like them in the world, and the long succession of their faded,
conscious faces makes of the quiet waterway they overhang a
promenade historique of which the lesson, however often we
read it, gives, in the depth of its interest, an incomparable
dignity to Venice. We read it in the Romanesque arches, crooked
to-day in their very curves, of the early middle-age, in the
exquisite individual Gothic of the splendid time, and in the
cornices and columns of a decadence almost as proud. These things
at present are almost equally touching in their good faith; they
have each in their degree so effectually parted with their pride.
They have lived on as they could and lasted as they might, and we
hold them to no account of their infirmities, for even those of
them whose blank eyes to-day meet criticism with most submission
are far less vulgar than the uses we have mainly managed to put
them to. We have botched them and patched them and covered them
with sordid signs; we have restored and improved them with a
merciless taste, and the best of them we have made over to the
pedlars. Some of the most striking objects in the finest vistas
at present are the huge advertisements of the curiosity-shops.

The antiquity-mongers in Venice have all the courage of their
opinion, and it is easy to see how well they know they can
confound you with an unanswerable question. What is the whole
place but a curiosity-shop, and what are you here for yourself
but to pick up odds and ends? "We pick them up for you,"
say these honest Jews, whose prices are marked in dollars, "and
who shall blame us if, the flowers being pretty well plucked, we
add an artificial rose or two to the composition of the bouquet?"
They take care, in a word, that there be plenty of relics, and
their establishments are huge and active. They administer the