Sung to her lute, her signal as she sate As between night and day we floated by) Goldoni, describing his excursion with the Passalacqua, has left us a lively picture of this class of men. "We were no sooner in the middle of that great lagoon which encircles the City, than our discreet Gondolier drew the curtain behind us, and let us float at the will of the waves.-At length night came on, and we could not tell where we were. 'What is the hour?' said I to the Gondolier-'I cannot guess, Sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it is the lover's hour.'-'Let us go home,' I replied; and he turned the prow homeward, singing, as he rowed, the twenty-sixth strophe of the sixteenth canto of the Jerusalem Delivered." The moon went down; and nothing now was seen Tho' haply none were coming, none were near, Crossed me and vanished-lost at once among Nor sought my threshold,† till the hour was come * Premi o stali. At Venice, if you have la riva in casa, you step from your boat into the hall. Bianca Capello. It had been shut, if we may believe the Novelist Malespini, by a baker's boy, as he passed by at day So often-then so lately left ajar, break; and in her despair she fled with her lover to Florence, where he fell by assassination. Her beauty, and her loveadventure as here related, her marriage afterwards with the Grand Duke, and that fatal banquet at which they were both poisoned by the Cardinal, his brother, have rendered her history a romance. THE BRIDES OF VENICE.* It was St. Mary's Eve, and all poured forth In yellow hat and thread-bare gaberdine, The noblest sons and daughters of the State, *This circumstance took place at Venice on the first of February, the eve of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, A. D. 994, Pietro Candiano, Doge. Were on that day to solemnize their nuptials. * Such splendour or such beauty. Two and two, (The richest tapestry unrolled before them) The two that, step by step, behind her bore And on her dazzling neck a jewel shone, *E 'l costume era, che tutte le novizze con tutta la dote loro venissero alla detta chiesa, dov' era il vescovo con tutta la chieresia.'-A. NAVAGIERO. 6 + Among the Habiti Antichi, in that admirable book of woodcuts ascribed to Titian (A. D. 1590), there is one entitled, Sposa Venetiana à Castello.' It was taken from an old painting in the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, and by the Writer is believed to represent one of the Brides here described. |