“Then came the disappointment of his youthful passion,—­the lassitude and remorse of premature excess,—­the lone friendlessness of his entrance into life, and the ruthless assault upon his first literary efforts,—–­all links in that chain of trials, errors, and sufferings, by which his great mind was gradually and painfully drawn out;—­all bearing their respective shares in accomplishing that destiny which seems to have decreed that the triumphal march of his genius should be over the waste and ruins of his heart.  He appeared, indeed, himself to have had an instinctive consciousness that it was out of such ordeals his strength and glory were to arise, as his whole life was passed in courting agitation and difficulties; and whenever the scenes around him were too tame to furnish such excitement, he flew to fancy or memory for ‘thorns’ whereon to ‘lean his breast.’” At the same time, the melancholy with which his heart was filled was soothed and cherished by the associations which every object in Venice inspired.  The prospects of dominion subdued, of a high spirit humbled, of splendour tarnished, of palaces sinking into ruins, was but too faithfully in accordance with the dark and mournful mind which the poet bore within him.  Nor were other motives of a nature wholly different wanting to draw him to Venice.[1] How beautifully has the poet illustrated this preference:—­

  In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,
  And silent rows the songless gondolier;
  Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
  And music meets not always now the ear: 
  Those days are gone—­but Beauty still is here. 
  States fall, hearts fade—­but Nature doth not die,
  Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
  The pleasant place of all festivity,
  The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.

  But unto us she hath a spell beyond
  Her name in story, and her long array
  Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
  Above the dogeless city’s vanish’d sway;
  Ours is a trophy which will not decay
  With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
  And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away—­
  The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er,
  For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

Her desolation:—­

  Statues of glass—­all shiver’d—­the long file
  Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
  But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
  Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
  Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust;
  Have yielded to the stranger:  empty halls,
  Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
  Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
  Have flung a desolate cloud o’er Venice’ lovely walls.

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