30 THE STONES OF VENICE

still admirable when contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one¹ whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only:* from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war-tower, and her roof terraces² were wreathed with Arabian imagery of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies.†

§ 13. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next endeavour to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connection with the history of the state:-

First, receive the witness of Painting.

* Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark-Pax tibi Marce. [1879.]

† The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself. They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack of a foreign enemy.

¹ [i.e., the Campanile of St. Mark, which was a civic edifice; a watchman, stationed in the belfry, struck the great bell at every quarter of an hour; for its fall, see below, p. 248 n.]

² [See the description of them in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vii. § 12.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]