Had
deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and
again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges
beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian
architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an
ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the
Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome,
and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only
a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the
doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there
is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without
setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tides
sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls.
Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and
ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a
treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
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