THE FLOWING STREETS. 319 



dark lone waters, sighing, soughing, and the sea-bird's 

 melancholy cry. Around them the dismal field of 

 slime, the salt and sombre plain. On that cluster of 

 islands had arisen a city of surpassing loveliness and 

 splendour. Great ships lay at anchor in its marble 

 streets ; their yards brushed sculptured balconies, and 

 the walls of palaces as they swept along. Branching 

 off from the great thoroughfares, bustling with com- 

 merce, magnificent with pomp, were sweet and silent 

 lanes of water, lined with summer palaces and with 

 myrtle gardens, sloping downwards to the shore. In 

 the fashionable quarter was a lake-like space — the 

 Park of Venice — which every evening was covered 

 with gondolas ; and the gondoliers in those days were 

 slaves from the East, Saracens or negroes, who sang 

 sadly as they rowed, the music of their homes — the 

 camel-song of the Sahara, or the soft minor airs of the 

 Soudan. 



The government of Venice was a rigid aristocracy. 

 Venice therefore has no Santa Croce; it can boast of 

 few illustrious names. However, its Aldine Press and 

 its poems in colour were not unworthy contributions to 

 the revival of ancient learning and the creation of 

 modern art. The famous wanderings of Marco Polo 

 had also excited among learned Venetians a peculiar 

 taste for the science of exploration. All over Europe 

 they corresponded with scholars of congenial tastes, and 

 urged those princes who had ships at their disposal to 

 undertake voyages of enterprise and discovery. Among 

 their correspondents there was one who carried out 

 their ideas too well. Venice was not so much injured 

 by the potentates who assembled at Cambray, as by a 

 single man who lived in a lonely spot on the south- 

 west coast of the Spanish peninsula. 



