Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/167

Rh world was immersed in gloom. Their increase and their wealth were a necessary consequence. New dwellings arose close against dwellings; rocks took the place of sand and marsh; houses sought the sky, being forced, like trees enclosed in a narrow compass, to seek in height what they were denied in breadth. Being niggards of every inch of ground, as having been from the very first compressed into a narrow compass, they allowed no more room for the streets than was just necessary to separate a row of houses from the one opposite, and to afford the citizens a narrow passage. Moreover, water supplied the place of street, square, and promenade. The Venetian was forced to become a new creature; and thus Venice can only be compared with itself. The large canal, winding like a serpent, yields to no street in the world; and nothing can be put by the side of the space in front of St. Mark's Square—I mean that great mirror of water, which is encompassed by Venice proper, in the form of a crescent. Across the watery surface, you see to the left the island of St. Giorgio Maggiore; to the right, a little farther off, the Guidecca and its canal, and, still more distant, the Dogana (custom-house) and the entrance into the Canal Grande, where right before us two immense marble temples are glittering in the sunshine. All the views and prospects have been so often engraved, that my friends will have no difficulty in forming a clear idea of them.

After dinner I hastened to fix my first impression of the whole, and without a guide, and merely observing the cardinal points, threw myself into the labyrinth of the city, which, though everywhere intersected by larger or smaller canals, is again connected by bridges. The narrow and crowded appearance of the whole cannot be conceived by one who has not seen it. In most cases one can quite or nearly measure the breadth of the street by stretching out one's arms; and, in the