VENICE.

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand;

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of an enchanter's wand.

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

BYRON.

AMID the thousand romantic associations with which Venice teems, there are none possessing a deeper or more engrossing interest than those which fill the heart of the traveller as he steps upon the Ponte dei Sospiri, or " Bridge of Sighs." Connecting the splendours of the ducal palace with the dungeons of the public prison, it recals the memory of those majestic times when Venice sate crowned upon the waters, and when she ruled not only the creatures of her conquests but her own subject-sons with the most despotic sway. Over the " Bridge of Sighs" have passed the thousand victims whom the state-jealousy of the TEN consigned to torture or to death, and whose groans were lost in the dark recesses to which it gave a ready access. The awful secrecy which attended all the political punishments of the Venetians was much assisted by this gloomy communication, which prevented the accused from being subjected at any time to the public gaze. The Bridge of Sighs derives no small additional interest

from its having suggested to Lord Byron the splendid commencement of the fourth canto of Childe Harold; and to the annotations on that poem we are also indebted for an accurate description of this singular structure, and of the dungeons to which it leads.

The Ponte dei Sospiri is a covered bridge or gallery, considerably elevated above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons called pozzi, or wells, were constructed in the thick walls of the palace, and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment or cell upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the prisoner was taken into this cell is now walled up, though the passage still remains open. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deepest of these dungeons. The curious traveller may still, descending through a trapdoor, crawl down through holes half choked with rubbish to the depth of two stories below the first range. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture, and no light was allowed. Upon the walls of many of the cells sentences are still visible which the despair or the devotion of their inmates has dictated.

The author of "Sketches descriptive of Italy" visited

these dungeons, of which he has given some account. Coryate, in his "Crudities," has also described the prison to which "the Bridge of Sighs" leads, of which he appears to have been quite enamoured. "There is near unto the duke's palace a very faire prison, the fairest absolutely that ever I saw, being divided from the palace by a little channel of water, and again joyned unto it by a marvellous faire little gallery, that is inserted aloft into the middest of the palace wall eastward. I think there is not a fairer prison in all Christendome: it is built with very faire white ashler stone, having a little walke without the roomes of the prison, which is forty paces long and seven broad; for I meated it; which walke is fairly vaulted over head, and adorned with seven goodly arches, each whereof is supported with a great square stone pillar. The outside of these pillars is curiously wrought with pointed diamonde work. In the higher part of the front towards the water, there are eight pretty pillars of freestone, betwixt which are seven iron windows for the prisoners above to look through. In the lower part of the prison, where the prisoners do usually remaine, there are six windows, three on each side of the doore; whereof each hath two rowes of great iron barres, one without and the other within; each row containing ten barres, that ascend in height to the toppe of the window, and eighteen more that crosse these tenne: so that it is altogether impossible for the prisoners to get forth. Betwixt the first row of windows in the outside, and another within, there is a little space, or an entry, for people to stand in that will talke with the prisoners who lie within the inner windows that are but single barred. The west side of