10
eVenice Friday Oct. 28. Monday
Strange that one should be so presumptuous as to suppose
that in one short day he could study the monuments which
Venice consumed near a thousand years in creating.
But my time is short, my long denied letters are
at Milan. I have given a day to Venice and
I am off this morning. But If I had time I would
correct some of the first impressions which I wrote
yesterday. But they will not widely mislead you.
I have gone through the Palace of the Doge, from its
lordly Halls to its lowest and darkest dungeons,
looked into the within and crossed the
Bridge of Sighs. It is now not There Stowe u I
have stood in the Seventh Church in the Church
of the Council of Ten. In that of the the ingenuity
of the Council of Three, as well as in the
Hall where Venice received Ambassadors
from all nations. Now there is no longer a
doge, a Senate, a Republic, or even a state
of Venice. The Palace is a vac museum and
library. I have studied as well as I might St.
Mark, its magnificent properties, its wilderness
of ornaments, its trophies won from Neighboring
Christian and ^distant^ Turkish States, its unique lion

11
its golden houses, its gil and I have It is still
a Christian Church, and seems to accommodate the
worship of Christians. I have stood on the
Rialto. It is still a place of where Venetians
most do congregate. But Except I have
traversed the aisles of twenty other churches
and the courts of many palaces. I even
live in a Palace. All is substantially as
it was in Venice of the older times. Proud
and magnificent to look upon. Pictures, to
speak of Pictures. Here are more of mature
pieces than all the Capitals of the whole
world possess beside. I am lost in turning
from ^a^ Tintoretto to ^a^ Titian, and from a Titian
to a Paul Veronese, on every kind, also, below
Statuary. The churches seem built exclusively of
marble in the forms and elements of Heroic
life, all the world has not so much of it.
I even find the commerce of vessels Venice. Its
ships its plays, and above all its picture its
gondoliers. And yet this is not the
Ancient Venice. The political life has fled
The social life is changing, from a nobility
or dissenting priesthood, and from artists who
gave love in their arts to the world, forever

12
has subsided into the condition and estate
of a primeval town tower and sevent important
seafront. Wealth, Power, Art, Genius, Pride
have fled, and only common poor and helpless
people possess the it palaces and monuments
of these prouder ancestors. They show these
for money, and they live in these without
pride. The Palaces are converted into Hotels.
The room houses are astounding to view. Houses
fortunate But the change is only recent and
is not even yet not complete. I want you to
see Venice. Ve It I saw in it one new
house only. Yet it has 125,000 inhabitants.
It has received many wrongs at the hands of Austria, but
every oth injury might be repaired save one, the raising
up of Trieste to be its rival on the Western shore of
the Adriatic. Venice will never recover from that blow.