Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-24

OFF berry Finn" So if you insist upon the for mer aspect, you must look beyond the bleached and rotting skeleton of the Venice which is to the Venice which was. You must zee with historic eyes; accept with sem timental enthusiasm; worship absolutely what the past has made and called art; and rehabilitsts through your own blind imagi- nation and willing fancy 8 once doubtful perfection with the splendid proportions and establishment you believe were here in some dim time before you.
 On this line of fealty to Venetian tradi- tion your historic faith sees noble people flying from the wrath of northern Huns, and, casting their lot with the wild fisher men of the Adriatio, founding city, or se- ries of cities, at last uniting numerous shoals and islands in 8 powerful and re- sourceful maritime league. It recalls the eventual concentration of their communicate peoples into republican government and the election of tho first dux, doge or leader,
 
 who was given authority over ell the islands. You trace from ths time of this first doge to the date of the extinction of the Venetian republic, precisely eleven hundred years later, by Napoleon Bonaparte, a long line of patriot, warrior, statesman and navigator doges, whose sole ambition was the protee- tion of the peoples liberties, the extension of Venetian fame for science and art, the re- pellanee 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. Mark were recovered from Egypt and ma jestic church became their reliquary; you feel the glow with which Tasso wrote that Venice sent two hundred vessels to assist in the holy wars; and you fout the idea thet the extension Of her commerce was first consideration in her astounding practical ev- idence of piety. You remember her "es- pousals of the sea" as a sweet and strikingly symbolic mysticism. You believe her to have been inspired by the highest patriotism l ln her almost incessent wars against Genoa and in her savage conquest of Padus, Vero- na, vicenzs, Bassano, Belluno and of the Mllanlan Breseia, Bergamo, Rovigo, Cremo- | na, Crema and Treviso. You are certain she assisted in the suppression of piracy, rather than that her feluocas and gallecns for half thousand years brought to her quays untold treasures wrested through butchery and HuuIueI lEClu uApI6sS QdEVebseIb OI Iu6 SSa You are certain that her world wide fame in ' the dawn and through the earlier part of the golden age for magnifcence, art and refine. ment WAS wholly resultant from the heroic solidarity of republican liberties, instead of from governmental crimes and corruptions and the fostering of magnificent titled ban ditti prsying upon human rights and proper y, worse than ever disgraced the rule of Spain in Cuba. And, turning to its olden cy1Nr sy,o opI Srti l ready to confess it's bastard, nameless, birth less, parentless conglomerate Of brick, mar ble and meaningless mosaics, and its faded daubs on canvas and in fresco, as the ulti- mate in all art, born out of the highest and purest aspiration of 8 time and genius nur- tured in the grendest epochs of an enlight- ened liberty and exalted civilization. With this sort of minds light upon all Venice has to display, one can see, as Quixote saw in every reeking country wench of Spain fe- male of noble birth and divine beauty, that ideal city of ecnsummste beauty and witeh- " with which historic romance, romantic history and the magic dream builders in verse have for ten centuries been deluding l the fond and willing imagination of men.
 Then, if you have an ieta of the sense of things absurb about you, Venice, divested of false history and false sentiment, while pos. sessing ample that Is worthy in art, architee. ture, associations and human interest, seems filled with contemptible travesties upon the l inexpressibly superlative claimed from time | immemorial for the "Adriatic Quesn." There Is not city of fifty thousand inhabi- tauts in continental Europe which does not own, and without endless bravado and tires some self praise about 1t, equal stores of ec- 1 clesiastical treasure and equal If not superior treasure in painting and sculpture. This Is simply a statement of fact, tho exact truth of which any observant and well informed European traveller will admit. One reads of her "domes and minarets" until ths minds horizon is fretted with the flashing silhou- cites Of some magical city of the orient. 1 Venice hes TO more domes than Boston; no l more minarets than New York. Any one l can count those on the fingers of both hands. Such as she has are squatty aud pinched, as 1 though the appropriation had suddenly given out and the builders had sknocked off" right there awaiting the funds of some future golden age. The enthusiastically famous ca l thedral of St. Mark is exceeded in beauty, proportion. stateliness and majesty by five hundred religious structures in the United States. The crumbling, tumbling, rambling city hall of Chicago, that architectural l laughing stock of the west, is better build ing in every respect, and with it's mammoth Carystides, and tremendous polished granite columns, presents more imposing facade 1 than the "restored" Dacal Palace of Venice. ] 4utfo &Go tIOuSauu Stou6 huo msIUl bridges in private gardens and grounds, and within the public parks, of the United States, more expensive, beautiful and more chaste expressions of ideas in stone art, than can be found in the most raved over canal bridge here. Senator Farwell, of Illinois, built state house for Texas, that grand. great commonwealth of the maverick" !" greaser and Tom Oohiltree, infinitely vaster, l statelier, more symmetric and @ better ex- pression of true architectural opulence and magni6cenes than any one who ever lived in
 Venice ever saw. And when it comes to the matter of 'tpalaces" who that has ever read has not been fired with glowing inscriptions of "the countless transcendent palaces of the queen city by the sea-" tell you there has never bssn more cruel or infamous imposi' tion in the history of cities and the litera. ture of travel. San Francisco, Denver, even Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Phila. delphia, Washington, Baltimore, New York 1 or Boston, each possess more palatial resi- denoes, which never even got into the Sum- day papers, than this pretentious, water soaked old fishing and piratical port ever contained; and there are half hundred country palaces in half dozsn New York | and New England counties, I could name, where Americans have built palaces for homes, costing more money, representing g more chaste aud exquisite conception of the purest form of architectural art, and, in eve- ry manner in which they may be oontempla- ted, representing each, per se, more re- fined and impressive monument to generous wealth and perfect civilization, than the most splendid single example all Venice car show. And this, too, at Venics's best. Sae
 has been repeatedly likened to a "Palmyrs of the sea-" The voiceless dead never 80 suffered by impudent comparison. Where now stand the huts of the Thadmor shsp-
 herds, five hundred years before Venice was
 known stood the most majestic monuments
 of architectural perfection ever known te
 man. No structure that ever added lusturt
 to the "fame and magnidcencs" of Venics if
 hidden by the sands of time or engulfed b,
 the waves of the sea. Every one, dilspida
 ted or "restored," occupied ss rat-swarmins
 hotel or let to modern nouveaux riches wht strut and oackle to attract notice to theil
 modern rookeries, or whether utilized a
 barracks for garlic eating, spider waisted
 soldiery, or still, deserted, moldy and silent
 echoing only to the carDivsls of the ghosts o
 desolate past, are here for your inspectio,
 to-day. Come and look at then. See then