PRISONS IN VENICE. 
fi98 
belly, but finely variegated on the back. It lives in the sand, and the 
sting which it inflicts w ith its tail, is said also to occasion contractions 
in the joints. 
Prison in Venice. 
When I was in Venice, says Moseley, I descended into the cells of 
the Prigoni Publiche, or Great Common Prison. — Here — even here — 
the soul of man clings to his body ; and shew's no more symptoms, or 
prescience, of immortality, than if that body were on a bed of down, 
canopied in a gorgeous palace. 
In the morning, when I set out on this gloomy expedition, Dominico 
Zacchi, my Venetian servant, who had attended Lord St. Asaph, Sir 
George Beaumont, and several other English travellers, during their 
residence at Venice, took his leave of me. This was on the sixteenth 
of September, 17B7. Dominico thought that I would never return, 
or, if I did, I might “ a tale unfold” that would endanger my safety 
at Venice. But he said, from what he had heard, he did not think 
it possible for me to survive the foul and pestilential air I had to 
encounter. 
My design was to see the perfection — the far-farmed ultimatum of 
policy — the immured for life in solitary cells. 
The late Mr. John Howard, F. R. S. was at the prison when he 
was in Venice; but he only heard something, and saw nothing, of this 
prison of prisons. 
He had not bodily strength to bear the exertion required in such 
an undertaking ; neither do I believe he would have been suffered 
to enter them. It was with some difficulty that I obtained permission 
from the inquisitors, w'hich was granted me merely on account of my 
being an English physician ; a character much respected at that time 
in Venice. I wished to have seen the Sotto Piombi, where the state 
prisoners were kept, but that was refused. Here, under the roof of 
the public buildings, they are confined ; exposed to the rigour of 
winter’s cold and summer’s heat, and the vicissitudes of scorching 
days and chilling nights. 
I was conducted through the prison by one of its inferior depend- 
ants. We had a torch with us, and crept along narrow passages 
as dark as pitch. In some of them two people could scarcely pass 
each other. The cells are made of massy marble ; the architecture 
of the celebrated Sansovine. 
The cells are not only dark and black as ink, but being surrounded 
and confined with huge walls, the smallest breath of air can scarcely 
find circulation in them ; they are about nine feet square on the 
floor, arched at the top, and between six and seven high in the high- 
est part. There is to each cell a round hole of eight inches diameter, 
through W'hich the prisoner’s daily allowance of tw'elve ounces of 
bread and a pot of water is delivered. There is a small iron door to 
the celt. The furniture of the cell is a little straw, and a small tub ; 
nothing else. The straw is renewed, and the tub emptied, occasionally, 
through the iron door. 
The diet is ingeniously contrived for perpetuating punishment. 
