George of the Sea-weed."
As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had
just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-colored line, tufted
irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern
extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids,
balanced on the bright mirage of the Lagoon; two or three smooth surges
of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond
these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the
Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here
and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices,
fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and
breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow,
into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred
clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian
Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the
nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where
it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
gondola drew nearer and nearer.
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