place seems to personify itself, to become human and sentient and
conscious of your affection. You desire to embrace it, to caress
it, to possess it; and finally a soft sense of possession grows
up and your visit becomes a perpetual love-affair. It is very
true that if you go, as the author of these lines on a certain
occasion went, about the middle of March, a certain amount of
disappointment is possible. He had paid no visit for several
years, and in the interval the beautiful and helpless city had
suffered an increase of injury. The barbarians are in full
possession and you tremble for what they may do. You are reminded
from the moment of your arrival that Venice scarcely exists any
more as a city at all; that she exists only as a battered peep-
show and bazaar. There was a horde of savage Germans encamped in
the Piazza, and they filled the Ducal Palace and the Academy with
their uproar. The English and Americans came a little later. They
came in good time, with a great many French, who were discreet
enough to make very long repasts at the Caffe Quadri, during
which they were out of the way. The months of April and May of
the year 1881 were not, as a general thing, a favourable season
for visiting the Ducal Palace and the Academy. The valet-de-
place had marked them for his own and held triumphant
possession of them. He celebrates his triumphs in a terrible
brassy voice, which resounds all over the place, and has,
whatever language he be speaking, the accent of some other idiom.
During all the spring months in Venice these gentry abound in the
great resorts, and they lead their helpless captives through
churches and galleries in dense irresponsible groups. They infest
the Piazza; they pursue you along the Riva; they hang about the
bridges and the doors of the cafes. In saying just now that I was
disappointed at first, I had chiefly in mind the impression that