a splendid example of the old palatial type. But I can only do so
in passing, with a hundred precautions, and, lifting the curtain
at the edge, drop a commemorative word on the success with which,
in this particularly happy instance, the cosmopolite habit, the
modern sympathy, the intelligent, flexible attitude, the latest
fruit of time, adjust themselves to the great gilded,
relinquished shell and try to fill it out. A Venetian palace that
has not too grossly suffered and that is not overwhelming by its
mass makes almost any life graceful that may be led in it. With
cultivated and generous contemporary ways it reveals a pre-
established harmony. As you live in it day after day its beauty
and its interest sink more deeply into your spirit; it has its
moods and its hours and its mystic voices and its shifting
expressions. If in the absence of its masters you have happened
to have it to yourself for twenty-four hours you will never
forget the charm of its haunted stillness, late on the summer
afternoon for instance, when the call of playing children comes
in behind from the campo, nor the way the old ghosts seemed to
pass on tip-toe on the marble floors. It gives you practically
the essence of the matter that we are considering, for beneath
the high balconies Venice comes and goes, and the particular
stretch you command contains all the characteristics. Everything
has its turn, from the heavy barges of merchandise, pushed by
long poles and the patient shoulder, to the floating pavilions of
the great serenades, and you may study at your leisure the
admirable Venetian arts of managing a boat and organising a
spectacle. Of the beautiful free stroke with which the gondola,
especially when there are two oars, is impelled, you never, in
the Venetian scene, grow weary; it is always in the picture, and
the large profiled action that lets the standing rowers throw