CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.

19

brethren, in weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." This persecuted man, assisted by two still more obscure companions, Crispus and Gaius, were the architects of an indestructible temple of Corinth.

The Acro-Corinthus is a fortified mountain, commanding the city and plain, encircled by three lines of circumvallation, and stupidly believed by Mussulman soldiers to have been completely impregnable. The site is difficult of access, and the walls not deficient in solidity; but the area is too extensive to be defended against a numerous army and skilful engineers. It has often been surprised and taken : the highest enclosure of the three, included the residence of the commandant, several mosques, water-tanks, magazines, &c.; and here also is a well, perhaps that called in early history the Fountain of Peirene. But all now are prostrate and ruined, along with the pride and the power of the Mussulman in Greece.

"Where is thy grandeur, Corinth! shrunk from sight

Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height:

Thy godlike fanes and palaces! Oh, where
Thy mighty myriads, and majestic fair!
Relentless war has raged around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall."

THE CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.

VENICE.

"Not for a prelate's nor a warrior's glory,

Nor pride of kingly throne:

For God-for God alone,

Were raised these sumptuous shrines, august and hoary.”

MARY HOWITT.

Two churches in Venice, Santa Maria della Salute, and San Giorgio, were erected by the senate, in performance of vows to their tutelary saints, who begged off terrible pestilences with which the city was visited. The latter was designed by Palladio, the former built under the direction of Baldissera Longhena. If gratitude might be measured by magnificence, this votive temple would constitute an exquisite monument to the most beautiful quality of the human heart; but so large a share of selfishness, cowardice, and superstition-so much folly and presumption, in imagining the possibility of compensating or conciliating the Almighty by weak offerings of mortal hands, is associated with such dedications, as to reduce them to the level of a mere compact for mutual benefit. The building of this very interesting church was commenced in 1630, upon the cessation of the plague; and the senate appear to have exhausted their last notions of

20

CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.

extravagance in its completion. A spacious flight of marble steps rises from the surface of the canal, and conducts to the great bronze portal, from which a most sublime spectacle, the interior of the dome, presents itself. The centre of the building is occupied by a spacious octagonal oratory, the dome of which is sustained by eight noble pillars, around which an ambulatory is continued, broken by eight cells, or recesses: of these, seven are converted into chapels, the eighth forms the great entrance. The windows, coupled, are placed in the sides of the upper octagonal lantern, and, from their great height, afford, at all times, a sort of veiled light.

Critics have complained of the sumptuousness that prevails in every part of this costly structure: the exterior they particularly protest against, as being overloaded with ornament; but the interior is unquestionably free from all such impeachment: it is intricate without confusion, wants neither majesty nor grandeur, and is favourable to the expression of richness and splendour. Mr. Forsyth says, "It is magnificent, to be sure, and lofty, and rich; but it runs into too many angles and projections, too many 'coignes of vantage,' both without and within. It issues into a pyramid, from the very basement up to the cupolas; but those cupolas screen each other, and are shored-up with vile inverted consoles."* Had this very elegant scholar, and very generally just critic, directed his entire indignation against the repetition of the cupola alone, he would have made more proselytes than he now can hope for. It is this unsightly introduction which marks the decline of the art. It possesses neither the graces of the gothic nor the simple beauty of the antique. When of very large dimensions, it is majestic; but then it crushes the structure which it adorns! when small, it is a paltry cap, that blends with no other member of the architecture, and rises above the entablature for the express purpose of breaking the harmonious line of the ogee.

The event in which the erection of this gorgeous temple originated, is finely represented in marble, over the grand altar. On the right of a figure of the Blessed Virgin holding an infant Christ in her arms, is Venice supplicating her interference to deliver the people from the ravages of a plague: while on the opposite side, "Plague” is represented flying before an angel with a torch in his hand. The high altar is also adorned with a bronze chandelier, the work of Andrea Alessandro, more than six feet in height, and, next to that at Padua, esteemed the most beautiful design of the class in Italy. Many have even preferred the graceful ornaments of the upper part of Alessandro's design to any part of its Paduan rival.

Upon the demolition of the church of St. Geminian, in 1807, the mausoleum of Sansovino, with his bust by Vittoria, the most celebrated of his pupils, was transferred first to St. Maurice, and afterwards, in 1822, pro tempore, to the chapel of the patriarchal seminary of the Salute, where it was placed behind the benches of the scholars. It is intended to replace this exquiste monument in the restored building, whenever that humble imitation of Sansovino's own great masterpiece shall be completed. The ashes of this eminent artist, who was a wanderer while living, and a fugitive from the sack of Rome, have had no settled resting-place for more than thirty years; and the

• Remarks on Italy, vol. ii. p. 116.