But The Ships Of War Belonging To The Republic Have
Mouldered Away With The Bucentaur.
I saw, however, two Austrian vessels,
the same which had conveyed the Polish exiles to New York, lying under
shelter in the docks, as if placed there to show who were the present
masters of the place.
It was melancholy to wander through the vast
unoccupied spaces of this noble edifice, and to think what must have been
the riches, the power, the prosperity, and the hopes of Venice at the time
it was built, and what they are at the present moment. It seems almost
impossible that any thing should take place to arrest the ruin which is
gradually consuming this renowned city. Some writers have asserted that
the lagoons around it are annually growing shallower by the depositions of
earth brought down by streams from the land, that they must finally become
marshes, and that their consequent insalubrity will drive the inhabitants
from Venice. I do not know how this may be; but the other causes I have
mentioned seem likely to produce nearly the same effect. I remembered, as
these ideas passed through my mind, a passage in which one of the sacred
poets foretells the desertion and desolation of Tyre, "the city that made
itself glorious in the midst of the seas,"
"Thy riches and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and thy pilots,
thy calkers and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war
that are in thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of
thy ruin."
I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities which I had seen, on the
24th of June, and took the road for the Tyrol.
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