Francesco Dall' Ongaro was born in 1808, at an obscure hamlet in
the district of Oderzo in the Friuli, of parents who were small
freeholders. They removed with their son in his tenth year to Venice,
and there he began his education for the Church in the Seminary of the
Madonna della Salute. The tourist who desires to see the Titians and
Tintorettos in the sacristy of this superb church, or to wonder at the
cold splendors of the interior of the temple, is sometimes obliged to
seek admittance through the seminary; and it has doubtless happened to
more than one of my readers to behold many little sedate old men in
their teens, lounging up and down the cool, humid courts there, and
trailing their black priestly robes over the springing mold. The sun
seldom strikes into that sad close, and when the boys form into long
files, two by two, and march out for recreation, they have a torpid
and melancholy aspect, upon which the daylight seems to smile in vain.
They march solemnly up the long Zattere, with a pale young father
at their head, and then march solemnly back again, sweet, genteel,
pathetic specters of childhood, and reenter their common tomb,
doubtless unenvied by the hungriest and raggedest street boy, who asks
charity of them as they pass, and hoarsely whispers "Raven!" when
their leader is beyond hearing.
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