III. ST. JAMES OF THE DEEP STREAM 239

I have but this autumn seen the last worn vestige trodden away; and yesterday, Feb. 26th [1877], in the morning, a little tree that was pleasant to me taken up from before the door, because it had heaved the pavement an inch or two out of square; also beside the Academy, a little over-hanging momentary shade of boughs hewn away, “to make the street ‘bello,’” said the axe-bearer. “What,” I asked, “will it be prettier in summer without its trees?” “Non x’e bello il verde,” he answered.* True oracle; though he knew not what he said;-voice of the modern Church of Venice ranking herself under the black standard of the pit.

40. I said you should hear the oracle of her ancient Church in a little while; but you must know why, and to whom it was spoken, first,-and we must leave the Rialto for to-day. Look, as you recross its bridge, westward, along the broad-flowing stream; and come here also, this evening, if the day sets calm, for then the waves of it, from the Rialto island to the Ca’ Foscari, glow like an Eastern tapestry in soft-flowing crimson, fretted with gold; and beside them, amidst the tumult of squalid ruin, remember the words that are the “burden of Venice,” as of Tyre:-

“Be still, ye inhabitants of the Isle. Thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. By great waters, the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.”¹

* I observe the good people of Edinburgh have the same taste; and rejoice proudly at having got an asphalt esplanade at the end of Princes Street, instead of cabbage-sellers. Alas! my Scottish friends; all that Princes Street of yours has not so much beauty in it as a single cabbage stalk, if you had eyes in your heads,-rather the extreme reverse of beauty; and there is not one of the lassies who now stagger up and down the burning marle in high-heeled boots and French bonnets, who would not look a thousand-fold prettier, and feel, there’s no counting how much nobler, bare-headed but for the snood, and bare-foot on old-fashioned grass by the Nor’ Loch side, bringing home from market, basket on arm, pease for papa’s dinner, and a bunch of cherries for baby.

¹ [Isaiah xxiii. 2, 3.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]