They, at least, are
little to be envied in whose hearts the great charities of the
imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
importunity of painful impressions or to raise what is ignoble and
disguise what is discordant in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there
must be no permission during the task which is before us.
The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this
century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those mightier
ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be
torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they
stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they
are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of
discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The
Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere
efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight
must dissipate into dust.
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