pression. Mr Whyte, indeed, took the right course to
enable him thoroughly to understand and appreciate Venice. Instead of
confining himself to the stately vision of the Grand Canal, or the
wizard magnificence of St Mark's, he seems to have habitually traced all
the lesser canals; the little Rii, which, like small veins, shoot off
from the great arteries of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, carrying
the circulation of the Adriatic through this unique city; exploring
their high, dark, and narrow recesses, pondering on the strange
contrasts of misery and magnificence, squalid filth and luxurious
ornament, which they present side by side; and heightening the
impression thus created, by selecting all varieties of aspects, from the
bright flashing sunshine pouring down into these dark chasms, as into a
well, to the shadowy evening, the magic contrasts of moonlight, the
gloom of wind and rain howling through the balconies, driving the ocean
wave impetuously through these water-ways, and beating against their
thousand bridges; or those thunder-storms--nowhere more magnificent
than at Venice--where the gleam of the lightning forms so fearful a
contrast with the Cimmerian gloom of the canal, and the peals are
reverberated with such magnificence from those piles of masonry with
which they are lined. There is, indeed, no spectacle that can be
conceived, more impressive than some of these smaller canals,
particularly if you enter them towards sundown. You glide into a gulf of
buildings, rising high on each side--almost meeting above your
head--most of them ruinous and dilapidated, sinking by piecemeal into
the green element which they have displaced for centuries, but which,
through the slow agency of the sap and mine, is visibly resuming his
oozy empire. You pass some church with its unfinished marble face.
Again, a set of poor rickety and mean edifices follow; when suddenly you
come upon some pile of massy grandeur, looming gigantic in the twilight,
in whose colossal, but beautiful proportions, you can trace the hand of
Sammichele or Sansovino. You come nearer, and perceive the fretted
windows broken, stuffed with rags, and patched with paper; rough boards
nailed up against the gilded beams; grand portals, of which the doors
have disappeared, allowing the eye to penetrate into a dark perspective
within: perhaps a sign-board over-tops a glorious cornice of grim masks
or armorial bearings; and from latticed windows, on which Palladio