There is something strange and fascinating in this mysterious
impersonality of the gondola. It has an identity when you are in
it, but, thanks to their all being of the same size, shape and
colour, and of the same deportment and gait, it has none, or as
little as possible, as you see it pass before you. From my
windows on the Riva there was always the same silhouette--the
long, black, slender skiff, lifting its head and throwing it back
a little, moving yet seeming not to move, with the grotesquely-
graceful figure on the poop. This figure inclines, as may be,
more to the graceful or to the grotesque--standing in the "second
position" of the dancing-master, but indulging from the waist
upward in a freedom of movement which that functionary would
deprecate. One may say as a general thing that there is something
rather awkward in the movement even of the most graceful
gondolier, and something graceful in the movement of the most
awkward. In the graceful men of course the grace predominates,
and nothing can be finer than the large, firm way in which, from
their point of vantage, they throw themselves over their
tremendous oar. It has the boldness of a plunging bird and the
regularity of a pendulum. Sometimes, as you see this movement in
profile, in a gondola that passes you--see, as you recline on
your own low cushions, the arching body of the gondolier lifted
up against the sky--it has a kind of nobleness which suggests an
image on a Greek frieze. The gondolier at Venice is your very
good friend--if you choose him happily--and on the quality of
the personage depends a good deal that of your impressions. He is
a part of your daily life, your double, your shadow, your
complement. Most people, I think, either like their gondolier or
hate him; and if they like him, like him very much. In this case
they take an interest in him after his departure; wish him to be