18 THE STONES OF VENICE

the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.

§ 2. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky.

Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,-TORCELLO, and VENICE.

Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum;¹ the lament from

¹ [Altinum, on the mainland opposite Torcello, was a prosperous town at the beginning of the Christian era, as we know from Martial (iv. 25), who compares the villas there with those at Baiae. In 452 it was sacked by the Huns; but it was not until the Lombard invasion in 568 that the inhabitants finally forsook the mainland. They were “in sore doubt whither they should turn to seek a home. ... Then a voice was heard, as though in thunder, saying to them, ‘Climb ye up to the tower and look at the stars.’ Then the Bishop Paul climbed the tower, and, looking up to the heavens, he saw the stars arranged as it were like islands in the lagoon. Thus

[Version 0.04: March 2008]