Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-24
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
No Such City in Existence as the Venice
the Most of us Have Pictured.
DIvested of False History and False senti
ment-Bilge- Water Eyerywhere-Impo-
sition in the Literature of Travel.
copyrighted 1907
Correspondence of the Gazette.

VENICE, ITALY, may TT is not pIeasaHt "
be ranked among those cynics who go about the
old world shying iconoclastic bricks at the mys-
tic fabrics which poets and painters have more
than half created and which the rest of the
world friendly fancy has clothed in warm and
glowing establishment. But however impress
sionable and sympathetic one may be, the ideal
Venice, the complete composite of the expectant
wanderers dream, is anoIher and better thing
than the possessed actually. One hesitates in
| such confession. It seems like setting one 5
| own Judgment, perception, feeling, against
| those of myriads who have come before. These
| have come to worship; parted from Venice to
adore. But so surely as would write all my
! life in justice, truth and kindliness, never
| elsewhere came with transports of expectancy
to meet with such bitter sadness in disappoint-
| menJ.
Every one hopes for travel and its perennial
| mental feast. Everybody sets as his ultima
| thule, some region, place or object, to come to,
| know and enjoy. All my life Venice was that
| transcendent point of attainment for me- Every
| song that had sung its praises had read. In
| every one 1 thought 1 saw between the lines
| strain of regret that the singer could not frame
| his words and measure in adequate alteration.
| Standing before the great paintings of Venetian
! life and scenes, have seen fairer city behind
| the best the masters had done: For score aDd
| half years had gone on building city of de-
| light, fair Armidean vision of enhancement,
far-away, radiant place of fieckless air, of ten
| thrilling with living light, of domed and NINA
| retted palaces floating upon waters of translu
| cent hyaline hue. This is the Venice we all
| have made. There is no such city this side OF
THE UTMOST ISLE.
came in from Brandisi by an Adriatic
coaster. We skirted Apulia, passed Bari, An
| coma, Rimini, and at Ravenna were alongside
| the lower region of lagoons. Passing Pc della
Macestra we had the whole upper coast region of
| lagoons from Venice,
''Fsr as Chioggia's sails and reeds"
| in view and the city gradually rose higher
and wider out of the waters, after threading our
way through maze of vessels with strange col
ored sails, quaint craft from Chioggia with high
peak and sterns like tho ancient galleons, and
clumsy feluccas from Crete and the Ionian
| islands, came to anchor inside the Malamocco
pass and was landed from black
black and dirty gondolier, upon
quay in the very heart of the city. That We
aroma known to the Liverpool and London
docks, and the filthy wharves along South and
West streets, New York, with Coentes Slip, the
Walsbout region and Apple Mary OF ancient
| and aromatic memory included could have
sat down there in the ooze and slime OF those
foul marble steps and wept for disappointment
imagery, beauty, mysticism of the sea might en-
nance the glory of the approach to my visionary
her her f s6-Tfep And write in
no captions or trifing spirit when
I say that the hurt of it all was so
great that 1 sneaked back into another ancient,
widowed and funereal gondolai was rowed to
the railway station took the first train from the
city towards Milan, shutting out with closed
eyes these unhappy first Impressions; rode to
the first station inland which hid the Adrlatic
from sight; and then returned over the great
travellers come; hoping thus to find myself SO
wrong in my first seeing and feeling that the
glorious city of dreamful restfulness and delight
would be there awaiting me. 1t may be this
will seem foolish, trivial action. did it to
be honest and just. found precisely
what had first discovered-a hot, sitting,
sinking city, rotting at its base; crum-
bling at its domes; a gaudy bawd in bastard
architecture, and Haunting, purile colorlng be-
tween; alive with lazzaroni; hateful with impor-
tuning gondolers; damp, dark, moldy with
oozE AND SALT AND SLIME.
The truth about Venice is that whatever might
have been its charm and glory in the days of the
doges, it presents but two aspects for study to
the visitor of to-day. One is of that intense
solemnity awakened by the contemplation of the
beautiful dying or dead. The other is of
righteousness pitiaole as that pathetic contempt
with which we view the antics and makeshifts Of
''Robert Macaire" upon the stage, or follow
the disgusting baseness of the ''Duke of Bilge-
water with shaking sides and moist
eyes throughout the later adventures of
HHuckleberry Finn So If you insist upon
the former aspect, you must look beyond the
bleached and rotting skeleton of the Venice
which is, to the Venice which was. You must
see with historic eyes; accept with sentimental
enthusiasm; worship absolutely what the past
has made and called art; and rehabilitate
through your own blind imagination and willing
fancy a once doubtful perfection with the splen-
were here in some dim time before you.
On this line of fealty to Venetian tradition
your historic faith sees noble people flying
from the wrath of Northern Huns, and, casting
their lots with the wild fishermen Of the AaI-
attic, founding city, or series OF cities. at last
uniting numerous shoals and islands in pow
erful and resourceful maritime league. 1t re-
calls the eventful concentration of their COM
munistic peoples into Republican government
and the election of the first dux, doge or leader,
in 697 in the person eff Pauluccfo Anafesto, who
was given authority over all the islands. You
trace from the time of this first doRe, to the date
of the extinction of the Venetian republic
precisely ll0O years later, by Napoleon Bo-
naparte, long line of patriot, warrior, states
man and navigator doges, whose sole ambition
was the protection of the peoples liberties, the
extension of the Venitian fame for science and
art, the repellance of Eastern aggression on the
one hand, and the statecraft of the Lombards
and the Franks on the other. Your religious
fervor is awakened that the relics of st. Marx
were recovered from Egypt and amsiestic church
which Tasso wrote that Venice sent 200 vessels
to assist in the holy wars; and you hout the
idea that the extension of her commerce was q
evidence of piety. You remember her ''es-
pousals of the sea- a sweet and striking
6 baSe been SspPed bv the highest pstros@
in her almost incessant wars against Genoa and
in her savage con4est of Padua, Verona, vi
cenza. Bassano. Belluno and of the Milanian
Brescia, Bergamo, Rovigo, Cremona, Crema and
Treviso. You are certain she assisted in the
suppression OF piracy, rather than that her
her quays untold treasures wrested through
butchery and murder from hapless
Il HARvBsTHRs OF THE SEA.
You are certain that the worldwide fame in the
dawn and through the earlier part of the golden
age for magnifcence. art and refinement
was wholly resultant from the heroic
solidarity of republican liberties, in
stead of from governmental crimes and
corruptions and the fostering of magnificent
titled bsndittl preyinR upon human rights and
property, worse than ever disgraced the rule Of
spain in Cuba And, turning to its olden glory
in architecture and painting, you are ready to
confess its bastard, nameless, birthless parent
less conglomerate of brick, marble and mean
ingless mosaics, and its faded daubs on canvass
and in fresco as the ultimate in all art born
out of the highest and purest aspiration Of q
time and genius nurtured in the grandest epochs
of an enlightened liberty and exalted civiliza-
ton. With this sort Of minds light upon all |
Venice has to display, one can see, as Quixote |
female OF noble birth and divine beauty, that !
ideal city Of consummate beauty and witchery |
with which historic romance, romantic history |
and the magic dream builders in verse have for |
ten centuries been deluding the fond and willing
imagination of men.
Then IL you have an iota of the sense Of things |
absurd about you, Venice, Invested Of false his
tory and false sentiment, while possessing ample
thSt is worthy in art, architecture, associations
and human interest. seems filed with contempu- |
Bile travesties upon the inexpressibly superlatve
claimed from time ir1memorial for the ARTISTIC |
Queen.'' There is not a city OF SO, 900 inhabi- |
tants in continental Europe which does not own, |
and without endless braFAdo and tiresome self |
praise about H.. equal stores Of ECCLESIASTICAL 1