Stones of Venice

Stones of Venice (Introductory Chapters and Local Indices for the Use of Travellers While Staying in Venice and Verona) [with accents]

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Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9804] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 19, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
STONES OF VENICE
BY JOHN RUSKIN

THE STONES OF VENICE:
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES (PRINTED SEPARATELY) FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.

PREFACE.
This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form, those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of forwardness.
The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index, abridged and corrected.
BRANTWOOD,
_3rd May_, 1879.

CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. The Quarry
II. The Throne
III. Torcello
IV. St. Mark's
V. The Ducal Palace

THE STONES OF VENICE


CHAPTER I
.
[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
THE QUARRY.
SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow.
I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we