his ship, and partook of his profuse elegant refreshments; but he
followed us after dinner to the house of our English friends, and took
six of us together in a gay bark, adorned with his arms, and rowed by
eight gondoliers in superb liveries, made up for the occasion to match
the boat, which was like them white, blue and silver, a flag of the same
colours flying from the stern, till we arrived at the Corso; so they
call the place of contention where the rowers exert their skill and
ingenuity; and numberless oars dashing the waves at once, make the only
agitation of which the sea seems capable; while ladies, now no longer
dressed in black, but ornamented with all their jewels, flowers, &c.
display their beauties unveiled upon the water; and covering the lagoons
with gaiety and splendour, bring to one's mind the games in Virgil, and
the galley of Cleopatra, by turns.

Never was locality so subservient to the purposes of pleasure as in this
city; where pleasure has set up her airy standard, and which on this
occasion looked like what one reads in poetry of Amphitrite's court; and
I ventured to tell a nobleman who was kindly attentive in shewing us
every possible politeness, that had Venus risen from the Adriatic sea,
she would scarcely have been tempted to quit it for Olympus. I was upon
the whole more struck with the evening's gaiety, than with the
magnificence in which the morning began to shine. The truth is, we had
been long prepared for seeing the Bucentoro; had heard and read every
thing I fancy that could have been thought or said upon the subject,
from the sullen Englishmen who rank it with a company's barge floating
up the Thames upon my Lord Mayor's day, to the old writers who compare
it with Theseus's ship; in imitation of which, it is said, this calls
itself the very identical vessel wherein Pope Alexander performed the
original ceremony in the year 1171; and though, perhaps, not a whole
plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often