for. So is it almost always in life. Fields of anticipated richness yield no harvest of thought adequate to our expectations; while unlikely places, chancevisited, are remembered ever after for the fruit they yielded.

Our road, after Padua, followed the canal of the Brenta, till at last Venice broke upon the view; Venice, with all her history upon her, all her crime and all her glory, all that whole volume of thought which rushes upon the mind when the word "Venice" is pronounced. And how is it to be described? What words can I use to express that vision, that thing of magic which lay before us? All nature seemed in harmony with our natural meditations. Never was there so wan a sun-light, never was there so pale a blue, as stood round about Venice that day. And there it was, a most visionary city, rising as if by enchantment out of the gentle-mannered Adriatic, the waveless Adriatic. One by one rose steeple, tower, and dome, street and marble palace. They rose to our eyes slowly, as from the weedy deeps; and then they and their images wavered and floated, like a dream, upon the pale, sunny sea. As we glided onward from Fusina in our gondola, the beautiful buildings, with their strange eastern architecture, seemed, like fairy ships, to totter, to steady themselves and come to anchor one by one; and where the shadow was, and where the palace was, you scarce could tell. And there was San Marco, and there the Ducal Palace, and there the Bridge of

Sighs, and the very shades of the Balbi, Foscari, Pisani, Bembi, seemed to hover about the Winged Lion of St. Mark. And all this, all, to the right and left, all was Venice; and it needed the sharp grating of the gondola against the stair to bid us be sure it was not all a dream.

We spent the evening in a gondola, shooting over the blue canals of this enchanted city. It was a mazy dream of marble palaces, old names, fair churches, strange costumes; while the canals were like the silver threads, the bright unities, of one of sleep's well-woven visions. We seemed to be actors for a night in some Arabian tale. The evening left no distinct remembrances. The pleasure of the excitement absorbed everything.

However, we awakened the next morning, and found it was not all a dream. Venice was still there, and the shadows of her palaces were heaving on the water. The sea was no longer the blue of Genoa, but a delicate pale green, like the back of a lizard; and the sky was cloudless, yet a pearly white; and the transparent sea-haze which hung over the city seemed to float like a veil. It looked more wonderful, more dream-like than ever. I was struck on land with the strange coloring of the scenery of Provence the barren white hills, the dull blue grey of the olives, the white and deep rose-red of the almond blossoms mingled together in an indescribable way. What Provence in early spring is for country coloring, Venice is for city and for sea. It

brought Canaletti's pictures strongly to mind; yet not even those convey the colors as they really are, a white, blue, green, and red, utterly unlike any other white, blue, green, and red I ever saw in nature or in art. Yet who is there that has ever been at Venice, but will confess that the memories of that fair city refuse to blend with any others in his mind? They demand a temple to be built for themselves. They will be enshrined apart from the recollections of all other places. And willingly is this conceded to thee, thou glittering vision. It is long, long before the glory of wonder and delight wears off from the memory of the bewildering thing thou art, sitting in the white sunshine by the sea!

Our very room at Venice is affectionately remembered. The house had probably been the palace of an old Venetian noble. The apartment in which we lived was hung with embroidered silk, much faded and tarnished; and the ceiling was painted with the exploits of some general or admiral, probably one of the owners of the palace, in the Turkish wars; and the coat of arms, which he is holding in his hand, is repeated in the cornice at both ends of the room. Beyond the windows, a covered balcony, also with windows, hung over the quay, and afforded an exquisite view. It was close to the Doge's palace, and faced towards the sea, and consequently the greater part of the terra firma of Venice was at our command; and we could pace about the Piazza di San Marco, thinking of Shylock or Othello, or lost

in admiration of an architectural group, which is beyond all description.

The palace of the Doges, that view of it, at least, which we have from the sea, is known to almost every English eye, from the number of engravings which there are of it. It is a strange building, with its multitudinous little marble columns and grotesque windows, and the Giant Staircase, all-glorious, of the purest marble of Carrara, carved and chiselled into ornaments of the most beautiful minuteness. A splendid place, indeed, it is; yet, while my eye wandered in a few minutes over the gorgeous part of the structure, they were riveted for long with undiminished interest upon the little round holes, close to the level of the sullen canal beneath the Bridge of Sighs: holes which marked the passages to the Pozzi, or Wells, that is, the dungeons beneath the level of the canal. There for years were the victims of this wicked merchant-republic confined. They are five paces long, two and a half wide, and seven feet high. They have holes into the passages, through which enough damp air found access to keep the prisoner alive, and through which also his food was thrust. One man, whom the French found there, had been confined sixteen years. Really, when we consider that in many cases the prisoner was secretly denounced, never knew his crime, or was confronted with his accuser, the thought becomes insupportable. We know, from our own English experience, how much prouder, meaner, and more

insolent towards inferiors an aristocracy of wealth is than an aristocracy of blood; and it is not strange that a merchant-republic should have exceeded in diabolical cruelty all the old European monarchies, bad, atrociously bad, as they were. Let the Rath

haus of gloomy Ratisbon, and the corpse-laden waters of the midnight Danube, testify to that. But Venice has been scarcely outdone by the sultan himself, and the scenes in the dungeons of the beautiful seraglio, and the horrid secrets committed to the reluctant keeping of the Bosphorus.

Let a man stand upon the low bridge close to the Ducal Palace; let him look up to the Bridge of Sighs which hangs above him, then down to the taciturn canal, then to those round holes upon its level; and upward again to the bleached leads of the palace roof, beneath which were those infernal dungeons called the Piombi, close under the leads, and the heat of which in summer was so appalling, so excruciating, as almost to cause madness, and to make the holes beneath the canal very dwellings of delight. Let him then look round on the gay, green Adriatic, the various costumes upon the quay, the cries of mariners, the gesticulations of the improvisatore, the violins, organs, punchinello, pyramids of oranges and other fruits, men sleeping on mats upon the stones, a most pictorial and merry confusion. Let him look at the tall, bright Campanile of St. Mark, the arches and pillars of the palace, the two columns; and then let him think of a poor wretch,