68

which he keeps letters of Pomp Giganti, a small the Giant Tita Romano. The fi In the garden ar ter, containing a from the Birth to Romano's pupils

"The charm o pends on the coff which display combined with but they will n from the reproac the tamest comi sign."

At the Scuole founded by Ma volumes, and 1,0 the Hecuba, and of Trajan and dence of Voltai library possesse elucidate the lit tury.

A little way agreeably to a his Purgatory, Virgil's birthpla Mantuan dukes, spot. Hither th refuge after the General Miolles Apollo, improvi taking the place At Curtaton Mincio, on the feated the Tusc Charles Albert. 1,316 soldiers of of the newly-rai

to

the Pisa Univers sources, to the command of Ge montese officers Austrian troops villages of Mont tant from each o the devoted littl force opposed Piedmontese gained the objec of the Austrians montese to win day." The loss but they had dor proved they con fe

su

of those who Santa Croce. and a third, Mo

wounded, afterw

of the Grand Duke's ministers."-T.A. TROLLOPE'S

Tuscany in 1849 and 1859.

been written in four great quartos, by a native

author, P. Affo. Guastalla, now finally annexed

Grand Hotel de l'Europe, on the Grand Canal. Grand Hotel d'Italie and Hotel Bauer, with a large terrace, on the Grand Canal.

Hotel de Rome and Pension Suisse, advantageously situated on the Grand Canal.

Hotel Beau Rivage, facing the Lagunes. Hotel d'Angleterre, Quai des Escalrons. Hotel Britannia, first-class hotel, with excellent accommodation.

Grand Hotel Vittoria; Hotel Luna.

Boarding House, 1159, Calle del Luganeglier. Cafés: Florian and Suttil. English and French papers. Restaurant Francais, over the Café Militaire, Piazza San Marco. Fish here in great variety. Bauer-Grünwald.

Resident English Consul and American Consul. Church of England Service.-Every Sunday forenoon at eleven, at the residence of the chaplain, Palazzo Contarini Scrigni.

Presbyterian Service.-Next door to the American Consulate.

Reading Room.-Piazza St. Marco, in the Procuratie Vecchie, English and other newspapers by the week or month.

Conveyances.-Railway, to Udine and Nabresina (for Vienna and Trieste); to Verona and Milan.

On arrival at Venice there is often confusion. When you alight from the train call out the name of your hotel, and the porter belonging to it will engage a gondola and see to your baggage. Or, proceed to the canal, which is at the front of the station,

engage a gondola, return for your baggage, with a porter, to whom point out your gondola; 5 cents per package is expected as his fee. On leaving Venice (which is called a free port), all baggage is subject to be examined at the station before it is allowed to pass. A fee equal to the number of packages, say from 1 to 2 lire, will save a great deal of annoyance and time.

There are upwards of 4,000 gondolas at Venice. Gondolas, with one boatman, 1 lira the first hour, and 50 cents. for each successive hour; Omnibus gondolas, 25 cents.; ferry across Grand Canal, 6 cents. The gondolas at the railway terminus, one boatman, 2 lire (without luggage, 1 lira), two boatmen, 3 lira; these men load your baggage in the gondola, and deliver it at the door of your apartment, at the hotel. A good gondolier serves as valet de place. The tide rises two or three feet, but the port is gradually drying up.

Steamers to the station; and to Trieste, Ancona, Chioggia; office at the Piazzetta. The P. & O. Company run mail boats from here to Ancona and Brindisi, in connection with the Overland Route.

Post and Telegraph Offices on Piazza St. Marco. Bankers.-Blumenthal and Co., Traghetto.

Theatres. All near St. Mark's and the Rialto. Fenice, or Phoenix; Rossini, or Gallo; Apollo, near S. Luca's; Malibran, near S. Gian Grisostomo. Chemist.-Gampironi. The Capuchins of the Redemption distil a fine liquor, called acqua di melissa.

The

The climate is healthy, though moist. marsh exhalations create an atmosphere favourable to pulmonary complaints, scrofula, rickets, &c., for which sea-bathing is an excellent antidote. Venice is not a pleasant place when the rain comes down, or storms move the Adriatic. Then boats ply in St. Mark's and one may even get jammed in them under a bridge. At the fall of the year smells and mosquitoes abound, and cold winds blow from the Alps. Hartshorn or carbolic acid is an antidote for the "crawling animals, skipping animals, humming and flying animals, which then (says Thackeray) all have at the traveller at once."

*Chief Objects of Notice.-Architecture, by the Lombardi, Sanmicheli, Falconetto, Sansovino, Palladio; besides Byzantine artists of an early date. Piazza of St. Mark, Cathedral, Palace, Bridge of Sighs, Campanile, Academy, Scalzi Church, Rialto, Madonna del Orto, S. Salvatore, S. Giorgio Maggiore (Palladio), Redentore Church, S. Sebastiano, S. Stefano, Frari, Scuola, S. Rocco, S. Zanipolo, S. Zaccaria, Arsenal, Salute Church, Fenice Theatre, S. Maria Formosa, Cà d'Oro, S. Trovaso Church, S. Francesa della Vigna (Palladio), Gesuiti Church, and Murano Glass Works.

Paintings by Mantegna. G. Bellini, Vivarini, Palma Vecchio, Titian (the Assumption), Pordenone, Bordone, Bassano, Del Piombo, Tintoretto, P. Veronese, Palma Giovane, Padovanino, S. Ricci, and Canaletto.

Sculpture by the Lombardi. Sansovino, and Canova, who was born and died in Venetian territory. Old furniture and canalettos are two branches of manufacture carried on here.

Venice is outside the lagoon, at the mouth of the Brenta, which, at high water, is a lake of some few feet depth; but at low water (the fall being about 2 feet) offers only a number of banks of sand and weed, in the middle of which are the streets, or canals, practicable for small boats or gondolas only. This lagoon, 5 miles long and 1 to 2 broad, is shut in from the sea by a tongue of land called the Lido, which has three fortified entrances.

About 150 Canals cut up the city into seventy or eighty little islands. The largest, called Canale Grande, and crossed by the Rialto Bridge, winds through the city in the form of an S. Another,

called Canale Giudecca, divides the city from the suburbs of Guidecca Island. Near the north end of the Canale Grande is a small branch, called Cannareggio, leading towards Mestre. The smaller canals are joined together by upwards of 300 short Bridges, to facilitate the communication. The houses are founded on millions of piles, their front or back being turned to a canal. Each door has a flight of steps to the water, and the gondolas are moored to the carved and painted side posts. Drinking water is got from 180 public cisterns, supplied from the mainland by pipes laid along the railway, or from artesian wells, sunk in 1847. Venice comprises six sestieri, or administrative divisions, and has forty-one open places, of which S. Marco, or St. Mark, is the finest; twenty-nine parish churches, besides the patriarchal church, the churches of the Greeks, Armenians, and Protestants, and seven synagogues.

It has lost the glory and commercial importance it enjoyed in past times, when it boasted of twentyfour ships of the line and 200 armed galleys. It had a Bank (so called) as early as 1157. During 1815-17, upwards of seventy old palaces had been demolished by their owners, and many are still deserted, or converted into hotels and warehouses. Books are printed here. It is a free port (so-called) since 1829, but its harbour is gradually filling up.

The last scene in its fall is described in Daru's Histoire. Out of 537 patricians, only 200 at most refused to vote for the Treaty of May, 1797, which transferred the Venetian territory to Austria. The Doge's sword was received by an apothecary, who bore the historical name of Dandolo. The Golden Book and the Ducal ensigns were burnt, and as the French marched out the Austrians marched in.

The latest important event in its history was the revolution of 1848, when the Austrian garrison was driven out, and the Republic of St. Mark proclaimed under Manin and Tommasco. On the defeat of Charles Albert, it was attacked by Radetzky and Haynau, and Venice once more came under the iron rule of Austria. But now a better state of things prevails; and here the King of Italy and

Austrian Emperor met as friends on the 5th

of April, 1873. A statue of Manin stands in Campo di S. Paterniano.

To the traveller who sees it for the first time, Venice presents a curious spectacle, with its marble palaces, buildings, and spires rising out of the water. It was begun in this manner when the ravages of Alaric and Attila (407-52) made the people fly from Aquileia, Padua, &c., on the mainland (which was called Venetia), and settle here, round a church built on the rivo alto, or Rialto. There are a few narrow quays and dry alleys between tall dark houses, where you may walk on foot, and where shops for meat, vegetables, jewellery, &c., are found, but they are not suitable for carriages and horses, which, being useless here, are never seen. Their place is supplied by the Gondola, a gloomy-looking, high-prowed boat, shaped something like the lord mayor's barge. The word is of doubtful origin. It is first mentioned at Avignon, 12th century, and at Venice, in the Cronico di Altino, 1200.

The favourite colour of the gondola is sable. It is a

"long covered boat that's common here,

Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly,
Rowed by two rowers, each called gondolier.

It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,

Where none can make out what you say or do."-Byron. Some are used as floating shops, and even the beggars go about in gondolas. Gondoliers (called barcaroli) are found at several points, or traghetti, where the traffic is greatest. Though useful, and at times necessary, to reach certain quarters, and obtain good points of view, yet, the canals being bridged, every part of the city may be reached on foot, though footways are not to be found on the sides of all the canals. A steam gondola runs to the station.

In spite of its aquatic advantages, and the cheap convenience of its gondolas, the visitor, "accustomed to expatiate on terra firma," may soon grow impatient of the "moated imprisonment of a town where one's walks are incessantly crossed by a canal, and the thread of talk or thinking is cut at the steep steps of a bridge."-LORD BROUGHTON'S Italy.

CANALE GRANDE, or GRAND CANAL. Itinerary of objects to be noticed in going from the quay of St. Mark's to the railway station, 3 miles long, by gondola. The palaces marked * are in the pointed or Gothic style. The style of the Lombardi school is marked by richness and elegance. The palaces stand on massive stone basements of a simple uniform character, rising out of the sea, "but above the water they are as various as their architects. Some display the light elegance of Sansovino, others the exuberant ornament of Longhena, and a few the correct beauty of Palladio."-Forsyth. Most of them have two or three gates, with steps to the water, in the middle of their fronts, over which are finely decorated balconies and arcades, and the windows are generally arched, either Gothic pointed, or circular.

"Whilst other Italian cities have each ten or twelve prominent structures on which their claim to architectural fame is based, Venice numbers her specimens by hundreds, and the residence of the simple citizen is often as artistic as the palace of the proudest noble. No other city possesses such a school of architectural art as applied to domestic purposes; and if we look for types from which to originate a style suitable to our modern wants, it is among the Venetian examples of the early part of the sixteenth century."-Fergusson. The churches are profusely ornamented with marble, porphyry, alabaster, agate, jasper, mosaics, &c., more remarkable for richness than good taste.

"Canaletto and Stanfield are miraculous in their truth; Turner is very noble; but the reality itself is beyond all description of pen or pencil. I never saw the thing before that I should be afraid to describe; but to tell what Venice is I feel to be an impossibility."-Dickens, 1844.

The canals are "water streets" without footways on the sides. "You may (says Lord Broughton) from the back of most houses, and sometimes from the front, step from the hall door into your boat at once, and may row through the city almost the whole day without suspecting there are any streets in it; or you may wander through innumerable lanes and narrow alleys, like those of