They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and
strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be
the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the
great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be
remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which
no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence
and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the
setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper
currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again
have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten
their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian
architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an
ordinary seaport. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the
Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome,
and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only
a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water access to the
doors of the palaces would have been impossible; even as it is, there is
sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting
foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes
enter the court-yards, and overflow the entrance halls.
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