I was curious at first to study the arrangements of houses and streets
in Venice. Here I found that what had once been the palace of a noble,
presented, first, a ground-floor about three feet above the medium
level of the Adriatic, composed of a broad vestibule crossing through
from front to rear, with the inferior apartments on each side; second,
a floor of good apartments, with an open hall in the centre right over
the vestibule--this hall adorned with pictures; third, a similar good
floor, with another hall in the centre, which had been the banqueting
or dining-room, and was now used as the _salle-a-manger_ of the
hotel--and this salle had balconied windows at one end looking out
upon the canal. There was, I suppose, a fourth floor of inferior
rooms, but there I never had occasion to be. Most of the rooms,
looking out at the sides of the building into narrow lanes, were
ill-lighted: only those having windows to the front were light or
cheerful. The walls, staircases, and floors, were all of marble--the
proportions large, and the decorations elegant. The date, 'JAN. 1676,'
appeared over an inner door in the salle.

A side-door in the rear of the house gave me exit for a walk into the
town. I found myself in a paved lane, here called a _calle_, with good
houses on each side. It led me into a wider lane, which had all the
characters of a street, excepting that it was comparatively narrow,
and only traversed by people on foot. Here I found shops of many
kinds, but almost all on a small scale; as also many stalls for the
sale of fruit and other petty articles. Following this way to the
right, I soon came to the outside of the great square, which is the
principal public place in the city. It was but necessary to go through
a wide passage, to find myself in the _Piazza_--that well-known paved
and arcaded quadrangle, which we have seen so often in pictures; the
far extremity being closed by the singular church of St Mark, while