more dust than is necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever
go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their
Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet,
their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old "Coryat's Crudities,"
and be thankful I spared them mine.

It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging
in the blue. I wished with all my heart that it were a little
matter of seven or eight hundred years earlier in the world's
history, for then the people would have been keeping vigil and
making ready for that nuptial ceremony of Ascension-tide when the
Doge married Venice to the sea. Why can we not make pictures
nowadays, as well as paint them? We are banishing colour as fast
as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black
and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother
Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes on painting her
reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavish hand, we
should have a sad and discreet universe indeed.

But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it
not fortunate that the great ones of the olden time have been
eternally fixed on the pages of the world's history, there to glow
and charm and burn for ever and a day? To be able to recall those
scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that one lives through them
again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being
picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to
behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can
imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San
Marco in my gondola.