THE SPELL OF VENICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19974, 16 June 1928, Page 20

THE SPELL OF VENICE.

A series of travel talks is being given at the meetings of tho League of New Zealand Penwomen, and yesterday afternoon the speaker was Mrs. Isobel Maud Ciuett. Mrs. Stuart Boyd was in the chair. " Venice, Ancient and Modern," was the subject chosen by Mrs. Ciuett, and most interestingly she spoke of that city whose name alone spells romance, and .whose stormy history is almost unrivalled in tho world. From tho time when it was nothing but a collection of fishermen's huts, many centuries ago, up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when its great arts were rivalled only by Florence, she lightly sketched its history and told much of its romance. The Venice pi to-day sho described as being only a shadow of the great andt wonderful city it had been when it was known throughout the world as the queen of the Adriatic. Like a beautiful woman it had grown old and worn, but even though it had reached the twilight, of its magnificence it still had tho power to fascinate and inspire. The gondolier of Venice to-day was no longer a picturesque personage, nor was the gondola the thing ol! beauty that it had once been. The peace, the quietude that pervaded the city, however, was one *>f its great charms and everywhere, from palaces and churches and great public buildings, was felt the spell of a magnificent past. Mrs. Ciuett described the interiors of some of the great churches sho had seen, with their marvellous frescoes, their paintings and sculpture, their mosaics and wonderful vessels of gold and silver. She described also tho Doges' Palace, and spoke of the dungeons below it, in -which prisoners had vanished from tho world forever. Tho industries of Venice, the shops in the great square of : ®t. Mark's, the wonderful fabrics, the iajnous Venetian glass and many other -were touched upon and incidents 8 -vising and otherwise related.