ion of the fable of Charon to Heaven has not been
regarded with the interest that it really deserves; and because, also,
it is a description that should be remembered by every traveler when
first he sees the white fork of the felucca sail shining on the Southern
Sea. Not that Dante had ever seen such sails;[K] his thought was utterly
irrespective of the form of canvas in any ship of the period; but it is
well to be able to attach this happy image to those felucca sails, as
they now float white and soft above the blue glowing of the bays of
Adria. Nor are other images wanting in them. Seen far away on the
horizon, the Neapolitan felucca has all the aspect of some strange bird
stooping out of the air and just striking the water with its claws;
while the Venetian, when its painted sails are at full swell in
sunshine, is as beautiful as a butterfly with its wings half-closed.[L]
There is something also in them that might remind us of the variegated
and spotted angel wings of Orcagna, only the Venetian sail never looks
majestic; it is too quaint and strange, yet with no peacock's pride or
vulgar gayety,--nothing of Milton's Dalilah:

"So bedecked, ornate and gay
Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the Isles
Of Javan or Gadire
With all her bravery on and tackle trim,
Sails filled and streamers waving."

That description could only have been written in a time of vulgar women
and vulgar vessels. The utmost vanity of dress in a woman of the
fourteenth century would have given no image of "sails filled or
streamers waving"; nor does the look or action of a really "stately"
ship ever suggest any image of the motion of a weak or vain woman. The
beauties of the Court of Charles II., and the gilded galleys of the
Thames, might fitly be compared; but the pomp of the Venetian
fisher-boat is like neither. The sail seems dyed in its fullness by the
sunshine, as the rainbow dyes a cloud; the rich stains upon it fade and
reappear, as its folds swell or fall; worn with the Adrian storms, its
rough woof has a kind of noble dimness upon it, and its colors seem as
grave, inherent, and free from vanity as the spots of the leopard, or
veins of the seashell.

[K] I am not quite sure of this, not having studied with any care
the forms of mediaeval shipping; but in all the MSS. I have examined
the sails of the shipping represented are square.

[L] It is not a little strange that in all the innumera