EPILOGUE¹

[1881]

CASTEL-FRANCO

§ 1. WITH the words which closed the last chapter² virtually ended the book which I called The Stones of Venice,-meaning, the history of Venice so far as it was written in her ruins: the city itself being even then, in my eyes, dead, in the sense of the death of Jerusalem, when yet her people could love her, dead, and say, “Thy servants think upon her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust.”³

And her history, so far as it was thus in her desolation graven, is indeed in this book,⁴ told truly, and, I find on re-reading it, so clearly, that it greatly amazes me at this date to reflect how no one has ever believed a word I said, though the public have from the first done me the honour to praise my manner of saying it; and, as far as they found the things I spoke of amusing to themselves, they have deigned for a couple of days or so to look at them,-helped always through the tedium of the business by due quantity of ices at Florian’s, music by moonlight on the Grand Canal, paper lamps, and the English papers and magazines at

¹ [With ch. iv. The Stones of Venice in its original form ended. In the “Travellers’ Edition,” vol. ii., issued in 1881, an additional chapter appeared: “Castel-Franco.” In “complete editions” of the whole work, since published, this has appeared as ch. v.; it is, however, rather an epilogue than a continuation of the original book.]

² [i.e. “the last chapter” in the “Travellers’ Edition,” namely, ch. iii. in this volume.]

³ [Psalms cii. 14, Prayer-Book version. On the meaning of the title “Stones of Venice,” see further, Vol. IX. p. xxii.]

⁴ [The “Travellers’ Edition” here adds “(as now put into the traveller’s hand, free of the encumbrance of minor detail).”]

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