The Bravo A Tale - 1-2 Author:James Fenimore Cooper Volume: 1-2 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1852 Original Publisher: Stringer and Townsend Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / General History / Europe / Italy Literary Criticism / General Travel / Europe / Italy Notes: This is a black and white OCR re... more »print of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. 'T will make me think The world is full of rubs, and that my fortune Runs 'gainst the bias. Richard the Second. Though Venice at that hour was so gay in her squares, the rest of the town was silent as the grave. A city in which the hoof of horse or the rolling of wheels is never heard, necessarily possesses a character of its own; but the peculiar form of the government, and the long training of the people in habits of caution, weighed on the spirits of the gay. There were times and places, it is true, when the buoyancy of youthful blood, and the levity of the thoughtless, found occasion for their display; nor were they rare; but when men found themselves removed from the temptation, and perhaps from the support of society, they appeared to imbibe the character of their sombre city. Such was the state of most of the town, while the scene described in the previous chapter was exhibited in the lively piazza of San Marco. The moon had risen so high that its light fell between the range of walls, here and there touching the surface of the water, to which it imparted a quivering brightness, while the domes and towers rested beneath its light in a solemn but grand repose. Occasionally the front of a palace received the rays on its heavy cornices and labored columns, the gloomy Btillness of the interior of the edifice furnishing, in every such instance, a striking contras...« less