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The makers of Venice

Venice has long borne in the imagination of the world a distinctive position, something of the character of a great enchantress, a magician of the seas. Her growth between the water and the sky; her great palaces, solid and splendid, built, so to speak, on nothing; the wonderful glory of light and reflection about her; the glimmer of incessant brightness and movement; the absence of all those harsh, artificial sounds which vex the air in other towns, but which in her are replaced by harmonies of human voices, and by the liquid tinkle of the waves — all these unusual characteristics combine to make her a wonder and a prodigy. While there are scarcely any who are unmoved by her special charm, there are some who are entirely subdued by it, to whom the sight of her is a continual enchantment, and who never get beyond the sense of something miraculous, the rapture of the first vision. Not only does she "shine where she stands," which even the poorest clusters of human habitations will do in the light of love; but all those walls, with the mist of ages like a bloom of eternal youth upon them — all those delicate pinnacles and carven stones, the arches and the pillars and the balconies, the fretted outlines that strike against the sky — shine, too, as with a light within that radiates into the clear sea air; and every ripple on the great water-way, and every wave on the lagoon, and each little rivulet of a canal, like a line of light between the piles of masonry, which are themselves built of pearl and tints of ocean shells, shines, too, with an ever-varied, fantastic, enchanting glimmer of responsive brightness. In the light of summer mornings, in the glow of winter sunsets, Venice stands out upon the blue background, the sea that brims upward to her very doors, the sky that sweeps in widening circles all around, radiant with an answering tone of light. She is all wonder, enchantment, the brightness and the glory of a dream. Her own children cannot enough paint her,

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Detail Information
Series Title
-
Call Number
SRLF_UCLA:LAGE-2554896
Publisher
: New York : H. M Caldwell.,
Collation
cdl; americana
Language
English
ISBN/ISSN
470477562
Classification
NONE
Content Type
text
Media Type
computer
Carrier Type
online resource
Edition
-
Subject(s)
History
Biography
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
Other Information
Cataloger
Suwardi
Source
https://archive.org/details/makersofvenice00olip/page/n14/mode/1up
Validator
Suwardi
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
urn:oclc:record:1049624010[WorldCat (this item)]
Journal Volume
-
Journal Issue
-
Subtitle
-
Parallel Title
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