172 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

being no space in the length and breadth of Italy to build new square-holed houses on, the Church of Charity must be used for makeshift.

Have you charity of imagination enough to cover this little field with fresh grass,-to tear down the iron bridge which some accursed Englishman, I suppose, greedy for filthy job, persuaded the poor Venetians to spoil their Grand Canal with, at its noblest bend,¹-and to fill the pointed lateral windows with light tracery of quatrefoiled stone? So stood, so bloomed, the church and its field, in early fourteenth century-dismal time! the church in its fresh beauty then, built towards the close of the thirteenth century, on the site of a much more ancient one, first built of wood; and, in 1119, of stone; but still very small, its attached monastery receiving Alexander III. in 1177; here on the little flowery field landed the Pontiff Exile, whose foot was to tread so soon on the Lion and the Adder.²

And, some hundred years later, putting away, one finds not why, her little Byzantine church, more gravely meditative Venice, visited much by Dominican and Franciscan friars, and more or less in cowled temper herself, built this graver and simpler pile; which, if any of my readers care for either Turner or me, they should look at with some moments’ pause; for I have given Turner’s lovely sketch of it to Oxford,³ painted as he saw it fifty years ago, with bright golden sails grouped in front of it where now is the ghastly iron bridge.*

Most probably (I cannot yet find any direct document

* “Very convenient for the people,” say you, modern man of business. Yes; very convenient to them also to pay two centesimi every time they cross,-six for three persons, into the pockets of that English engineer; instead of five for three persons, to one of their own boatmen, who now take to begging, drinking, and bellowing for the wretched hordes at the tables d’hôte, whose ears have been rent by railroad whistles till they don’t know a howl from a song-instead of ferrying.

¹ [The bridge was in fact erected by an English firm; the toll, referred to in Ruskin’s note, was abolished shortly after he wrote.]

² [See Vol. XI. p. 93.]

³ [No. 30 in Ruskin’s gift of 1861: see Vol. XIII. p. 560.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]