Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-02-21

/ luuuCHce NAV De T6lleu upon tO ONCtCOulC o
multitude of evils. In the Grand Canal
there are strong currents As the tides
come and go the broad that winds through
the city is like rushing river, and its
banks are clean. 1t is for this among other
reasons the favorite place of residence, and
the hotels that look upon it are preferable
Big Pigeons Own the Town.
Showers of burly pigeons are in posses
sion of the CITY. They are more sacred than
neat, and sanctify rather more than they
adorn. They have fine feathers and a very
confident manner, and the recklessness of
their treatment of old statuary and the
tacades that offer lodgment for nesting and
roosting is testimony that they and their
ancestors have been taught that human
hands will not harm them. If child has a
paper of bread or cake, or package OF grain,
and scatters it upon the pavement OF St.
Marks Square, the stones are covered with
pigeons for rods. Preserving these birds IS
one OF the old conceits like the bears at
Berne, the wolf and eagle at Rome, the
storks in Strasburg, and the apes at Gibral-
tar: and there is not superstition enough
| about the custom to do any harm.
There was beautiful ship, long, low,
white and graceful, with tall masts, set at a
raRish angle. and white smokestack; and
as the breeze blew out the flag, it was ''the
Is that ship of war? The reply was: SIT
is Mr. Benefits yacht; he is a great man
in New York and Paris, and keeps his ship
here. She is ready for q cruise now, and he
comes when ne pleaseS" The yacht is q
beauty, and passed close enough going to
the island of st. George to be able to say
that she seemed to glitter with good order.
May l say, without offense, that the oys-
tiers were just as good as we have at home;
that they were not as tender as l have found
the favorite shell fish, but of pleasing flavor.
juicy, and not coppery. Their shells were
curiously unlike the American shells. They
were not rugged and lumpy like our shells,
but thinner-ro deep shells-and they were
so fiat it was hard to see how there hap
pened to be room for so fine a morsel as
they contained. The shells were tawny In
coloring, and had fine lines of engraving, so
to speak, like the crusts of diamond-backed
terrapin.
The Color Pictures OF St. Marks
St. Marks is not the largest or the most
ancient or historic of cathedrals, but takes
first rank in interest The effects of it, Rus
kin savs-and one must quote him on st.
Mark 's-depend mot only upon the most
delicate sculpture in every part, but cmi-
nently on its color also, and that the most
subtle, variable, inexpressible color in the
world-the color of glass, of transparent
alabaster; of polished marble, and lustrous
gold" That sentence itself is an incom-
parable color picture and it is better to say
1t is all so, and leave it to tell the story.
The history of the fou- horses in gilded
bronze over the principal portal is typical
They are Roman horses-once adorned a
triumph arch in Rome, it is not certain
which one; were taken to Constantinople by
Constantine; and when the Venetians were
masters of that city the Doge Dandolo
brought them to Venice-this was when
they were at least 1000 years old. They
were taken to Paris by Napoleon, and when
he fell restored to Venice.
The interior Of the Cathedral is exceed
ingly attractive, and grows in its majesty of
architecture and somber beauty of decora-
tlon and riches OF association as it is
studied. The walls are all firm. but evil
dence of unstable foundation is in the un.
evenness of the floor, which has become
quite undulating. The mosaics tell what
tne possibilities OF the art are The carving
OF the altars and pulpits are exquisite, and
the objects OF beauty and things curious in
Vulnerable; and over all there is an Asian
glow that is faded, but it fingers in tones
like sunset when the twilight is long.
The Art Treasures of Venice.
The Academy is crowded with the work
of Venetian masters, including the master
piece of Titan and his first painting, and
the last upon which he was engaged 80 years
after, when the plague carried him off in
his 99th year. The northern Italians of the
old times were strong men, as in the case of
Andrea Dorio. who died at 90, and Titan
at 80. The art treasures of Venice are sec
ond only to those of Rome and Florence;
but there is at least an embarrassment of
riches, when the ewes and the brain grow
weary of the boundless feast, and the inf
mite variety becomes indistinct. 1t is the
claim of Dresden to come next to Rome
and Florence in art treasures, but the claim
ant has hardly taken Venice into full and
fair consideration. The great picture of
Venice is Titian's Assumption" and after
him comes, first, Tintoretto and, second,
Paul Veronese.
The Palace of Doges surpasses the average
anticipation. There is 10 point from which
it can be viewed that it is not grand,
gloomy and peculiar"
Just how Lord Byron managed to do as he
saws he did in Venice have not been able
to make out with mechanical and nathe-
matical accuracy. He remarks:
1 stood in Venice on the Bridge of sighs,
A palace and prison on either hand:
And saw from out the wave vast structures
rise.
A thousand years their cloudy wings ex-
pand.
But l could not manage to get more than
one foot en- the Bridge of Sighs. There are
several bridges generally like it in Venice,
though not connecting palaces and prisons.
The actual passage from the palace, still a
palace, though not royal one, to the prison
still prison, and a gloomy one, with iron
barred windows of horrid aspect, and hid
cons prison boat at the steps under the ia
nous hridge-the actual walk of the prison.
ers from the hall of condemnation to the
cells of imprisonment was not through the
bridge that the novelist Howells, in his ca
pacity of historian, calls pathetic swim
die"
The worst of the dungeons, the vaults in
which the prisoners were bestowed in dark
ness, removed from every sight and sound,
the living tombs, each with its history of
bafied ambition and bloodshed, and the den
for private executions, looking like good
place to put few tons of coal, are in the
palace itself
Facts About the Bridge Of sighs.
The guides are instructed artists. They
introduce you to the Giants stairway, So
called from gigantic statuary that stand on
either side; then you ascend the stairs of
gold-"Scala d'Oro'-not the golden stairs
that lead to Jerusalem the golden, but those
used only by the citizens of high degree
whose names were written in the golden
book as "nobili." Then you see the halls
where history was made and where it was
painted; you see the library and the
museum, long rows of august Doges, acres
of heroes, the Venetians aiding the Pope to
bring the aggressive Barbarossa to terms
and Barbarossa as he was brought to kneel
before the Pope at the portal of St Marks,
and the lnnr nrncesSinn of the denartad