38 THE STONES OF VENICE

island of the dead, and the linked conclave of the Alps know no decline from their old pre-eminence, nor stoop from their golden thrones in the circle of the horizon. So lovely is the scene still, in spite of all its injuries, that we shall find ourselves drawn there again and again at evening¹ out of the narrow canals and streets of the city, to watch the wreaths of the sea-mist weaving themselves like mourning veils around the mountains far away, and listen to the green waves as they fret and sigh along the cemetery shore.²

§ 4. But it is morning now: we have a hard day’s work to do at Murano, and our boat shoots swiftly from beneath the last bridge of Venice, and brings us out into the open sea and sky.

The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another, rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet them, and are lost in them, barred across by the grey terraces of those cloud foundations, and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the mainland fringed with low trees; and then

¹ [An autobiographical note; Ruskin often went to what he calls “the quay of Murano,” i.e., the quay of Venice looking towards Murano, on winter evenings during his sojourn at Venice: see the passages from his diary cited in Vol. IX. p. xxvi., to which the following extract from a letter of 1851 to his father may be added:-

“Dec. 22.- ... After prayers I had a long quiet walk on the quay which is described in the last sheet sent you, commanding the view of Murano and the Alps. ... Though there was a fresh north wind, it was quite calm on the quay, and quite lonely, all the Venetians being drawn to the other side of the city, like the damp, by the sunshine; and the hoarfrost, untrodden, lay thick upon the pavement, and the Alps without a cloud, 150 miles of them, in the clear winter air, and the sea blue and cheerful, with a full bent sail glittering here and there upon its deeper channels.”]

² [The cemetery island is known as S. Michele, from the church of that name upon it (erected in 1478). Ruskin in a letter to his father from Venice (Dec. 28, 1851), written upon hearing of the death of Turner, refers to this passage, a draft of which he had already sent home:-

“I have been walking among tombs, curiously enough, for this last three weeks, and I was thinking of adding to that passage about the cemetery of Murano, saying that Turner had been struck with it, and had made its long purple wall the subject of the second most lovely picture he ever painted of Venice.”]

The picture in question is the “Campo Santo”; see note in Vol. III. p. 251.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]