It was ten years earlier, in 1744, that the Ridotto, or great public gaming-house, was closed in Venice by order of the Great Council, and the Venetians, their chief occupation gone, were reduced to melancholy peregrination of the Piazza. “They have all become hypochondriacs,” writes Madame Sara Gondar. “The Jews are as yellow as melons; the mask-sellers are dying of starvation; and wrinkles are growing on the hands of many a poor old nobleman who has been in the habit of dealing cards ten hours a day. Vice is absolutely necessary to the activity of a state.” This then is the Venice against which Goldoni stands out; and after all, the essential difference between the world reflected in his comedies and that world of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio, which was Colleoni’s world, is a difference of horizon. There is an epic grandeur about Carpaccio’s world: heroes stride across it, with lesser men and lesser interests in their train. The small affairs of life are not neglected. There is the Company of the Stocking, who discuss their peculiar device and the articles of their order with the grave elaboration of State councillors. Venice was always interested in matters of detail. But in Colleoni’s day the same seriousness of purpose was available when larger issues were discerned: in Goldoni’s the power to discern larger issues has disappeared. The Venetians, lords once of the sea, can still take interest in their stockings, but they can take interest in nothing else. The Lilliputians are in possession. Goldoni does not quarrel with his age for not being monumental, and we shall do well to follow his example and make our peace with it. He looks upon the clubs of freemasons, the pedantic literary reformers, the false romanticists, the bourgeois tyrants and masquerading ladies, with a serene and indulgent smile. In his famous literary dispute with Gozzi he maintains before his fiery opponent the calm and level countenance of truth. The battles rage around him, but he stands firm and unassailable, as Colleoni himself may once have stood in the midst of battles how different, waged in how different a world! Chapter Eight VENETIAN WATERWAYS (PART I)