* * * * *




NOTES OF A READER.


PICTURE OF VENICE.

(_From Contarini Fleming, a Psychological Autobiography_.)


An hour before sunset, I arrived at Fusina, and beheld, four or five miles
out at sea, the towers and cupolas of Venice suffused with a rich golden
light, and rising out of the bright blue waters. Not an exclamation
escaped me. I felt like a man, who has achieved a great object. I was full
of calm exultation, but the strange incident of the morning made me
serious and pensive.

As our gondolas glided over the great Lagune, the excitement of the
spectacle reanimated me. The buildings, that I had so fondly studied in
books and pictures, rose up before me. I knew them all; I required no
Cicerone. One by one, I caught the hooded Cupolas of St. Mark, the tall
Campanile red in the sun, the Moresco Palace of the Doges, the deadly
Bridge of Sighs, and the dark structure to which it leads. Here my gondola
quitted the Lagune, and, turning up a small canal, and passing under a
bridge which connected the quays, stopped at the steps of a palace.

I ascended a staircase of marble, I passed through a gallery crowded with