Venice

It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure
there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything
to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of
times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to
visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find
a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and
you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There
is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one
has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of
photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as
about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as
familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to
speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-
lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said
about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It
would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to
say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having
no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten
the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I
hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love
with his theme.

I

Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after
extracting half a lifetime of pleasure and an immeasurable
quantity of fame from it. We all may do the same, after it has
served our turn, which it probably will not cease to do for many
a year to come. Meantime it is Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps
us to enjoy. He has indeed lately produced several aids to
depression in the shape of certain little humorous--ill-humorous--
pamphlets (the series of St. Mark's Rest) which embody
his latest reflections on the subject of our city and describe
the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are
numerous and deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have
spoiled Venice would be to admit that Venice may be spoiled--an
admission pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty.
Fortunately one reacts against the Ruskinian contagion, and one
hour of the lagoon is worth a hundred pages of demoralised prose.
This queer late-coming prose of Mr. Ruskin (including the revised
and condensed issue of the Stones of Venice, only one
little volume of which has been published, or perhaps ever will
be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to
children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and
might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is,
however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just.
There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author