The action of this astonishing figure fills him who beholds it with admiration and terror, and this is the production of the chisel whose powers many believed limited to turning the neck and arms of Venus and the Graces! "This Hercules is sublime tragedy," says Cesærotti; "and the pen of Euripides may envy the chisel of Canova."

I saw no other works of Canova's but these in Venice, but I will not for that reason pass abruptly from a name so interesting and so pleasing. The virtues of Canova are the ornament of the Italian name, not less than the perfection to which he brought the art is the boast of our sculpture. Too frequently is excellence in letters and the fine arts associated with indecency, vice, or crime, and the fame with which they are crowned becomes thus the scourge of their possessors, whose disfiguring vices become public with the honour they win. The celebrity which Canova acquired placed before Europe an edifice complete in rare gifts both of mind and heart, setting before artists especially a noble example which should be a spur to their generous emulation.

"The beauty and greatness of the Italian name," writes Misirini, the worthy biographer of Canova, "was his first care—was the chief of his thoughts. He was accustomed to say, that the Italians were created by Providence to bring every great thing to perfection; and this is proved when we place the grand works of Italy in comparison with those produced by other nations; yet the artists, the literati, the scientific of other countries, support each other, approve and aid each other, with national love, and credit and fame wait on the least of their productions; besides this, they are protected by princes and nobles, they are abundantly rewarded, and left in full liberty to unfold their boldest conceptions, and to nourish themselves with philosophy; in addition to all this, they are disposed to meditation and study by the inclemency of their climates, by the gravity and melancholy of their temperaments;-still it is the Italian who produces the masterworks of every kind-it is he who is the teacher and master of all—at least in the imitative arts,—and this by the irresistible impulse of his own genius alone. He is driven to the creation of great things without even the incentive of emulation or reward, often without even praise, and amidst all the bewitching distractions of a mild air and a benignant sky, which invite and dispose him to idleness and amusement; and herein," continued he, "lies the distinguishing characteristic of the Italians. They are constrained to what they do by the force of their nature, solely to satisfy the want of their own souls, and with the hope only of being rewarded by posterity.”

The "Academy of the Fine Arts" was formerly the property of a "confraternity of charity." Venice had many of those religious associations, to one or the other of which their richest merchants belonged, and among which there was a perpetual striving which should decorate their place of assembling with the greatest splendour. The hall of the Academy bears testimony to this magnificence. I visited it in company with the accomplished engineer Salvadori, who is a member of this enlightened institute, and to whom I owe much gratitude for the kindnesses he showed me during my abode in Venice, and the light he threw on many subjects connected with the country.

"How !" I exclaimed with astonishment, " could a society of a few merchants be rich and generous enough to erect such edifices as this, and adorn them with so much splendour ?"

66

a

"There was ever among the wealthy Venetians," he replied, desire, I might almost say a mania, to enrich the confraternity of which they formed part; and not merely for this, but for any objects of public or private beneficence, they would open their chests wedged with gold, and turn their money out in heaps, not counting it but by ladlesful into the cups held to receive it. That many of the Venetian merchants should have attained such immense wealth will not appear incredible to you, when you reflect on the monopoly of the East, which was theirs in those days, and on the extension and activity of a commerce so vast, that we can with difficulty realise it to the imagination."

This conversation passed in the most insignificant saloon of the academy, and my courteous guide, pointing to the ceiling resplendent with gold, added, "I will relate to you a story connected with this, which, while it amazes you by its oddity, will confirm what I have just told you. This ceiling, which cost, in gilding alone, many millions of zecchini, was done at the sole charge of a member of this confraternity. His name was Cherubino Ottale. He had requested permission of his companions, before he put a hand to the work, to make mention of his splendid generosity on a tablet, to be affixed to the wall of the saloon. This was denied him, and he ingeniously found means of gratifying his ambition without displeasing his friends. Examine the ceiling, and you will perceive that it is divided into small square compartments, and that in the middle of each there is the face of a cherub, surrounded with eight wings; so that the name of Cherubino Ottale is repeated more than a thousand times."

The pictures which adorn the walls are still more admirable than the splendid ceiling-than the pavement of finest marbles beneath the feet. They are all of them of the Venetian school, most of them chef d'œuvres, which have returned from Paris. But as I should never end were I to notice but briefly the whole of these pictures, I will only mention three of the most remarkable.

The first of them is a miracle of St. Mark's by Domenico Tintoretto. A Christian slave, condemned by his master to terrible torture, lies stretched on the ground, and executioners are around him in various menacing attitudes. At a gesture of the saint, whom he invokes, and who appears on high, the several instruments of torture fall from the hands of the ministers of vengeance. The powerful picture gives us the surprise of the men, and the calm confidence of the slave, with wonderful effect. But the most surprising part of the whole is the fore-shortening of the saint, who sustaining himself in the air in front of the beholder, with his head bent forward, covers the greater part of his body with his ample beard, and leaves nothing but the extremities in sight. It is one of the most extraordinary conceits in painting-the fore-shortening is perfect, so that the effect so difficult of representation results from it; the saint has not the appearance of a falling body, but of a supernatural being, supporting himself with dignity in the air by his own will. The pencil of Tin

toretto has renewed the miracle.

The Assumption of Titian, considered by many his best work, is placed directly opposite the St. Mark. The Virgin, risen from the tomb and ascended into the sky, is received by the Eternal Father, amid choirs of immortals. Her countenance wears the expression of paradise, and the long drapery of rose-colour and azure adds to the grace and elegance of the figure and the divine face. Enchanting groups of angels sustain and crown her in her flight, and around the empty tomb at the base stand the disciples in ecstasy at the miraculous vision.

The third painting is Bellino's, and gives us Saint Mark and the Piazza as they were in the fifteenth century. This is a most valuable picture to the Venetians, not so much for its nice execution and vivid colouring, though both are admirable, as for its being the exact record of the ancient form of the most magnificent quarter of their city. The painter has peopled the Piazza with a great many carefully executed figures, and has also introduced a solemn procession -all are exact delineations of the fashion of dress of the various classes of society.

The other rooms contain models in plaster of the most famous statues, ancient and modern. Here are besides large magazines, where are stored innumerable pictures, the valuable spoils of religious establishments, which fell into the hands of the exchequer on the downfall of the republic.

This collection, more numerous at least than that exhibited, will be arranged, but not wholly, in two very large saloons now prepared for them, and this will then be one of the most surprising collections of pictures in the world.

Two hundred and eighty-eight public edifices, erected for religious worship in ages long past, were to be found in Venice and its vicinity before the time we speak of. Of these, one hundred and seventy-six were closed or demolished within a few years. Among these many were preserved, not only from reverence for the sacred purpose to which they were devoted, but from being doubly consecrated by patriotic and historic recollections in which they abounded, and by the riches which had been lavished on them by the fine arts, from their revival down to our own days.

Artists, and those who loved their country's glory, mourned over the dispersion of these monuments; and the magistrates, who were the guardians of these sanctuaries, and presidents likewise of the public institutions, with whom it rested to preserve amid modern studies the memory of the past, either were not consulted, or had their mouths closed with a hand of iron. Merchandise was made, with open impudence, of bronzes, marbles, inscriptions, pictures, and all kinds of precious things. The porphyries, the granites, the serpentines, the oriental basalts, which covered the arms of the venerated fathers of the country, and the altars of the sanctuary, were placed beneath the saw, and, under new and multiplied forms, ornamented the cabinets of the nouveaux riches.

Thirty millions of francs-for to this sum, without doubt, amounted the funds of the different corporations and companies alone-should have furnished handsome assistance to the public necessities, without

reckoning the immense funds of the religious societies; and the ulterior dispersion of the works of art has produced almost nothing. We need only recollect that precious works in antique gold and enamel were sold at the mere weight of the metal of which they were composed. In such treasures, the works of the middle ages, and the spoils of the bazaars of Constantinople, Venice was extremely rich.

Marano is an island distant about a mile from Venice, and has been celebrated for many ages for its glass manufactories. The greater part of these are now surpassed by those of the French and English; but there are three among them still worthy of the attention of strangers, because they alone in all the world supply commerce with those pretty beads which we see in such countless designs, and with which our ladies find so many ways of passing their leisure hours.

I will give a short account of the process of this manufacture. I went to Marano in company with the most courteous Signior, Bigaglia, the proprietor of one of these three houses, and to his politeness I am indebted for the few ideas I am about to communicate on this curious part of glassmaking. The first operation is that of fusing the mixture, which must be exposed to the most intense heat to vitrify, and is carefully compounded of those substances which will give precisely the colour required. In this lie the difficulty and the secret of the art, for this compound is not made on any general precepts, easy to be discovered and put in practice, but from recipes, of which long practice has taught the manufacturers the due proportions, and which they jealously conceal, transmitting them carefully to their descendants. They remain the most valuable part of the family property, and are a handsome patrimony for their possessor. All is mysterious in this operation-and I found myself embarrassed, and my courteous guide confused, when I unreflectingly pushed my inquiries beyond convenient limits.

Signior Bigaglia had some nice experiments much at heart, on which he had been long employed, the object of which was to discover from what substances he could obtain certain colours, the receipt for which was not in his collection, and for which he was obliged to have recourse to the rival manufactories to supply his correspondents. They had so far succeeded very well, and as he had, before his return to the city to prepare his compound for the last trials, he took leave of us for a few minutes, and fastened himself in his laboratory, as a disciple of Paracelsus would have done for the discovery of the philosopher's stone; but he could assert, with more truth than he, that he had found means of converting stone into gold; so exorbitant and arbitrary is the price affixed by the manufacturers to this form of glass, of which the knowledge is in their hands alone.

The mixture, when properly prepared, is taken from the laboratory to the furnace. Some zecchins* are put into aqua regia, and soon melted in it by the action of fire; with this precious liquor the paste is then sprinkled, and I confess there was only wanting the muttering of some unintelligible words, to make me hold the whole matter as one of magic or cabalistic art. The mixture, thus prepared, is now to be converted into glass, and this is the business of intelligent work* The well known gold coin of Venice.

men, who know how to measure the degree of fire, and when the mass, which becomes semiliquid in the furnace, has been long enough exposed to its action. The extremity of a rod of iron is then plunged into the fused mass, and turned round three or four times until a quantity of the soft and heated metal, to the thickness of three or four fingers, is collected round it; to this they give a compact and cylindrical form, by rolling the rod upon a polished stone.

In the centre of the extreme point of this vitreous mass, which, while it has adhered to the rod, has as it were slipped beyond it, they dexterously make a hollow, as if for a bottle, which has a small hole; another workman then presents another iron to this hole in the metal, which closes over it, and to which the mass consequently adheres. With this he runs, at his utmost speed, to one extremity of the long corridor, and he who holds the rod does the same in the opposite direction-the metal, still soft, is drawn out into a line, which becomes finer and finer as the distance between them is increased, and forms, without breaking, those long fine threads, of which the beads are afterwards made, and which remain hollow, however finely and hair-like they may be drawn out. This thread is divided into small pieces by a knife held in the left hand, while the right measures the lengths into which it is to be proportioned.

These pieces are then put, with pulverised charcoal and sand, into an iron cylinder, which is introduced into the furnace, and turned for some time on a pivot-the charcoal dust preventing the closing and fusion into one mass of the little tubes: the crystalline substance, however, softens sufficiently to take the spherical form required, by the rotation of the machine, and nothing now remains but to clear them from the charcoal, which is soon effected by putting them into a sack, which is swung rapidly round, and from this movement they receive also their last polish and lustre.

The paste of which these beads is formed is used for other branches of manufacture, also exclusively Venetian; some of these are those beautiful necklaces of glass, in which it seems to us that the labour of the industrious artist must have been immense. On a white ground, having the whiteness, of silk, are traced ornaments and flowers red and beautiful as the ruby, or yellow as the topaz; these necklaces are sold here at a very low price, because they are made with little trouble by the workman, who, with a lathe, makes a long and slender needle move round itself; on this he places the metal which the instant before has fused, and making use with great dexterity of small iron stamps, forms the metal to his will, and adorns it with stripes or any other design. If they are to be of various colours, the operation is repeated, and on the white ground, prepared as above, he places red, yellow, or blue liquid metal, in any manner you please. The result depends on the skill of the workman, and the rapidity with which these elegant productions are finished is surprising.

I am about to close my sketches of Venice, which sadden us on the retrospect of this powerful people, this rich city, sinking as they have done beneath the revolutions which time brings about in its slow but irresistible course.

In the church of "St. Giovanni e Paulo" are assembled the mo