The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-13
Venice nnd TorccIIo.

IeIIaps u IS the very strangeness and COM
leteness of the contrast which makes one $
rst row from Venice to Torcello 50 hard TO
prget. Behind the great city sinks slowly
pto low line of domes and towers around
otted here and there over the cleaning sur
bee are the orange sails of trailing market
oats; we skirt the great hay-barges of Ma
erbo, whose boatmen handy ldzzt and badi-
age with our gondolier, we glide by lonely
Iypress into a broader reach, and before us
cross a waste of brown sedge and brush
Food, the tower of Torcello rises sharply
gainst the sky. There is something weird
nd unearthly in the suddenness with which
ne passes from the bright, luminous
|aters of the lagoon, barred with soft
nes of violet light, and broken with
eHections of wall and bell-tower, into this
resence of desolation and death. whole
orld seems to part those dreary fats broken
ith lfeless inlets, those patches of sodden
elds flung shapelessly among sheets of sullen
&ater, from the life and JOY of the Grand
canal. And yet, really to understand the
Il igin of Venice, those ages of terror and
ght and exile in which the republic took
IS birth, we must study them at Torcello.
u was from the vast Alpine chain which
hngs in the haze Of midday like o long dim
oud-line to the north, that the hordes of
un and Goth burst on the Roman world.
heir path lay along the coast trending round
the west, where, lost among the little
hges that stand out white in the dis
shadow, lie the sites of Heraclea
Altinum. Across these grey shall
s cut by the blue serpentine windings of
per channels the Romans of the older
eta fled before Attila or Theodore or
bin to found the new. Eastward over
ID, the glimmer Of the Adriatic recalls the
centuries of the Pirate war, that struggle
ife which shaped into their after-form the
ernment and destinies of Venice. Venice
II, the crown and end of struggle and of
pit, lies over shining miles of sea to the
h. But it is here that one can best study
story of its birth: it is easier to realize
be centuries of exile and bufEeting for life
d the dreary flats, the solitude, the poverty
rorcello than beneath the cleaning front
he Ducal Palace or the mosaics of st.
TX.
ere in fact lies the secret of Venetian
ory, the one key by which it is possible to
erstand the strange riddle of the Repub-
For thirteen centuries Venice laymoored
bt were off the coast of Western Europe
bout political analogue or social parallel
patriciate, its people, its government were
what government or people or patriciate
e in other countries of Western Chrlsten-
a. And this difference lay not in any pc
BAR institutions which it had developed, or
any novel form sor social or admins
hve order which it had invented,
in the very origin of the State itself.
same age saw the birth of the two
Rt maritime powers of modern Europe
settlements of the English in Britain
{er the same century with those of
exiles in the Lagoon But the English
fDnization was the establishment Of a
rely Teutonic State on the wreck of Rome.
lile the Venetian was the establishment of
purely Roman State in the face of the Teu-
n. Venice in its origin was simply the I'm
ral province of Venetia foated across to
islands of the shore. Before the success
II waves of the Northern inroad the citi-
s of the coast fed to the sandbanks which
long served them as gardens or merchant
is. The "Chair of Attila, the rough stone
beside the church of San Fosco, preserves
memory of the destroyer before whom a
d part of the people of Altinum fled to Tor
b and the islands around. Their city-even
erially-passed with them. The new
ses were built from the ruins of the old.
very stones of Altinum served for the
bw Altinum" which arose on the desolate
Inscriptions, pillars, capitals came in
track of the exiles across the lagoon to
worked into the fabric of it's cathedral.
ther citizens or city were changed even in
les to sea, but the sandbanks on which thev
ded were still Venetia. The fugitive patri-
ps were neither more nor less citizens of
eiimperial province because they had fled
pm Padua or Altinum to Malamocco or Tor
10. Their political allegiance was still due
the empire. Their social organization re-
hined unaffected by the flight, So far were
ey from being severed from Rome, so far
pm entertaining any dreams of starting
psh in the new democracy" which exists
fhe imagination of Daru and his followers
the one boast of their annalists is that
n are more Roman than the Romans
Hmselves. Theirnoble looked with contempt
fhe barbaric blood which had tainted that
the Colonnas or the Orsini. No Isaurian
asant ever broke the Roman line of Doges
Leo broke the line of Roman Emperors.
nice-as she proudly styled herself in after
ne-was ''the legitimate daughter of
bme." The trip of sea-board from the
enta to the Isonzo was the one spot in the
hpire from the Caspian to the Atlantic
rere foot of barbarian never trod. And as
rose, so it set. From that older world of
fich it was part its history stretched on to
French Revolution untouched by Teutonic
iuences. The old Roman life which had
come strange even to the Capitol fingered
altered, unimpaired beside the palace of
duke. 1t is startling to think that almost
thin the memory of living men Venice
bught Rome-the Rome of Ambrose and
eodosius-to the very doors of the Western
rld; that the living and unchanged tradi-
IN Of the Empire passed away only with the
It of the Doges. Only on the tomb of
min could men write truthfully, ''Hic jacet
imus Romanorum."
|It is this simple continuance of the old So
organization which the barbarians else
ere overthrew that explains the peculiar