not a wheel in Venice save those that steer rudders, or ring bells; but
instead, as you discern in time when the brightness and unfamiliarity of
it all no longer bemuse your eyes, here are long black boats by the
score, at the foot of the steps, all ready to take you and your luggage
anywhere for fifty per cent more than the proper fare. You are in
Venice.

If you go to the National Gallery and look at No. 163 by Canaletto you
will see the first thing that meets the gaze as one emerges upon
fairyland from the Venice terminus: the copper dome of S. Simeon. The
scene was not much different when it was painted, say, _circa_ 1740. The
iron bridge was not yet, and a church stands where the station now is;
but the rest is much the same. And as you wander here and there in this
city, in the days to come, that will be one of your dominating
impressions--how much of the past remains unharmed. Venice is a city of
yesterdays.

One should stay in her midst either long enough really to know something
about her or only for three or four days. In the second case all is
magical and bewildering, and one carries away, for the mind to rejoice
in, no very definite detail, but a vague, confused impression of wonder
and unreality and loveliness. Dickens, in his _Pictures of Italy_, with
sure instinct makes Venice a city of a dream, while all the other towns
which he describes are treated realistically.

But for no matter how short a time one is in Venice, a large proportion
of it should be sacred to idleness. Unless Venice is permitted and
encouraged to invite one's soul to loaf, she is visited in vain.