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Updated: June 1, 2025
In the spring, two years after my visit to Malamocco, we people in Casa Falier made a long-intended expedition to the island of Torcello, which is perhaps the most interesting of the islands of the lagoons.
In the thirteenth century the debris of the river that emptied into the lagoon there began to choke up the wholesome salt canals, and to poison the air with swampy malaria; and in the seventeenth century the city had so dwindled that the Venetian podesta removed his residence from the depopulated island to Burano, though the bishopric established immediately after the settlement of the refugees at Torcello continued there till 1814, to the satisfaction, no doubt, of the frogs and mosquitoes that had long inherited the former citizens.
Primitive hinges were sometimes sockets cut in stone, as at Torcello; but soon this was proved a clumsy and inconvenient method of hanging a door, and hinges more simple in one way, and yet more ornate, came into fashion.
With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped upon her fields, Italy still laughed; and when the voice of conscience sounding through Savonarola asked her why, she only smiled Sic Genius. One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello, and at sunset broke bread and drank wine together among the rank grasses just outside that ancient church.
The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a tea-picnic at Torcello.
The vigorous climb the campanile, from which, as Signor Rooskin says, may be seen Torcello and Venice "Mother and Daughter ... in their widowhood." Looking down, it is strange indeed to think that here once were populous streets. On the way to the campanile do not forget to notice the great stone shutters of the windows of the cathedral; which suggest a security impossible to be conveyed by iron.
The return to Venice in the sunset is classical and indispensable, and those who at that glowing hour have floated toward the towers that rise out of the lagoon will not easily part with the impression. But you indulge in larger excursions you go to Burano and Torcello, to Malamocco and Chioggia.
Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear.
The late tribunitial ministry has transmitted to us as its monument little beyond the disclosure of a chronic disposition to tyranny and periodical fluctuations of preponderance. The so-called chair of Attila at Torcello is supposed to have been the seat where the officer presiding over that district long held his court sub dio.
The place lent itself to irony; parties of Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone, and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger drank his wine in Attila's chair, and nature's jester smiled Sic Genius.
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