A better station." So o'er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. I was about to speak, when--"We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row. "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile,-- A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,-- We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled In strong and black relief--"What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"-- Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour, Those who may cross the water hear that bell, Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers." It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in "Julian and Maddalo":-- Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song. Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here "Prometheus Unbound" was begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice--only in time, however, for the child to die.