On Christmas Eve, then, this church was crowded, and the door-ways were constantly thronged with people pa.s.sing in and out. I was puzzled to see so many young men present, for Young Italy is not usually in great number at church; but a friend explained the anomaly: "After the guests at our Christmas Eve dinners have well eaten and drunken, they all go to ma.s.s in at least one church, and the younger offer a multiplied devotion by going to all. It is a good thing in some ways, for by this means they manage to see every pretty face in the city, which that night has specially prepared itself to be seen;" and from this slender text my friend began to discourse at large about these Christmas Eve dinners, and chiefly how jollily the priests fared, ending with the devout wish, "Would G.o.d had made me nephew of a canonico!" The great dinners of the priests are a favorite theme with Italian talkers; but I doubt it is after all only a habit of speech. The priests are too numerous to feed sumptuously in most cases.
We had a good place to see and hear, sitting in the middle of the main aisle, directly over the dust of John Law, who alighted in Venice when his great Mississippi bubble burst, and died here, and now sleeps peacefully under a marble tablet in the ugly church of San Moise. The thought of that busy, ambitious life, come to this unscheming repose under our feet,--so far from the scene of its hopes, successes, and defeats,--gave its own touch of solemnity to the time and place, and helped the offended sense of propriety through the bursts of operatic music, which interspersed the ma.s.s. But on the whole, the music was good and the function sufficiently impressive,--what with the gloom of the temple everywhere starred with tapers, and the grand altar lighted to the mountain-top. The singing of the priests also was here much better than I had found it elsewhere in Venice.
The equality of all cla.s.ses in church is a noticeable thing always in Italy, but on this Christmas Eve it was unusually evident. The rags of the beggar brushed the silks of luxury, as the wearers knelt side by side on the marble floor; and on the night when G.o.d was born to poverty on earth, the rich seemed to feel that they drew nearer Him in the neighborhood of the poor. In these costly temples of the eldest Christianity, the poor seem to enter upon their inheritance of the future, for it is they who frequent them most and possess them with the deepest sense of ownership. The withered old woman, who creeps into St Mark"s with her scaldino in her hand, takes visible possession of its magnificence as G.o.d"s and hers, and Catholic wealth and rank would hardly, if challenged, dispute her claim.
Even the longest ma.s.s comes to an end at last, and those of our party who could credit themselves with no gain of ma.s.ses against the morrow, received the benediction at San Moise with peculiar unction. We all issued forth, and pa.s.sing through the lines of young men who draw themselves up on either side of the doors of public places in Venice, to look at the young ladies as they come out, we entered the Place of St. Mark. The Piazza was more gloriously beautiful than ever I saw it before, and the church had a saintly loveliness. The moon was full, and snowed down the mellowest light on the gray domes, which in their soft, elusive outlines, and strange effect of far-withdrawal, rhymed like faint-heard refrains to the bright and vivid arches of the facade. And if the bronze horses had been minded to quit their station before the great window over the central arch, they might have paced around the night"s whole half-world, and found no fairer resting-place.
As for Christmas Day in Venice, it amounted to very little; every thing was closed, and whatever merry-making went on was all within doors.
Although the shops and the places of amus.e.m.e.nt were opened the day following, the city entered very sparingly on the pleasures of Carnival, and Christmas week pa.s.sed off in every-day fashion. It will be remembered that on St. Stephen"s Day--the first of Carnival--one of the five annual banquets took place at the Ducal Palace in the time of the Republic. A certain number of patricians received invitations to the dinner, and those for whom there was no room were presented with fish and poultry by the Doge. The populace were admitted to look on during the first course, and then, having sated their appet.i.tes with this savory observance, were invited to withdraw. The patriotic Giustina Renier-Michiel of course makes much of the courtesy thus extended to the people by the State, but I cannot help thinking it must have been hard to bear. The banquet, however, has pa.s.sed away with the Republic which gave it, and the only savor of dinner which Venetian poverty now inhales on St. Stephen"s Day, is that which arises from its own proper pot of broth.
New Year"s is the carnival of the beggars in Venice. Their business is carried on briskly throughout the year, but on this day it is pursued with an unusual degree of perseverance, and an enterprise worthy of all disinterested admiration. At every corner, on every bridge, under every door-way, hideous shapes of poverty, mutilation, and deformity stand waiting, and thrust out palms, plates, and pans, and advance good wishes and blessings to all who pa.s.s, It is an immemorial custom, and it is one in which all but the quite comfortable cla.s.ses partic.i.p.ate. The facchini in every square take up their collections; the gondoliers have their plates prepared for contribution at every ferry; at every caffe and restaurant begging-boxes appeal to charity. Whoever has lifted hand in your service in any way during the past year expects a reward on New Year"s for the complaisance, and in some cases the shop-keepers send to wish you a _bel capo d"anno_, with the same practical end in view. On New Year"s Eve and morning bands of facchini and gondoliers go about howling _vivas_ under charitable windows till they open and drop alms. The Piazza is invaded by the legions of beggary, and held in overpowering numbers against all comers; and to traverse it is like a progress through a lazar-house.
Beyond encouraging so gross an abuse as this, I do not know that Venice celebrates New Year"s in a peculiar manner. It is a _festa_, and there are ma.s.ses, of course. Presents are exchanged, which consist chiefly of books--printed for the season, and brilliant outside and dull within, like all annuals.
CHAPTER XIX.
LOVE-MAKING AND MARRYING; BAPTISMS AND BURIALS.
The Venetians have had a practical and strictly business-like way of arranging marriages from the earliest times. The shrewdest provision has always been made for the dower and for the good of the State; private and public interest being consulted, the small matters of affections have been left to the chances of a.s.sociation; and it does not seem that Venetian society has ever dealt severely with husbands or wives whom incompatibilities forced to seek consolation outside of matrimony.
Herodotus relates that the Illyrian Veneti sold their daughters at auction to the highest bidder; and the fair being thus comfortably placed in life, the hard-favored were given to whomsoever would take them, with such dower as might be considered a reasonable compensation.
The auction was discontinued in Christian times, but marriage contracts still partook of the form of a public and half-mercantile transaction.
At a comparatively late period Venetian fathers went with their daughters to a great annual matrimonial fair at San Pietro di Castello Olivolo, and the youth of the lagoons repaired thither to choose wives from the number of the maidens. These were all dressed in white, with hair loose about the neck, and each bore her dower in a little box, slung over her shoulder by a ribbon. It is to be supposed that there was commonly a previous understanding between each damsel and some youth in the crowd: as soon as all had paired off, the bishop gave them a sermon and his benediction, and the young men gathered up their brides and boxes, and went away wedded. It was on one of these occasions, in the year 944, that the Triestine pirates stole the Brides of Venice with their dowers, and gave occasion to the Festa delle Marie, already described, and to Rogers"s poem, which every body pretends to have read.
This going to San Pietro"s, selecting a wife and marrying her on the spot, out of hand, could only have been the contrivance of a straightforward, practical race. Among the common people betrothals were managed with even greater ease and dispatch, till a very late day in history; and in the record of a certain trial which took place in 1443 there is an account of one of these brief and unceremonious courtships.
Donna Catarussa, who gives evidence, and whom I take to have been a worthless, idle gossip, was one day sitting at her door, when Piero di Trento pa.s.sed, selling brooms, and said to her, "Madonna, find me some nice girl." To which Donna Catarussa replied, "Ugly fool! do you take me for a go-between?" "No," said Piero, "not that; I mean a girl to be my wife." And as Donna Catarussa thought at once of a suitable match, she said, "In faith of G.o.d, I know one for you. Come again to-morrow." So they both met next day, and the woman chosen by Donna Catarussa being asked, "Wouldst thou like to have Piero for thy husband, as G.o.d commands and holy Church?" she answered, "Yes." And Peter being asked the like question, answered, "Why, yes, certainly." And they went off and had the wedding feast. A number of these betrothals takes place in the last scene of Goldoni"s "Baruffe Chiozzotte," where the belligerent women and their lovers take hands in the public streets, and saluting each other as man and wife, are affianced, and get married as quickly as possible:--
"_Checa_ (to Tofolo). Take my hand.
"_Tofolo_. Wife!
"_Checa_. Husband!
"_Tofolo_. Hurra!"
The betrothals of the Venetian n.o.bles were celebrated with as much pomp and ceremony as could possibly distinguish them from those of the people, and there was much more polite indifference to the inclinations of the parties immediately concerned. The contract was often concluded before the betrothed had seen each other, by means of a third person, when the amount of the dower was fixed. The bridegroom elect having verbally agreed with the parents of the bride, repaired at an early day to the court-yard of the Ducal Palace, where the match was published, and where he shook hands with his kinsmen and friends. On the day fixed for signing the contract the bride"s father invited to his house the bridegroom and all his friends, and hither came the high officers of state to compliment the future husband. He, with the father of his betrothed, met the guests at the door of the palace, and conducted them to the grand saloon, which no woman was allowed (_si figuri!_) at this time to enter. When the company was seated, the bride, clad in white, was led from her rooms and presented. She wore a crown of pearls and brilliants on her head, and her hair, mixed with long threads of gold, fell loose about her shoulders, as you may see it in Carpaccio"s pictures of the Espousals of St. Ursula. Her ear-rings were pendants of three pearls set in gold; her neck and throat were bare but for a collar of lace and gems, from which slid a fine jeweled chain into her bosom.
Over her breast she wore a stomacher of cloth of gold, to which were attached her sleeves, open from the elbow to the hand. The formal words of espousal being p.r.o.nounced, the bride paced slowly round the hall to the music of fifes and trumpets, and made a gentle inclination to each of the guests; and then returned to her chamber, from which she issued again on the arrival of any tardy friend, and repeated the ceremony.
After all this, she descended to the courtyard, where she was received by gentlewomen, her friends, and placed on a raised seat (which was covered with rich stuffs) in an open gondola, and thus, followed by a fleet of attendant gondolas, went to visit all the convents in which there were kinspeople of herself or her betrothed. The excessive publicity of these ceremonies was supposed to strengthen the validity of the marriage contract. At an early day after the espousals the betrothed, preceded by musicians and followed by relatives and friends, went at dawn to be married in the church,--the bridegroom wearing a toga, and the bride a dress of white silk or crimson velvet, with jewels in her hair, and pearls embroidered on her robes. Visits of congratulation followed, and on the same day a public feast was given in honor of the wedding, to which at least three hundred persons were always invited, and at which the number, quality, and cost of the dishes were carefully regulated by the Republic"s laws. On this occasion, one or more persons were chosen as governors of the feast, and after the tables were removed, a mock-heroic character appeared, and recounted with absurd exaggeration the deeds of the ancestors of the bride and groom. The next morning _ristorativi_ of sweetmeats and confectionery were presented to the happy couple, by whom the presents were returned in kind.
A splendor so exceptional, even in the most splendid age of the most splendid city, as that which marked the nuptial feasts of the unhappy Jacopo Foscari, could not be left unnoticed in this place. He espoused Lucrezia, daughter of Lionardo Contarini, a n.o.ble as rich and magnificent as Jacopo"s own father, the Doge; and, on the 29th of January 1441, the n.o.ble Eustachio Balbi being chosen lord of the feasts, the bridegroom, the bride"s brother and eighteen other patrician youths, a.s.sembled in the Palazzo Balbi, whence they went on horseback to conduct Lucrezia to the Ducal Palace. They were all sumptuously dressed in crimson velvet and silver brocade of Alexandria, and rode chargers superbly caparisoned. Other n.o.ble friends attended them; musicians went before; a troop of soldiers brought up the rear. They thus proceeded to the court-yard of the Ducal Palace, and then, returning, traversed the Piazza, and threading the devious little streets to the Campo San Samuele, there crossed the Grand Ca.n.a.l upon a bridge of boats, to San Barnaba opposite, where the Contarini lived. On their arrival at this place the bride, supported by two Procuratori di San Marco, and attended by sixty ladies, descended to the church and heard ma.s.s, after which an oration was delivered in Campo San Barnaba before the Doge, the amba.s.sadors, and a mult.i.tude of n.o.bles and people, in praise of the spouses and their families. The bride then returned to her father"s house, and jousts took place in the campos of Santa Maria Formosa and San Polo (the largest in the city), and in the Piazza San Marco. The Doge gave a great banquet, and at its close one hundred and fifty ladies proceeded to the bride"s palace in the Bucintoro, where one hundred other ladies joined them, together with Lucrezia, who, seated between Francesco Sforza (then General-in-chief of the Republic"s armies) and the Florentine amba.s.sador, was conducted, amid the shouts of the people and the sound of trumpets, to the Ducal Palace. The Doge received her at the riva of the Piazzetta, and, with Sforza and Balbi led her to the foot of the palace stairs, where the Dogaressa, with sixty ladies, welcomed her. A state supper ended this day"s rejoicings, and on the following day a tournament took place in the Piazza, for a prize of cloth of gold, which was offered by Sforza. Forty knights contested the prize and supped afterward with the Doge. On the next day there were processions of boats with music on the Grand Ca.n.a.l; on the fourth and last day there were other jousts for prizes offered by the jewelers and Florentine merchants; and every night there were dancing and feasting in the Ducal Palace. The Doge was himself the giver of the last tournament, and with this the festivities came to an end.
I have read an account by an old-fashioned English traveler of a Venetian marriage which he saw, sixty or seventy years ago, at the church of San Giorgio Maggiore: "After a crowd of n.o.bles," he says, "in their usual black robes, had been some time in attendance, the gondolas appearing, exhibited a fine show, though all of them were painted of a sable hue, in consequence of a sumptuary law, which is very necessary in this place, to prevent an expense which many who could not bear it would incur; nevertheless the barcarioli, or boatmen, were dressed in handsome liveries; the gondolas followed one another in a line, each carrying two ladies, who were likewise dressed in black. As they landed they arranged themselves in order, forming a line from the gate to the great altar.
At length the bride, arrayed in white as the symbol of innocence, led by the bridesman, ascended the stairs of the landing-place. There she received the compliments of the bridegroom, in his black toga, who walked at her right hand to the altar, where they and all the company kneeled. I was often afraid the poor young creature would have sunk upon the ground before she arrived, for she trembled with great agitation, while she made her low courtesies from side to side: however, the ceremony was no sooner performed than she seemed to recover her spirits, and looked matrimony in the face with a determined smile. Indeed, in all appearance she had nothing to fear from her husband, whose age and aspect were not at all formidable; accordingly she tripped back to the gondola with great activity and resolution, and the procession ended as it began. Though there was something attractive in this aquatic parade, the black hue of the boats and the company presented to a stranger, like me, the idea of a funeral rather than a wedding. My expectation was raised too high by the previous description of the Italians, who are much given to hyperbole, who gave me to understand that this procession would far exceed any thing I had ever seen. When I reflect upon this rhodomontade," disdainfully adds Mr. Drummond, "I cannot help comparing, in my memory, the paltry procession of the Venetian marriage with a very august occurrence of which I was eyewitness in Sweden," and which being the reception of their Swedish Majesties by the British fleet, I am sure the reader will not ask me to quote. With change of government, changes of civilization following the revolutions, and the decay of wealth among the Venetian n.o.bles, almost all their splendid customs have pa.s.sed away, and the habit of making wedding presents of sweetmeats and confectionery is perhaps the only relic which has descended from the picturesque past to the present time. These gifts are still exchanged not only by n.o.bles, but by all commoners according to their means, and are sometimes a source of very profuse outlay. It is the habit to send the candies in the elegant and costly paper caskets which the confectioners sell, and the sum of a thousand florins scarcely suffices to pa.s.s the courtesy round a moderately large circle of friends.
With the n.o.bility and with the richest commoners marriage is still greatly a matter of contract, and is arranged without much reference to the princ.i.p.als, though it is now scarcely probable in any case that they have not seen each other. But with all other cla.s.ses, except the poorest, who cannot and do not seclude the youth of either s.e.x from each other, and with whom, consequently, romantic contrivance and subterfuge would be superfluous, love is made to-day in Venice as in the _capa y espada_ comedies of the Spaniards, and the business is carried on with all the c.u.mbrous machinery of confidants, billets-doux, and stolen interviews.
Let us take our nominal friends, Marco and Todaro, and attend them in their solemn promenade under the arcades of the Procuratie, or upon the Molo, whither they go every evening to taste the air and to look at the ladies, while the Austrians and the other foreigners listen to the military music in the Piazza. They are both young, our friends; they have both glossy silk hats; they have both light canes and an innocent swagger. Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in their talk indescribably small and commonplace.
They look at the ladies, and suddenly Todaro feels the consuming ardors of love.
_Todaro_ (to Marco). Here, dear! Behold this beautiful blonde here!
Beautiful as an angel! But what loveliness!
_Marco_. But where?
_Todaro_. It is enough. Let us go. I follow her.
Such is the force of the pa.s.sion in southern hearts. They follow that beautiful blonde, who, marching demurely in front of the gray-moustached papa and the fat mamma, after the fashion in Venice, is electrically conscious of pursuit. They follow her during the whole evening, and, at a distance, softly follow her home, where the burning Todaro photographs the number of the house upon the sensitized tablets of his soul.
This is the first great step in love: he has seen his adored one, and he knows that he loves her with an inextinguishable ardor. The next advance is to be decided between himself and the faithful Marco, and is to be debated over many cups of black coffee, not to name gla.s.ses of sugar-and-water and the like exciting beverages. The friends may now find out the caffe which the Biondina frequents with her parents, and to which Todaro may go every evening and feast his eyes upon her loveliness, never making his regard known by any word, till some night, when he has followed her home, he steals speech with her as he stands in the street under her balcony,--and looks sufficiently sheepish as people detect him on their late return from the theatre. [Footnote: The love-making scenes in Goldoni"s comedy of _Il Bugiarda_ are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice.] Or, if the friends do not take this course in their courtship (for they are both engaged in the wooing), they decide that Todaro, after walking back and forth a sufficient number of times in the street where the Biondina lives, shall write her a tender letter, to demand if she be disposed to correspond his love. This billet must always be conveyed to her by her serving-maid, who must be bribed by Marco for the purpose. At every juncture Marco must be consulted, and acquainted with every step of progress; and no doubt the Biondina has some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom she confides her part of the love-affair in all its intricacy.
It may likewise happen that Todaro shall go to see the Biondina in church, whither, but for her presence, he would hardly go, and that there, though he may not have speech with her, he shall still fan the ardors of her curiosity and pity by persistent sighs. It must be confessed that if the Biondina is not pleased with his looks, his devotion must a.s.sume the character of an intolerable bore to her; and that to see him everywhere at her heels--to behold him leaning against the pillar near which she kneels at church, the head of his stick in his mouth, and his att.i.tude carefully taken with a view to captivation--to be always in deadly fear lest she shall meet him in promenade, or, turning round at the caffe encounter his pleading gaze--that all this must drive the Biondina to a state bordering upon blasphemy and finger-nails. _Ma, come si fa? Ci vuol pazienza!_ This is the sole course open to ingenuous youth in Venice, where confessed and unashamed acquaintance between young people is extremely difficult; and so this blind pursuit must go on, till the Biondina"s inclinations are at last laboriously ascertained.
Suppose the Biondina consents to be loved? Then Todaro has just and proper inquiries to make concerning her dower, and if her fortune is as pleasing as herself, he has only to demand her in marriage of her father, and after that to make her acquaintance.
One day a Venetian friend of mine, who spoke a little English, came to me with a joyous air and said:
"I am in lofe."
The recipient of repeated confidences of this kind from the same person, I listened with tempered effusion.
"It is a blonde again?"
"Yes, you have right; blonde again."
"And pretty?"
"Oh, but beautiful. I lofe her--_come si dice!--immensamente."_ "And where did you see her? Where did you make her acquaintance?"
"I have not make the acquaintance. I see her pa.s.s with his fazer every night on Rialto Bridge We did not spoke yet--only with the eyes.
The lady is not of Venice. She has four thousand florins. It is not much--no. But!"
Is not this love at first sight almost idyllic? Is it not also a sublime prudence to know the lady"s fortune better than herself, before herself?
These pa.s.sionate, headlong Italians look well to the main chance before they leap into matrimony, and you may be sure Todaro knows, in black and white, what the Biondina has to her fortune before he weds her. After that may come the marriage, and the sonnet written by the next of friendship, and printed to hang up in all the shop-windows, celebrating the auspicious event. If he be rich, or can write _n.o.bile_ after his Christian name, perhaps some abbate, elegantly addicted to verses and alive to grateful consequences, may publish a poem, elegantly printed by the matchless printers at Rovigo, and send it to all the bridegroom"s friends. It is not the only event which the facile Venetian Muse shall sing for him. If his child is brought happily through the measles by Dottor Cavasangue, the Nine shall celebrate the fact. If he takes any public honor or scholastic degree, it is equal occasion for verses; and when he dies the mortuary rhyme shall follow him. Indeed, almost every occurrence--a boy"s success at school, an advocate"s triumphal pa.s.sage of the perils of examination at Padua, a priest"s first ma.s.s, a nun"s novitiate, a birth, an amputation--is the subject of tuneful effusion, and no less the occasion of a visit from the facchini of the neighboring campo, who a.s.semble with blare of trumpets and tumult of voices around the victim"s door, and proclaim his skill or good fortune, and break into _vivas_ that never end till he bribes their enthusiasm into silence. The nave commonplaceness of feeling in all matrimonial transactions, in spite of the gloss which the operatic methods of courtship threw about them, was a source of endless amus.e.m.e.nt, as it stole out in different ways. "You know my friend Marco?" asked an acquaintance one day. "Well, we are looking out a wife for him. He doesn"t want to marry, but his father insists; and he has begged us to find somebody. There are three of us on the look-out. But he hates women, and is very hard to suit. _Ben! Ci vuol pazienza!"_
It rarely happens now that the religious part of the marriage ceremony is not performed in church, though it may be performed at the house of the bride. In this case, it usually takes place in the evening, and the spouses attend five o"clock ma.s.s next morning. But if the marriage takes place at church, it must be between five and eleven in the morning, and the blessing is commonly p.r.o.nounced about six o"clock. Civil marriage is still unknown among the Venetians. It is entirely the affair of the Church, in which the bans are published beforehand, and which exacts from the candidates a preliminary visit to their parish priest, for examination in their catechism, and for instruction in religion when they are defective in knowledge of the kind. There is no longer any civil publication of the betrothals, and the hand-shaking in the court of the Ducal Palace has long been disused. I cannot help thinking that the ceremony must have been a great affliction, and that, in the Republican times at Venice, a bridegroom must have fared nearly as hard as a President elect in our times at home.
There was a curious display on occasion of births among the n.o.bility in former times. The room of the young mother was decorated with a profusion of paintings, sculpture, and jewelry; and, while yet in bed, she received the congratulations of her friends, and regaled them with sweetmeats served in vases of gold and silver.
The child of n.o.ble parents had always at least two G.o.dfathers, and sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty; but in order that the relationship of G.o.dfather (which is the same according to the canonical law as a tie of consanguinity) should not prevent desirable matrimony between n.o.bles, no patrician was allowed to be G.o.dfather to another"s child. Consequently the _compare_ was usually a client of the n.o.ble parent, and was not expected to make any present to the G.o.dchild, whose father, on the day following the baptism, sent him a piece of marchpane, in acknowledgment of their relationship. No women were present at the baptism except those who had charge of the babe. After the fall of the Republic the French custom of baptism in the parents" house was introduced, as well as the custom, on the G.o.dfather"s part, of giving a present,--usually of sugarplums and silver toys. But I think that most baptisms still take place in church, if I may judge from the numbers of tight little gla.s.s cases I have noticed,--half bed and half coffin,--containing little eight-day-old Venetians, closely swathed in mummy-like bandages, and borne to and from the churches by mysterious old women. The ceremony of baptism itself does not apparently differ from that in other Catholic countries, and is performed, like all religious services in Italy, without a ray of religious feeling or solemnity of any kind.
For many centuries funeral services in Venice have been conducted by the _Scuole del Sacramento,_ inst.i.tuted for that purpose. To one of these societies the friends of the defunct pay a certain sum, and the a.s.sociation engages to inter the dead, and bear all the expenses of the ceremony, the dignity of which is regulated by the priest of the parish in which the deceased lived. The rite is now most generally undertaken by the Scuola di San Rocco. The funeral train is of ten or twenty facchini, wearing tunics of white, with caps and capes of red, and bearing the society"s long, gilded candlesticks of wood with lighted tapers. Priests follow them chanting prayers, and then comes the bier,--with a gilt crown lying on the coffin, if the dead be a babe, to indicate the triumph of innocence. Formerly, hired mourners attended, and a candle, weighing a pound, was given to any one who chose to carry it in the procession.
Anciently there was great show of mourning in Venice for the dead, when, according to Mutinelli, the friends and kinsmen of the deceased, having seen his body deposited in the church, "fell to weeping and howling, tore their hair and rent their clothes, and withdrew forever from that church, thenceforth become for them a place of abomination." Decenter customs prevailed in after-times, and there was a pathetic dignity in the ceremony of condolence among patricians: the mourners, on the day following the interment, repaired to the porticos of Rialto and the court of the Ducal Palace, and their friends came, one after one, and expressed their sympathy by a mute pressure of the hand.
Death, however, is hushed up as much as possible in modern Venice. The corpse is hurried from the house of mourning to the parish church, where the friends, after the funeral service, take leave of it. Then it is placed in a boat and carried to the burial-ground, where it is quickly interred. I was fortunate, therefore, in witnessing a cheerful funeral at which I one day casually a.s.sisted at San Michele. There was a church on this island as early as the tenth century, and in the thirteenth century it fell into the possession of the Comandulensen Friars. They built a monastery on it, which became famous as a seat of learning, and gave much erudite scholarship to the world. In later times Pope Gregory XVI. carried his profound learning from San Michele to the Vatican. The present church is in the Renaissance style, but not very offensively so, and has some indifferent paintings. The arcades and the courts around which it is built contain funeral monuments as unutterably ugly and tasteless as any thing of the kind I ever saw at home; but the dead, for the most part, lie in graves marked merely by little iron crosses in the narrow and roofless s.p.a.ce walled in from the lagoon, which laps sluggishly at the foot of the masonry with the impulses of the tide.