold. The gondola has a well-stuffed cushion for two, one oar at least behind the canopy, and one before, a peaked stern, a beak of steel at the prow, the proportions of a canoc, and the speed of a dolphin. During day, few are abroad, save such as carry visitors pressed for time to view the Titians: but as evening draws on, the surface of the water becomes an agitated sca; hundreds of gondolas are flying in every direction, and the boats of the Podestà, sixoared and eight-oared, cleave their way through the lighter craft, as the armed pike dashes among the minnows. Row out past the gardens, cross that sandy neck of "dunes" beyond the lagoon, and you reach the Lido, where is a delicious ramble along the edge of the breaking wave for several miles. In your way, you will note features recalling Naples, though there all is stir and noise, while here is the region of calm repose: yonder is a man quietly seated on one of the sea-piles; his legs are knee-deep in the water, and he is inhaling the fragrant weed, musing, perhaps, all the time, on the Foscari and the Contarini of other days. The Piazza of San Marc is alike majestic and beautiful at noon or at nightfall: perhaps for certain chiaroscuro effects, as that of the huge ochrecoloured Campanile relieved by a dark sky in which the summer lightning is brewing, a late hour at eve is preferable. But, either way, when you contemplate the Basilica and the Palace of the Doges, you will make up your mind not to attempt the description of a scene so little conceivable. They talk of "speaking portraits," but what canvass ever told a tale so profoundly cloquent, so historically grand, as the fortunes of Venice recorded in her glorious Piazza? Rome affects you like a by-gone vision; but when you stand in the Piazza of St. Mark, the vision is present. The stately trophies, the gorgeous buildings, the brilliant bazaars, the singular costumes,— all bespeak the middle age, and the crowning city, whose merchants, like those of Tyre, were princes. Those three masts in front of the Basilica are trophies from Crete and Cyprus and the Morea. Yonder, over the azure clock, the two bronze giants are about to strike the hour on the great bell, — 1, |