412 THE STONES OF VENICE.

which has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture, which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the beginning to the end of time.

§ 7. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East.¹

It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo² is seen trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did at first. Presently, you pass one of the much vaunted “villas on the Brenta:”³ a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish sunshine,

¹ [Ruskin is describing one of his several journeys before the completion of the railroad. In 1845 he saw the railway-bridge across the lagoon and the railway station at Venice in course of construction: see the passage from a letter cited in Vol. IV., pp. 40-1. The line was opened in that year. Dolo (now on a local line from Padua to Fusina) was in old days the half-way house between Padua and Mestre (now the last station on the main line before Venice). A lively description of Mestre, when it was the posting terminus and point of embarcation for Venice, is given in Ruskin’s juvenile tale, “Velasquez, the Novice,” see Vol. I. p. 537.]

² [For another reference to this tower, see p. 248 n.]

³ [The Brenta flows from its source in Tyrol, past Padua into the Lagoon at Fusina. Its banks were much in favour with the Venetian noblemen as the site for their country villas. An interesting account of the famous villa at Strà and of the villeggiatura existence passed on the river may be read in H. F. Brown’s Life on the Lagoons. Byron, during his residence at Venice, rented also one of these villas-“La Mira,” about seven miles inland: see Don Juan (i. 112): “Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta.” “Deep-dyed” he elsewhere calls it (Childe Harold, iv. 27).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]