THE IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. JUNE, 1834. TOPOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF VENICE. (With an Engraving.) I STOOD at Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, -- O'er the far times, when many a subject land Where Venice sate in state throned on her hundred isles! She looks a sea Cybele fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers, A ruler of the waters and their powers. And such she was,-her daughters had their dowers Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the south, the masque of Italy! But unto us she hath a spell beyond Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled were this solitary shore. THERE are few places which stand connected with a train of more interesting associations than Venice. Its ancient opulence and power, the eventful character of its history, its present degradation, the classic recollections 2D. SERIES, NO, 42.-VOL. IV. 2 K 186.-VOL. XV1. attached to it by those poets who have either celebrated its former greatness, or mourned its subsequent degeneracy; Shakspeare, Tasso, Milton, Byron, all these things are calculated to invite inquiry, and inspire a melancholy interest. Its early history, or rather its origin, is related by Gibbon, with his characteristic beauty and richness of style, in the following paragraph: one "It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage destroyer undesignedly laid the foundations of a republic, which revived in the feudal state of Europe the art and spirit of commercial industry. The celebrated name of Venice, or Venetia, was formerly diffused over a large and fertile province of Italy, from the confines of Pannonia to the river Addua, and from the Po to the Rhætian and Julian Alps. Before the irruption of the barbarians, fifty Venetian cities flourished in peace and prosperity: Aquileia was placed in the most conspicuous station; but the ancient dignity of Padua was supported by agriculture and manufacture; and the property of five hundred citizens who were entitled to the equestrian rank, must have amounted, at the strictest computation, to million seven hundred thousand pounds. Many families of Aquileia, Padua, and the adjacent towns, who fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe though obscure refuge in the neighbouring islands. At the extremity of the gulf, where the Hadriatic feebly imitates the tides of the ocean, near an hundred small islands are separated by shallow water from the continent, and protected from the waves by several long slips of land, which admit the entrance of vessels through some secret and narrow channels. Till the middle of the fifth century, these remote and sequestered spots remained without cultivation, with few inhabitants, and almost without a name. But the manners of the Venetian fugitives, their arts and their government, were gradually formed by their new situation; and one of the epistles of Cassiodorius, which describes their condition about seventy years afterwards, may be considered as the primitive monument of the republic. The minister of Theodorus compares them, in his quaint style, to water-fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the waves; and though he allows that the Venetian provinces had formerly contained many noble families, he insinuates that they were now reduced to the same level of humble poverty. Fish was the common and almost universal food of every rank; their only treasure consisted in the plenty of salt, which they extracted from the sea; and the exchange of that commodity, so essential to human life, was substituted in the neighbouring markets for the currency of gold and silver. A people whose habitations might be doubtfully assigned to the earth or water, soon became alike familiar with two elements, and the demands of avarice succeeded to those of necessity. The islanders, who, from Grado to Chrozzu, were intimately connected with each other, penetrated into the heart of Italy by the secure, though laborious, navigation of the rivers and inland canals. Their vessels, which were continually increasing in size and number, visited all the harbours of the gulf; and the marriage which Venice annually celebrates with the Hadriatic, was contracted in her early infancy. The Epistle of Cassiodorius, the prætorian prefect, is addressed to the maritime tribunes; and he exhorts them, in a tone of mild authority, to animate the heart of their countrymen for the public service, which required their assistance to transport the magazines of wine and oil from the province of Istria to the royal city of Ravenna. The ambiguous office of their magistrates is explained by the tradition, that in the twelve principal islands, twelve tribunes or judges were created by an annual and popular election. The existence of the Venetian republic under the Gothic kingdom of Italy, is attested by the same authentic record which annihilates their lofty claim of original and perpetual independence.' Such was the origin of Venice; and whatever may be the truth respecting the primitive independence which they boast, one thing is certain, that, even in her early days, her situation, and the character of her inhabitants, secured their republicanism and their power. Charlemagne himself resigned his claim to, and withheld his insatiable hands from, the "hundred isles;" and his son attempted in vain to compel that submission, of which his father had despaired. At length, however, the circumstances of the Continent combined to strengthen and increase their insulated opulence and power. The increasing civilization, and consequently increasing wants, of Europe, together with the ingenuity of the Venetians in various manufactures, particularly those of silk and glass, gradually swelled the affluence of the adolescent republic, until she became a state of commanding and monopolizing merchants. "The policy of Venice," says Gibbon, " was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a maritime, power; yet her ambition was prudent; nor did she often forget that, if armed galleys were the effect and safeguard, merchant-vessels were the cause and supply of her greatness. In her religion, she avoided the schism of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff. Her primitive government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy; the doge was elected by the votes of the general assembly; as long as he was popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a prince; but, in the frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or banished, or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The twelfth century produced the first rudiments of that wise and jealous aristocracy, which reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to a cipher." In the beginning of the thirteenth century, during the reign of the celebrated Dandolo, the Venetians formed their alliance with the French; the fourth crusade met at Venice, and departed thence to those victories which raised the queen of the sea to her "high and palmy state;" and after a short exertion of her victorious arms, the surrender of Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern empire, poured immense wealth into her treasury, and marked the growth of her greatness. Till now, the Venetians, with that profound policy which distinguished all their measures, and secured to them all their success, had allowed to their ecclesiastics no share or voice in their public acts; but the gigantic growth of papal influence at length affected them, and the intestine contest between temporal and spiritual powers was one of the principal causes of the decline of Venice. The remarkable circumstances out of which this contest arose, are stated by Mr. Roscoe, in his elegant article on Venice, in the Landscape Annual for 1831, of which we shall avail ourselves in continuing this article. "The elevation of Camillo Borghese to the pontifical chair, (about the beginning of the seventeenth century,) under the name of Paul V. gave birth to the most remarkable struggle which the republic had ever sustained. The new pope was determined to exercise his power to the utmost; and the Venetians were resolved to follow their usual customs in all ecclesiastical matters. "Paul had been known to say that, if he were pope, and the Venetians gave him any cause of uneasiness, he would at once launch against them the thunders of the church: "and 1," said the ambassador, Leonardo Donato, "if I were doge, would despise your anathemas. It was remarkable that they were subsequently both in the situation to put their threats into execution; and the consequence was a long and most violent conflict, which resulted in Venice retaining all her laws and boasted independence undiminished. Thus did Venice prosper, until her opulence was so vast that she assisted various other states with immense loans, until Columbus and Vasco de Gama humbled a power, which neither popes, princes, nor sultans could unsettle or overthrow. The discovery of America poured such a tide of wealth into Spain, as enabled her to compete with Venice. Moreover, the frightful tyranny of the council of Ten, the waning liberty of the people, in spite of their declarations of independence, and their retention of the name of a republic; above all, the prevalent and almost unexampled dissoluteness of their manners-an inevitable result of tyrannyall laid them open an easy prey to others, and, amidst the spirit of political enterprise and change which prevailed on the continent, portended the degradation of the Rome of the ocean' beneath the rank of a nation. "Such was the state of manners in Venice, when it had to meet the shock of the French revolution. For many years past, the favourite maxim of its statesmen had been to preserve peace at any sacrifice; and they had, in consequence, suffered their fortifications to decay, their arsenal to remain without defence, and their fleet in the same condition as when they had to fear no enemy or rival. When the war between France and the other states of Europe commenced, they would fain have acted on the maxim they had thus devoutly embraced, and determined to preserve a strict neutrality. But they were quickly undeceived in their hopes; and Verona and Padua had no sooner yielded to the French, than they saw them approach within sight of their shores. On the 30th of April, 1797, a memorable day for Venice, the doge summoned all the different departments of the government, to deliberate on the situation of the state. Various were the opinions advanced on the occasion: midnight had already past, and they had formed no determination as to what measures they should pursue, when a letter was delivered from the commander of their flotilla, announcing that the French had already commenced operations for a blockade. In a subsequent meeting, it was debated whether a change in the constitution might not serve to remove some of the evils which were hanging over the state. The grand council was assembled, to deliberate on the project. The palace, on this occasion, was surrounded with troops and cannon; the workmen of the arsenal, and different companies of citizens, were all under arms; while patrols, hastening through the streets, their faces displaying signs of fear and amazement, served to spread apprehension through every quarter of the city. Six hundred and nineteen senators met at this hour of terror, to resolve on such measures as their situation allowed them to take. The doge, bowed with affliction, read a proposition, the purport of which was, to consider, with Bonaparte, what changes might be most properly made in the government. A mournful silence succeeded; the measure was put to the vote, and four hundred and ninety-eight senators declared themselves in its favour. When the report of this determination was presented to Napoleon, he replied, that unless the death of his captain Langier, and some others who had fallen in a late affair with the Venetian fleet, were revenged by the immediate punishment of those who had authorized the assault, he would, in fifteen days, enter Venice sword in hand. Neither the doge nor his councillors had any means of resistance to propose; and they, therefore, gave their commissioners full power to treat with the general on his own terms. They found Bonaparte at Milan, and there a treaty was entered into, that put an end to the sovereignty of the great council, which was thenceforth to reside in the whole body of the citizens. On the 12th of May, while the council was holding its final session, and the doge was lamenting the miserable condition to which he was reduced, the sound of musketry was heard near the palace. The most frightful confusion immediately prevailed throughout the chamber. Every one believed himself on the point of being massacred, and, without further debate, and more like madmen than senators debating for the good of their falling country, they hastily gave their suffrages, and departed. On the 16th of May, 1797, three thousand French troops disembarked on the Place Saint Mark, in the midst of the wild shouts of one part of the population, and the mournful tears and lamentations of the other. The demolition of the prison of the inquisition was the first act of the new government; the burning of the book of gold devoted to the enrolment of the nobility, was the next; while the Lion of Saint Mark, instead of the inscription which designated his sacred character, was made to bear the motto, "The Rights of Man." But Venice had not yet reached its lowest stage of degradation. It had fallen beneath a conqueror, but it had never yet been made an object of barter between one master and another. To this, however, it was now reduced. By the treaty of Campo Formio, Venice was ceded to Austria, whose forces entered the city on January the 8th, 1798. The state inquisition was re-established; and Peraro, who had made such a display of his patriotism in the scenes which preceded the final humiliation, actually reappeared as an Austrian commissary. It was before him that the humbled patricians had to take the oaths of allegiance to their new master; and the ex-doge, who, though too weak and undecided for the situation he held, still had the love of his country deep at hear, fell, as he pronounced the words of the oath, senseless to the ground. Thus sunk the free and queenly Venice, and true in every word are these vords of her epitaph:"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord And annual marriage now no more renev'd, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stod, Stand, but in mockery of his withered pwer, Over the proud place where an emperr sued, And monarchs gazed, and envied in thehour, When Venice was a queen with an une uall'd dower. The Suabian sued, and now the Austria reigns, An emperor tramples where an emperorknelt; Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, andchains Clank over sceptred cities, nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for awhile, and downward go, Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountan's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo ! Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's coquering foe !" One of the many interesting buildings in Venice, which invite the notice of the tourist, is the Bridge of the Rialto. It deives its name from the island of Rialto, which was early fixed upon as he seat of government, and the centre and citadel of the Venetian republc. It was at first built of wood, and offered no indication of the celebrity which would attach to |