Venice (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE GRAND CANAL. HAVING visited the group of buildings around S. Mark's the traveller cannot do better than engage a gondolier at the Piazzetta and bid him row leisurely up and down the Grand Canal, which the Venetians call Canalazzo, which will give him a general impression of the palaces, to be more minutely studied afterwards. The buildings also of the Grand Canal, unlike the rest of Venice, can in most cases only be seen from the water. Those who visit its palaces on foot must make constant use of the traghetti, which, shaded by their little pergolas, ' send out the perfume of vine flowers along the canal.' Here the public gondolas cross as ferryboats, and here, in the shade, the most picturesque groups may usually be seen, of facchini gossiping with the gondoliers, or market-women from Mestre waiting with their baskets overflowing with fruits and greenery. Here a peculiar class of beggars are always stationed, pretending to pull your gondola to the shore, and really doing you no service whatever, called by the Venetians gransieri, or crab-catchers. Here we may see that the type of the lagunes, especially the masculine type, is now that which Gozzi describes as ' bianco, biondo, e grassotto,' rather than the dark, bronzed, and grave figures of Giorgione. Gravity certainly is washed out of the Venetian character, and, in the places where dry land affords a meeting ground, nothing can exceed the energy, excitement, and vivacity displayed?almost like that of Naples, and even where a shrine is marked by its redSEMINARIO PATRIARCHALE. 49 lamp on its little landing place, you seldom see one silent figure kneeling, but two or three votaries pressing forward to the Madonna at once, as if they had a secret to confide in her. It is an ever-changing diorama. ' You ...