Our watery journey was indeed delightful; friendship, music, poetry combined their charms with those of nature to enchant us, and make one think the passage was too short, though longing to embrace our much-regretted sweet companions. The scent of odoriferous plants, the smoothness of the water, the sweetness of the piano forte, which allured to its banks many of the gay inhabitants, who glad of a change in the variety of their amusements, came down to the shores and danced or sang, as we went by, seized every sense at once, and filled me with unaffected pleasure. I longed to see the weeping willow planted along this elegant stream; but the Venetians like to see nothing weep I fancy: yet the Salix Babylonica would have a fine effect here, and spread to a prodigious growth, like those on which the captive Israelites once hung their harps, on the banks of the river Euphrates. “Of all Europe however,” Millar says, “it prospers best in pensive Britain;”

These lines, quoted from Merry’s Paulina, remind me of the pleasure we enjoyed in reading that glorious poem as we floated down the Brenta. I have certainly read no poetry since; that would be like looking at Sansovino’s sculpture, after having seen the Apollo, the Venus, and the Flora Farnese. The view of Venice only made us shut the book. Lovely Venice! wise in her councils, grave and steady in her just authority, splendid in her palaces, gay in her casinos, and charming in all.

says the Italian who celebrates all their towns by adding a well-adapted epithet to each. But Sannazarius, who experienced in return for it more than even British bounty would have bestowed, exalts it in his famous epigram to a decided preference even over Rome itself.

And now really, if the subject did not bribe me to admiration of them, I should have much ado to think these six lines better worth fifty pounds a piece, the price Sannazarius was paid for them, than many lines I have read; as mythological allusions are always cheaply obtained, and this can hardly be said to run with any peculiar happiness: for if Mars built the Wall, and Jupiter founded the Capitol, how could Neptune justly challenge this last among all people, to look on both, and say, That men built Rome, but the Gods founded Venice. Had he said, that after all their pains, this was the manner in which those two cities would in future times strike all impartial observers, it would have been enough; and it would have been true, and when fiction has done its best,

Here, however, is the best translation or imitation I can make, of the best praise ever given to this justly celebrated city. Baron Cronthal, the learned librarian of Brera, gave me, when at Milan, the epigram, and persuaded me to try at a translation, but I never could succeed till I had been upon the grand canal.

It is a sweet place sure enough, and the caged[34] nightingales who, when men are most silent, answer each other across the canals, increase the enchantments of Venetian moonlight; while the full gondolas skimming over the tide with a lanthorn in their stern, like glow-worms of a dark evening, dashing the cool wave too as they glide along, leave no moments unmarked by peculiarity of pleasure. The Doge’s wedding has however been less brilliant this year; his galleys have been sent to fight the Turks and Corsairs, and the splendor at home of course suffers some temporary diminution; but the corso of boats in the evening must be for ever charming, and the musical parties upon the water delightful. We passed this morning in Pinelli’s library, a collection so valuable from the frequence of old editions, particularly the old fourteen hundreds as we call them, that it is supposed they will be purchased by some crowned head; and here are specimens of Aldus’s printing too, very curious; but there are too many curiosities,

as Milton says. Pinelli had an excellent taste for pictures likewise, and here at Venice there are paintings to satisfy, nay satiate connoisseurship herself. Tintoret’s force of colouring at St. Rocque’s, displayed in the crucifixion, can surely be exceeded by no disposition of light and shade; but the Scuola Bolognese has hardened my heart against merit of any other sort, so much more easy to be obtained, than that of character, dignity, and truth. Paul Veronese forgets too seldom his original trade of orefice, there is too much gold and silver in his drapery; and though Darius’s ladies are judiciously adorned with a great deal of it here at Palazzo Pisani, I would willingly have abated some brocade, for an addition of expressive majesty in the Alexander. What a striking difference there is too between Guercino’s prodigal returned, and a picture at some Venetian palace of the same story treated by Leandro Bassano! yet who can forbear crying out Nature, nature! when in the last named work one sees the faithful spaniel run out to meet and acknowledge his poor young master though in rags, while the cook admiring the uncommon fatness of the calf, seems to anticipate the pleasure of a jolly day: so if the old father does look a little like pantaloon, why one forgives him, for we are not told that the fable had to do with nobiltÀ, though Guercino has made his master of the house a rich and stately oriental, who meets and consoles, near a column of Grecian architecture, his penitent son, whose half-uncovered form exhibits beauty sunk into decay, and whose graceful expression of shame and sorrow shew the dignity of his original birth, and little expectation of the ill-endured pains his poverty has caused: the elder brother, meantime, glowing with resentment, and turning with apparent scorn away from the sight of a scene so little to the honour of the family. Basta! as the Italians say; when we were at Rome we purchased a fine view of St. Mark’s Place Venice; now we are at Venice we have bought a sketch of Guido’s Aurora. The Doge’s dinner was magnificent, the plate older and I think finer than the Pope’s; I forget on what occasion it was given, I mean the feast, but had it been an annual ceremony our kind friends would have shewn it us last year. We must leave them once more, for a long time I fear, but I part with less regret because the heat grows almost insupportable; and either the stench of the small canals, or else the too great abundance of sardelline, a fresh anchovy with which these seas abound, keep me unwell and in perpetual fear of catching a putrid fever, should I indulge in eating once again of so rich but dangerous a dainty. Besides that one may be tired of exertion, and fatigued with festivity, purchased at the price of sleep and quiet.