Though making many slaves, Herself still free,
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite;'
Witness Troy's rival, Candia !2 Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!3
For ye are names no Time nor Tyranny can blight.

XV.

Statues of glass-all shivered-the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;

Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,

for July 27, St. Pantaleon's Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), gives the preference to Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed “eum non amplius esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantalee

The accompanying woodcut is the reproduction of the frontispiece of a black-letter tract, composed by Augustinus de Cremâ, in honour of the "translation" of one of the sainted martyr's arms to Crema, in Lombardy. It was printed at Cremona, in 1493.]

1. Shakespeare is my authority for the word "Ottomite " for Ottoman. "Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites" (see Othello, act ii. sc. 3, line 161).—[MS. D.]

2. ["On 29th September (1669) Candia, and the island of Candia, passed away from Venice, after a defence which had lasted twenty-five years, and was unmatched for bravery in the annals of the Republic."-Venice, an Historical Sketch, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, p. 378.]

["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours. . . . The losses are estimated at 8000 Christians and 30,000 Turks. . . . The chief glory of the victory rests with Sebastian Veniero and the Venetians."-Venice, etc., 1893, p. 368.]

Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must

Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,"
7. H.

Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

XVI.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,

And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,1

Her voice their only ransom from afar :
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car

Of the o'ermastered Victor stops-the reins

Fall from his hands-his idle scimitar

Starts from its belt-he rends his captive's chains,

And bids him thank the Bard for Freedom and his

strains.ii.

XVII.

Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,

Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot

i. And won her hopeless children from afar.-[MS. M., D. erased.] ii. And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains.-[MS. M.] or, And sends him home to bless the poet for his strains.—

[MS. D. erased.]

1. [The story is told in Plutarch's Life of Nicias, cap. xxix. (Plut. Vit., Lipsia, 1813, v. 154). "The dramas of Euripides were so popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who knew portions of them, won the affections of their masters. I cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its trustworthiness . . is much inferior to its pathos and interest."-Grote's History of Greece, 1869, vii. 186.]

Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,

Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot-
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,-most of all,
Albion to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

XVIII.

I loved her from my boyhood-she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,

ii.

Rising like water-columns from the sea-
Of Joy the sojourn, and of Wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,"
Had stamped her image in me, and even so,

i. Thy love of Tasso's verse should cut the knot.—[MS. M.]
- for come it will and shall.—[MS. M., D. erased.]
iii. And Otway's-Radcliffe's-Schiller's-Shakspeare's art.—
[MS. M., D.]

1. [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (Don Juan, Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.]

2. Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The GhostSeer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.

66

[For Venice Preserved, vide ante, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the Mysteries of Udolpho Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, vide ante, stanza i. line '4, note, and Mysteries, etc., London, 1794, 2. 39: The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's