s if to swallow up
the silently sweeping gondola in its arch of shadow; their deep
dead silence only broken by the sullen plash of the oar, the dreary
word of warning uttered by the gondoliers before turning a sharp
angle, or the shrill rattling creak of innumerable crickets; but
principally those old Gothic posterns with deep-ribbed archways,
like rat-holes in proportion to the enormous piles, and their
thresholds level with the water, some blockaded with ponderous
doors, others developing their long withdrawn passage by a lamp,
that not only makes darkness _visible_, but _frightful_; while
others (as in the Martinengo palace to-night) disclose wide
pillared halls, and stately staircases, and moonlight courts --to
me, I say, all these attributes of the interior of Venice are
irresistible. Were you to see these old porticos by a summer's
daylight, you would not fail to find an old fig tree in broad leaf
and full of fruit, or a lattice-work of vine, most pleasantly green
in its deep court, where sun and shadow hold divided reign; while
the hundred shaped windows of those gloomy walls are variegated
with geranium and carnation, and perhaps a sweet dark eye fairer
than either.

"They are so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself,
which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave
palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once
sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy
was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which
Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where
Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were
watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and Disgrace, and Fate!

"It is impossible to scrutinize these dread abysms of mansions,
without experiencing that strange mixture of repugnance and
attraction which certain spectacles are wont to call forth in
animated nature. It is impossible to mark their melancholy and
downfallen, yet portentous aspect, without deeming them at once the
theatre and monument of those 'secret, black, and midnight crimes,'
which history and tradition ascribe to the domestic, as well as to
the state policy, of this Gehenna of fourteen centuries dominion.

'Visendus Ater flumine languido
Cocytus errans.'