Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese
and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the
flesh-and-blood side of Art,--but look over to Florence and see who lie
in Santa Croce, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!
Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of
St. Mark, and her Casa d' Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; and
Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book,
in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all
that did not make Venice the brain of Italy.
I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of
civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the _jeunesse
doree_ whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous,
splendid, marble-palaced Venice,--something in the higher walks of
literature,--something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I
grant you, Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars
and thinkers and statesmen,--five for every Boston one, as the
population is to ours,--_ten_ to one more properly, in virtue of
centralizing attraction as _the_ alleged metropolis,--and not call our
people provincials, and have to come begging to us to write the lives of
Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur Morris!
----The little gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the
expense of every other place.
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