Volume I Part 37 (2/2)
The Hall of the Council of Ten (the most powerful and the most abominable tribunal that ever existed) has been partly modernised In the Chamber of the Inquisitors of State is still the hole in the hich was called the 'Lion's Mouth,' through which written communications were made; and the box into which they fell, which the Inquisitors alone could open There were 'Bocche di Lioni' in several places at the head of the Giant's Staircase, and in others The h the interior of the Ponte di Sospiri is no longer visible, the prisons are horrible places, twenty-four in number, besides three others under water which the French had closed up
They are about fourteen feet long, seven wide, and seven high, with one hole to admit air, a wooden bed, which was covered with straw, and a shelf In one of the prisons are several inscriptions, scrawled on the wall and ceiling
Di chi uardo io
Un parlar pocho, un negar pronto, Un pensar in fine pu dar la vita A noi altri ir vuoi di spioni, insidie e lacci
Il pentirti, il pentirti, nulla giova Ma ben del valor tuo far vera prova
There are two places in which criled, and without seeing their executioner, for a cord was passed through an opening, which he twisted till the victim was dead This was the mode pursued with the prisoners of the Inquisitors; those of the Council were often placed in a cell to which there was a thickly grated , through which the executioner did his office, and if they resisted he stabbed them in the throat The wall is still covered with the blood of those who have thus suffered Froo, to the destruction of the Republic nobody was ever allowed to see these prisons, till the French came and threw them open, when the people set fire to them and burnt all the ork; the stone was too solid to be destroyed
One or two escaped, and they remain as memorials of the horrors that were perpetrated in thee Head: VENICE]
June 17th, 1830 {p408}
This ayer than yesterday From the Rialto to the Piazza di San Marco there is plenty of life and movement, and it is exactly like Cranbourne Alley and the other alleys out of Leicester Square While Venice was prosperous St Mark'sis decayed All round the piazza are coffee houses, which used to be open and crowded all night, and some of them are still open, but never crowded They used to be illuone One sees a few Turks sed to dine and sleep in one house, which is on the Grand Canal, and called the Casa dei Turchi I went this iore, Redentore, SS Giovanni e Paolo, and the Gesuiti The latter is the most beautiful church I ever saw, the whole of it adorned hite ular pattern SS Giovanni e Paolo has no enerals To the Manfrini Palace for the pictures The finest picture in the palace is titian's 'Deposition from the Cross,' for which the Marchese Manfrini refused 10,000 ducats A Guido (Lucretia) and soe pictures I cannot admire, and Bassano's still less titian's portrait of Ariosto is thein the collection To the arsenal, which is three ious establishment In the time of the Republic there were nearly 6,000 men employed in it, in that of the French 4,000, now 800 The old armoury is very curious, full of ancient weapons, the ares, Turkish spoils, and instruretted here It is since the last peace that the population of Venice has diminished a fourth, and the palaces of the nobles have been abandoned There is no co to enliven or benefit the town (there has not yet been ti it a free port) The French employed the people, and spent money and embellished the place They covered over a wide canal and turned it into a fine street, and adjoining it they forhtful addition to the town
Till the French caerous; there was no balustrade on either side, and people often fell into the water
They built side walls to all of theift they could bestow upon the Venetians
ThisI asked for the newspapers which came by the post yesterday, and found that they had not yet returned from the police, and would not be till to-morrow Before anybody is allowed to read their newspapers theywhich the censor deeether After dinner I went to the public gardens, and into a theatre which is in theht, and in the open air I only arrived at the end, just in time to see the deliverance of a Christian heroine and a very truculent-looking Turk craue Nothing certainly can be more extraordinary or more beautiful than Venice with her adjacent islands, and nothing ondola and s about the whole day, without noise, ht I went to a dirty, ill-lit theatre, to see the 'Barbiere di Seviglia,' which was very ill performed There was a ballet, but I did not stay for it
June 18th, 1830 {p409}
To the Church of St Mark, and exae, but very curious, so loaded with ornament within and without, and so unlike any other church The pave flat, is made to undulate like the waves of the sea All the sides are marble, all the top mosaic, all the pavement coloured le tomb in it, but it wants no ornaes could supply
Climbed up the tower to see Venice and the islands; a ht to strike the hours and quarters on a great bell, to ring the alarm in case of fire in any part of the city It is a very curious panorae place can be completely seen In the Griood) of Gririppa, which Cardinal Gri by Salviati of Neptune and Minerva contending to give a name to Athens In the Pisani Palace, a fine picture of P Veronese, 'Darius's Fao Palace has never been inal form and decorations It is full of titians, all very dirty and spoiling The finest is the 'Magdalen,' which is famous The Royal Acadenificent collection of the Venetian school
[13] [This fine work is now in the National Gallery, London]
In I forget which church is the 'Martyrdom of St Peter' by titian, so like in cona that the one is certainly an imitation of the other (titian died in 1576; Domenichino was born in 1581) There is the saures, and in the same respective attitudes and actions, and even the same dress to each In the hall of the Acadeht hand in an urn, and underneath it his chisel, with these words inscribed: 'Quod aloriae instrus and sketches by various e Head: VINCENZA AND PADUA]
Vicenza, June 19th, 1830 {p411}
This ain to St Mark's to examine the library and the palace, which I could hardly see the other day, it was such, gloo list of rules, a which silence is particularly enjoined The _custos libroruret of the splendour of the Republic, and is very angry with Daru for his history The Hall of the Great Council, containing the portraits of the Doges (and Marino Faliero's black curtain), is splendid, and adorned with paintings of Paul Veronese, Bassano, Tintoret, and Palondola and left Venice without the least regret or desire to return there The banks of the Brenta would be very gay if the villas were inhabited, but most of thenificent building, fors to the Viceroy, the Archduke Rainer
Padua is a large and rather gloo been ruined by the French, and that, since their downfall, the population has increased immensely The University contains 1,400 scholars It contained 52,500 in the tireat days of Padua 18,000 I went to look at the outside of the building, which is not large, but handsome The old palace of the Carraras is half ruined, and what remains is tenanted by the commandant of the place The old Sala di Giustizia, which, is very ancient, is now a lu scenes in it Still it is undaed, and they call it the finest roo, 100 wide, and 100 high At one end of it is the monument and bust of Livy, the latter of which they pretend to have found here; they also talk of his house and theup in it, which theyto boast of, except that Petrarch was one of its canons, and in it is his bust, put up by a brother canon I had not tio to the churches
The whole road from Fusina to this place is as flat as the paper on which I a I really don't believe there is a ay froious cultivation of all sorts Vicenza is one of the reeable towns I ever saw, and I would rather live in it than in any place I have seen since Rome It is spacious and clean, full of Palladio's architecture; besides the Palazzo della Ragione, a very fine building, there are twenty-two palaces built by him in various parts of the town They show the house in which he lived From the Church of Santa Maria del Monte, a nificent view, and the town itself, under the mountains of the Tyrol, and the end of a vast cultivated plain, looks very inviting and gay There is a Campo di Marte, a public walk and drive, and fro up to the church on the hill One of the s here is the Olyun by Palladio and finished by his son It is a small Grecian theatre, exactly as he supposes those ancient theatres to have been, with the same proscenium, scenes, decorations, and seats for the audience There appeared to me to be some material variations froo down to the level of the orchestra, which they do not here, and at Pompeii there is no depth behind the proscenium, whereas here there is very considerable It is, however, a beautiful ood, and there is shooting, so that I really think it would be possible to live here They talk with horror of the French, and of the two seem to prefer the Austrians, but peace is better than war, _caeteris paribus_