windows--it is another proof that they really show us everything-
-and in feeling that the gardens of Venice would deserve a page
to themselves. They are infinitely more numerous than the
arriving stranger can suppose; they nestle with a charm all their
own in the complications of most back-views. Some of them are
exquisite, many are large, and even the scrappiest have an artful
understanding, in the interest of colour, with the waterways that
edge their foundations. On the small canals, in the hunt for
amusement, they are the prettiest surprises of all. The tangle of
plants and flowers crowds over the battered walls, the greenness
makes an arrangement with the rosy sordid brick. Of all the
reflected and liquefied things in Venice, and the number of these
is countless, I think the lapping water loves them most. They are
numerous on the Canalazzo, but wherever they occur they give a
brush to the picture and in particular, it is easy to guess, give
a sweetness to the house. Then the elements are complete--the
trio of air and water and of things that grow. Venice without
them would be too much a matter of the tides and the stones. Even
the little trellises of the traghetti count charmingly as
reminders, amid so much artifice, of the woodland nature of man.
The vine-leaves, trained on horizontal poles, make a roof of
chequered shade for the gondoliers and ferrymen, who doze there
according to opportunity, or chatter or hail the approaching
"fare." There is no "hum" in Venice, so that their voices travel
far; they enter your windows and mingle even with your dreams. I
beg the reader to believe that if I had time to go into
everything, I would go into the traghetti, which have
their manners and their morals, and which used to have their
piety. This piety was always a madonnina, the protectress
of the passage--a quaint figure of the Virgin with the red spark