The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-09
THE CITY OF PURE ROMANCE.
{By ". H. K. Trowbrtdge, Jr., in the
 RrItiah L.uiaMm ArcOsY.N

| in the loop of the Adriatic gathered salt at low tide on the lagoons of the Lidc fifteen hundred years ago to our own
 day. the history, the very atmosphere of Venice, has been nothing but romance. ! Nature in her most churlish mood may
 be woed into a smile, and the smile
 wrung by Art, the Art of the middle
 ages, from those sour salt lagoons, has
 never vet died away
 Romance has many meanings, but in
 Venice it has only one. Here it means
 the absolute elimination of the mundane
 from everyday life; in all her moods
 the sea-Cybele is picturesque. The trib-
 utes paid her in prose and poetry are
 monuments to her charms; her de-
 tractors are acrid and not to be be-
 lieVed, their brains are distorted and
 their vision is more crooked than the
 Canalazzo. The railway-Station is not
 wart on the face of Venice; the dis
 figuring iron bridges must be sought
 arduously by the vandal-hearted tour
 ist; the omnibus-steamers" that dis
 turb the rythmic motion of the gondolas
 have the distinction of carrying you for
 a lira from the Ducal Palace to the Ri cbllC tc llttNCl py lilGill io et pilNiits1G lC-
 served for the blessed; the canals are
 not foul drains at low tide; nor is all
 Venice a rckety facade on the Grand Canal. The curse of Rusiin on the de-
 tractors!
 The history of a state is the history of
 it's people, the history of the people is the picture of the national life. The
 Venetians above all other people, car
 ried the cult of the picturesque into | their everyday life; and the attitude, or
 pose, of their public life, as eyinced in
 the great historical tableaux, go well known to the world at the mention of Venice, has a sincerity that disarms
 criticism. The gorgeous yearly specta
 cle of the espousal of the Adriatic had
 deep significance; the innate love of l the beautiful common to the Venetians | colored all that they did; the very form
 of government resembled that of an
 antique state; the Golden Book, the
 Council of Tea the Doges who lived like kings and were not kings, but the slaves
 of the state, were as fitting and as typ
 ical of the national character as the paintings of Paul Veronese or the arch | itecture of the palaces and churches.
 The love of letters, the manuscripts and marbles stolen from ConStantnople and Athens, the worldwide invitation to genius, lend an air of impractcab blity and romance to the vast commerce of
 Venice such as no other trading people have ever inspired. Perhaps the Vene- tians were only traders of necessity, and their wonderful adaptability to com merce, in which they were so success ful, was but another phase of their love of splendor. The commerce of Venice is the apotheosis of trade; since Vasco da Cana found the way to the Orient round the Cape of Good Hope, trade has ceased to be picturesque.
 In Venice one seeks in vain for wharves and warehouses Here all that one naturally associates with ex port and import is carefully hidden | from sight This new Tyre. with her ships in every sea and her colonies and | vassals acknowledging the Winged Lion of St. Mark, is anything but suggestive of barter and the sordid cunning of the art of exchange. It is as though in her wonderful crueible everything was turned into the red rose of romance The Venetian ships carried crusaders to the Holy Land before they carried mer- chandize, and Marco Polo in the Piazza, whetting mems enthusiasm and cupidi- ty with his tales of Golconda and the inexhaustible East, is a romantic and highly unbusiness-like example of how the Venetian government sought new markets. This extravagant love of the picturesque with its utterly impractical ble application, had begun to be the ruin of Venice even before her grandiose vic tory at Lepanto But Venice escaped the fate of Sybaris, and out-lived all the other rival olgarches by reason of the very trade which she glorified because she despsed it, and the fame of which, even after she had lost it, lent her an false dignity till Napoleon pricked the bubble and put an end to the romantic anachronism of Greek state in modern Europe.
 The splendor of Venice died with her We of these latter days who only know the beautiful shell of the old oligarchy, have little thought of the tableaux of history as we walk in the Piazza. To the rushing tourist or the luxuriously lesured cosmopolite, there is subtle romance about Venice quite distinct from the glamour of the past. How many, l wonder. think of Shylock as they bargain in the bazars I of the Rialto? Or as you sit at dinner in your hotel on the Grand Canal, lis tening to the swish of the water over he marble mosaic steps alongside which gondola is moored, do you think of Marino Falero and the Council of Ten? { And later on, at table a deux, sipping ,orbetti at FlOrian 8 in the Piazza. when | he military bands are playing and all Venice is passing to and fro before your ( yes under a purple velvet sky spangled with stars, is your mind pre-occupied | with thoughts of what happened here vice five hundred years ago? No, no; ( { is not the past that gives your senses hat lavish luxury of living which is all f most bacchaualian. but the present. which in Venice is always indescribable. , Who can say just what the charm Is? To some it is one thing, to others how ifferent! But to all it is perpetual. i My friend w. lived in Venice, and in- ited me to visit him. l arrived at r midnight after an endless journey cross the dusty plains of Lombardy. f t was the July of Italy; wind had een racing up the Adriatic all day and r lown all the smells and heat away. and n the zenith there was a marvellous ',