File:Italian hours (1909) (14592650768).jpg

Identifier: cu31924028396004 (find matches)
Title: Italian hours
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: James, Henry, 1843-1916 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926, illus
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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still shown at which he gave the rein to his passions.For other observers it is sufficiently enlivened by so delightful acreation as the Palazzo Loredan, once a masterpiece and at presentthe Municipio, not to speak of a variety of other immemorialbits whose beauty still has a degree of freshness. Some of themost touching relics of early Venice are here — for it was hereshe precariously clustered — peeping out of a submersion morepitiless than the sea. As we approach the Rialto indeed the pic-ture falls off and a comparative commonness suffuses it. Thereis a wide paved walk on either side of the Canal, on which thewaterman — and who in Venice is not a waterman ? — is proneto seek repose. I speak of the summer days — it is the sum-mer Venice that is the visible Venice. The big tarry barges aredrawn up at the fondamenta, and the bare-legged boatmen, infaded blue cotton, lie asleep on the hot stones. If there wereno colour anywhere else there would be enough in their tanned (64)
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PALAZZO MONCENIGO, VENICE. THE GRAND CANAL personalities. Half the low doorways open into the warm interiorof waterside drinking-shops, and here and there, on the quay,beneath the bush that overhangs the door, there are rickety tablesand chairs. Where in Venice is there not the amusement ofcharacter and of detail ? The tone in this part is very vivid, andis largely that of the brown plebeian faces looking out of thepatchy miscellaneous houses — the faces of fat undressed womenand of other simple folk who are not aware that they enjoy, frombalconies once doubtless patrician, a view the knowing ones ofthe earth come thousands of miles to envy them. The effect isenhanced by the tattered clothes hung to dry in the windows,by the sun-faded rags that flutter from the polished balustrades—these are ivory-smooth with time; and the whole scene profits bythe general law that renders decadence and ruin in Venice morebrilliant than any prosperity. Decay is in this extraordinary placegolden in

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