TYRE. VENICE, ENGLAND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XV, 14 April 1900, Page 708

TYRE. VENICE, ENGLAND.

mi: rfskin's word of wvrnI NG. I’liere was an interesting echo of huslvn in Lord Roseberv's peroration at Chatham the other day. Referring to the fact that the ' Mayor of that, town wears on his neck the chain ami badge of the Doge of Venice, Lord Roseberry asked Ids hearers to remember that "this symbol once adorned the chief of a Slate which was scarcely less great than our own, not less commercial, not less naval, not less predominant. ami which faded away like an empty dream because its rulers took no thought for the future, and did am live abreast oi the limes." To many readers Lord Rosebery's words must have recalled the striking' and beautiful passage with which "The Stones of Venice” < Ia ns, and which we must, give ourselves the pleasure of citing here: Since first, the dominion of man was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of lyre. ten ice. and England. <ll the First of these great powers <nly the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin: the Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eniim'nce to less pitted desI ruct ion. Ihe exaltation, the sin. tint] the punishment of lyre have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching wilds ever uttered by the iTopliets of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a loiely .-ong; and close* our cars to the sternness of their warning; lor lhe very depth of the Fall of lyre has blinded us to its reality, and wo forget, as we watch the bleaching it the rocks between the sunshine ami the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God.” Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline; a ghost upon the snnds of the sea. so weak, .so quiet, so la-reft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City and which the Shadow.

1 would endeavour to trace the lines if this mirage before it be* for ever lost, and to record, as far as 1 may, lhe warning*, which seems to me to l>e uttered by every one of the fastgaining wave*, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE. Let us hope that the Parliament of England will in this hour of test rind trial comport itself as in its best days did the Parliament of Venice: ’’Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable—every word a fate —sate her Senate: a world from which all petty thoughts were banished.”