They are
charmingly expressed. There is a sketch of a cicerone at Bologna which
will remain in his books among their many delightful examples of his
unerring and loving perception for every gentle, heavenly, and tender
soul, under whatever conventional disguise it wanders here on earth,
whether as poorhouse orphan or lawyer's clerk, architect's pupil at
Salisbury or cheerful little guide to graves at Bologna; and there is
another memorable description in his Rembrandt sketch, in form of a
dream, of the silent, unearthly, watery wonders of Venice. This last,
though not written until after his London visit, had been prefigured so
vividly in what he wrote at once from the spot, that those passages from
his letter[90] may be read still with a quite undiminished interest. "I
must not," he said, "anticipate myself. But, my dear fellow, nothing in
the world that ever you have heard of Venice, is equal to the
magnificent and stupendous reality. The wildest visions of the Arabian
Nights are nothing to the piazza of Saint Mark, and the first impression
of the inside of the church. The gorgeous and wonderful reality of
Venice is beyond the fancy of the wildest dreamer. Opium couldn't build
such a place, and enchantment couldn't shadow it forth in a vision. All
that I have heard of it, read of it in truth or fiction, fancied of it,
is left thousands of miles behind. You know that I am liable to
disappointment in such things from over-expectation, but Venice is
above, beyond, out of all reach of coming near, the imagination of a
man. It has never been rated high enough. It is a thing you would shed
tears to see. When I came _on board_ here last night (after a five
miles' row in a gondola; which somehow or other, I wasn't at all
prepared for); when, from seeing the city lying, one light, upon the
distant water, like a ship, I came plashing through the silent and
deserted streets; I felt as if the houses were reality--the water,
fever-madness. But when, in the bright, cold, bracing day, I stood upon
the piazza, this morning, by Heaven the glory of the place was
insupportable! And diving down from that into its wickedness and
gloom--its awful prisons, deep below the water; its judgment chambers,
secret doors, deadly nooks, where the torches you carry with you blink
as if they couldn't bear the air in which the frightful scenes were
acted; and coming out again into the radiant, unsubstantial Magic of the
town; and diving in again, into