The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1868-06-19
Graphite Description or Venice.

Venice is a collection of one hundred and
seventeen islets, divided by one hundred
and forty-nine canals connected by three
hundred and eighty bridges, and pierced
by two thousand and fifty infinitely narrow
and labyrinthine streets. Almost every
foot of the city is built upon piles. Each
OF its fifteen thousand houses is washed by
the sea water, and of its one hundred and
thirty thousand people, not one ever rode
upon wheels down the mainland of his city,
Making broad spiral ribbon of blue sea,
thrice as wide as Broadway, through the
longest diameter of Venice, passes the
Grand Canal, the most wonderful water
panorama in the world in no degree like
the dull brick facing of the Flemish and
Dutch city Canals, but highway to mar
BILE palaces, into which are burned the
dyes of a Southern sun, and all the flor
illness of the Goth blossoms in their archi-
lecture. Three bridges only cross this
Grand Canal, two of them practical and
modern; the middle bridge, famed in all
lands is the Rialto, high archway of
shops and multitudes, under which, like
decile erocodiles, gondolas shoot their
beaks of steel.
Upon the surface of this peopled archi-
pelago there are two hundred and ninety
four open places or campi. Most of them
were spaces to give some church perspect-
i've; but two-thirds of the way down the
city, where it narrows to almost its smallest
girdle, lies the only square of a greater
length than sings throw, the wondrous
Piazza of San Marco. This piazza is like
nothing in America. From the day of
Petrarch, who loved it, it has been mar
vel. 1t is a great oblong square, six hun
dred feet long by two hundred and thirty
feet wide, paved with hewn blocks of mar
BILE, bordered on three sides by marble
palace, faced with long arcades, which
show gilded cafes and splendid shops of
jewelry beneath them and ON the third
side, or rather at the head of it, the Cathe-
dral of st. Mark, the patron of Venice, rises
venerable and plentiful of domes, the rich
est, if not the purest, religious edifce in the
world.
Before it career the bronze horses of st.
Mark, part of the plumber of the Crusades,
and from the paved space before them, set
aside, so as not to mar the perspective, rises
the great Campanile OF bell-tower, nearly
thousand years old and to the height of
three hundred and fifty feet-about twice
that, if do not mistake, of Trinity Church,
on Broadway. A second tower near by
holds zodiacal clock, rung by Moorish
giants, and facile it from the opposite cor
ner of the piazza, reaches at right angles
quite down to the harbor side, the piazetta
of St. Mark, smaller area, fianked with
the Doge's Palace, grand edifice, many
hued, built on pointed arches and reaching
on its further end along the splendid quay.
This piazetta is closed almost at the waters
edge, by two granite columns, each of a
single stone, crested, the one with statue
of st. George, the other with winged lion.
Going down between them, in past times
the hoary Admirals have been escorted to
their gondolas, followed by the anxious
Doge, and sailed from the very shadows of
these columns to fight out the quarrel of
the Republic on distant seas. Behind the
ducal palaces are the prisoners of State,
whose outlet is the famed Bridge of Signs,
of late the sepulchres of italian patriots
From this Molo, or State quay, the view is
wonderful of the domes and Companies on
three opposite islands, and the broad blue
paths of the canals, ploughed with swift
gondolas. Far down the island is the
arsenal, where the Venetians fitted out
their fleets, as Dante describes them.