lamps rose the shadowy masses of church and palace; the moon stood bright
and full in the heavens; the gondola drifted away to the northward; the
islands of the lagoons seemed to rise and sink with the light palpitations
of the waves like pictures on the undulating fields of banners; the stark
rigging of a ship showed black against the sky, the Lido sank from sight
upon the east, as if the shore had composed itself to sleep by the side of
its beloved sea to the music of the surge that gently beat its sands; the
yet leafless boughs of the trees above me stirred themselves together, and
out of one of those trembling towers in the lagoons, one rich, full sob
burst from the heart of a bell, too deeply stricken with the glory of the
scene, and suffused the languid night with the murmur of luxurious,
ineffable sadness.

But there is a perfect democracy in the realm of the beautiful, and
whatsoever pleases is equal to any other thing there, no matter how low
its origin or humble its composition; and the magnificence of that
moonlight scene gave me no deeper joy than I won from the fine spectacle
of an old man whom I saw burning coffee one night in the little court
behind my lodgings, and whom I recollect now as one of the most
interesting people I saw in my first days at Venice. All day long the air
of that neighbourhood had reeked with the odors of the fragrant berry, and
all day long this patient old man--sage, let me call him--had turned the
sheet-iron cylinder in which it was roasting over an open fire after the
picturesque fashion of roasting coffee in Venice. Now that the night had
fallen, and the stars shone down upon him, and the red of the flame
luridly illumined him, he showed more grand and venerable than ever.
Simple, abstract humanity, has its own grandeur in Italy; and it is not
hard here for the artist to find the primitive types with which genius
loves best to deal. As for this old man, he had the beard of a saint, and
the dignity of a senator, harmonized with the squalor of a beggar,