Saturday, September 15, 2012

More from John Ruskin


More prose from John Ruskin. This is from Volume II of The Stones of Venice, where he leaves discussion of the science of architecture behind to paint a word picture of the city. I allowed the sensations to take over and ignored his word brush stroke technique:

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.

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