Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to
the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the
waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state,
rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature
was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and
tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might
still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed
for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea.
And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the
face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on
Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble
landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a
glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though
many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins,
there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect
has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her
origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at
least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of
the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to
repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is
ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its
remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty.
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