PRISON IN VENICE 
G9?' 
Animal food, or a cordial nutritious regimen, in such a situation, 
would bring on disease, and defeat the end of this Venetian justice. 
Neither can the soui, if so inclined, steal away, wrapt up in slumber- 
ing delusion, or sink to rest, from the admonition of her sad exist- 
ence, afforded by the gaoler's daily return. 
I saw one man who had been in a cell thirty years ; two who had 
been twelve years ; and several who had been eight and nine years in 
their respective cells. 
By my taper’s light I could discover the prisoners’ horrid counte- 
nances. They were all naked. The man who had been there thirty 
years, in face and body was covered with long hair. He had lost 
the arrangement of words, and order of language. When I spoke to 
him, he made an unintelligible noise; and expressed fear and surprise, 
and, like some animals in deserts, which have suffered by the treachery 
of the human race, or have an instinctive abhorrence of it, he would 
have fled like lightning from me, if he could. 
One, whose faculties were not so obliterated, who still recollected 
the difference between day and night, whose eyes and ears, though 
long closed with a silent blank, still languished to perform their natural 
functions, implored in the most piercing manner that I would prevail 
on the gaoler to murder him, or to give him some instrument to 
destroy himself. I told him I had no power to serve him in this 
request. He then entreated I would use my endeavours with the 
inquisitors to get him hanged, or drowned in the canal d’Orfano. 
But even in this I could not serve him. Death was a favour I had not 
interest enough to procure for him. This kindness of death, however, 
was, during my stay in Venice, granted to one man who had been 
“ from the cheerful ways of men cut off” thirteen years. 
Before he left his dungeon, I had some conversation with him ; 
this was six days previous to his execution. His transport at the 
prospect of death was surprising. He longed for the happy moment. 
No saint ever exhibited more fervour in anticipating the joys of a 
future state, than this man did at the thoughts of being released from 
life, during the four days’ mockery of his trial. 
It is in the canal d’Orfano where vessels from Turkey and the Levant 
perform quarantine. This place is the watery grave of many who 
have committed political or personal offences against the state or 
senate ; and of many who have committed no offences at all. They 
are carried only through the city in the middle of the night, tied up 
in a sack, with a large stone fastened to it, and thrown into the water. 
Fishermen are prohibited, on forfeiture of their lives, against fishing in 
this district. The pretence is the plague. This is the secret history of 
people being lost in Venice. 
What I ’ow unfold in regard to the prison in Venice is known but 
to a few people. have reason to believe that no foreigner besides 
myself ever witnessed the scene I have related — the exploring of 
which nearly cost me my life. The heat and want of air in the pas- 
sages so oppressed my strength and respiration, that 1 could scarcely 
walk or breathe when I left the prison. Sweat ran through every 
pore of my body — my clothes were, to my coat sleeves, wet through — 
I staid too long there. 1 went to St. Mark’s Place as soon as I could 
