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Updated: May 5, 2025
And it is also strange to think, when wandering along the canals of Bruges, where now the swans glide silently about in the almost stagnant water which laps the basements of the old houses, how in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ships of every nation carried in great bales of merchandise, and that rich traders stored them in warehouses and strong vaults, which are now mere coal-cellars, or the dark and empty haunts of the rats which swarm in the canals.
The spirit of the place requires them, as much as the captives who came in the triumphs, as the Goths and Huns, as the pilgrims of the Mediæval Jubilees, and it subdues them: subdues them, as it subdues with the chemistry of this odd climate of crumble and decay, the new dreadful houses; as it has made, with the marvellous rank Roman vegetation, a sort of Forum or Palatine of the knocked-down modern houses, the empty unfinished basements behind the hoardings under my window.
Since men have come to live so much in cities; since houses and streets and rooms and passages and windows and basements have come to mean more to them than fields and woods, it is essential that "the Old Man covered with a Mantle," the Ancient of Ancients, the Disturber of Rational Dreams, should move into the town, too, and mutter and murmur in its shadows!
Some of them were old and feeble, and others were young men, broken down in the prime of life. Their limbs were shrunken and drawn. They had been digging in the earth, and working on high buildings, and confined in dingy basements, and had done all kinds of hard labor for other men. They had given their lives and strength for others, and this was the end of it to die poor and forsaken.
As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden; whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum, there are only some huge substructures, akin to those of the house of Severus buttresses, lofty arcades, which upheld the palace, vast basements, so to say, where the praetorians were posted and gorged themselves with continual junketings.
The main sanitary sewer was in operation, although many of the laterals leading from houses were clogged with mud and backed-up water. The flood sewers, separate from the sanitary, were almost ready for service. These sewers carry off the rainfall from the gutters, and were needed to remove the water being pumped from basements.
During that first week, offices and classes had been scattered all over the campus, in the Society houses, in the basements of dormitories, the Art Building, the Chemistry Building, the Gymnasium, the basement of the Library, the Observatory, the Stone Hall Botany Laboratories, Billings Hall; all had opened their doors wide.
Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles the water and cools our forehead.
My calculations had furnished me with the exact measurement of gas required to carry my companions and myself to a considerable height. We were to ascend at noon. It was truly a magnificent spectacle, that of the impatient crowd who thronged around the reserved enclosure, inundated the entire square and adjoining streets, and covered the neighbouring houses from the basements to the slated roofs.
That must be an elevated train banging along; here was a park, with men packed on the benches, and newspapers blowing lazily on the paths. And shops in all the basements why had no one ever told her that there were shops in all the basements? And a placid church facade breaking this array of trimmed windows and crowded little enterprises!
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