Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are forever defaced and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions or to raise what is ignoble and disguise what is discordant in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us.