Italian Hours by Henry James
page 54 of 414 (13%)
page 54 of 414 (13%)
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of a lamp at her feet. The lamps appear for the most part to have
gone out, and the images doubtless have been sold for bric-a- brac. The ferrymen, for aught I know, are converted to Nihilism--a faith consistent happily with a good stroke of business. One of the figures has been left, however--the Madonnetta which gives its name to a traghetto near the Rialto. But this sweet survivor is a carven stone inserted ages ago in the corner of an old palace and doubtless difficult of removal. Pazienza, the day will come when so marketable a relic will also be extracted from its socket and purchased by the devouring American. I leave that expression, on second thought, standing; but I repent of it when I remember that it is a devouring American--a lady long resident in Venice and whose kindnesses all Venetians, as well as her country-people, know, who has rekindled some of the extinguished tapers, setting up especially the big brave Gothic shrine, of painted and gilded wood, which, on the top of its stout palo, sheds its influence on the place of passage opposite the Salute. If I may not go into those of the palaces this devious discourse has left behind, much less may I enter the great galleries of the Academy, which rears its blank wall, surmounted by the lion of St. Mark, well within sight of the windows at which we are still lingering. This wondrous temple of Venetian art--for all it promises little from without--overhangs, in a manner, the Grand Canal, but if we were so much as to cross its threshold we should wander beyond recall. It contains, in some of the most magnificent halls--where the ceilings have all the glory with which the imagination of Venice alone could over-arch a room-- some of the noblest pictures in the world; and whether or not we |
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