XXX. THE VESTIBULE 415

dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky,-the Alps of Bassano!¹ Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,-the bastions of the fort of Malghera.² Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast,-it widens: the rank grass of the banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco³ to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous dockyard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it;-this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line; but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a church.

It is Venice.

¹ [Lying some 25 or 30 miles north-west of Venice.]

² [Shown in Ruskin’s sketch here reproduced (Plate E). It underwent a long siege in 1849; it has now been considerably repaired and strengthened. The train, going to Venice, passes it on the left soon after leaving Mestre.]

³ [The Porto di Malamocco is one of the southern entrances to the lagoons from the open sea. Malamocco itself is a village on the long island of the Lido which forms the natural breakwater for Venice.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]