charming architectural promontory of the Dogana stretches out the
most graceful of arms, balancing in its hand the gilded globe on
which revolves the delightful satirical figure of a little
weathercock of a woman. This Fortune, this Navigation, or
whatever she is called--she surely needs no name--catches the
wind in the bit of drapery of which she has divested her rotary
bronze loveliness. On the other side of the Canal twinkles and
glitters the long row of the happy palaces which are mainly
expensive hotels. There is a little of everything everywhere, in
the bright Venetian air, but to these houses belongs especially
the appearance of sitting, across the water, at the receipt of
custom, of watching in their hypocritical loveliness for the
stranger and the victim. I call them happy, because even their
sordid uses and their vulgar signs melt somehow, with their vague
sea-stained pinks and drabs, into that strange gaiety of light
and colour which is made up of the reflection of superannuated
things. The atmosphere plays over them like a laugh, they are of
the essence of the sad old joke. They are almost as charming from
other places as they are from their own balconies, and share
fully in that universal privilege of Venetian objects which
consists of being both the picture and the point of view.

This double character, which is particularly strong in the Grand
Canal, adds a difficulty to any control of one's notes. The Grand
Canal may be practically, as in impression, the cushioned balcony
of a high and well-loved palace--the memory of irresistible
evenings, of the sociable elbow, of endless lingering and
looking; or it may evoke the restlessness of a fresh curiosity,
of methodical inquiry, in a gondola piled with references. There
are no references, I ought to mention, in the present remarks,