writing in advance to secure it, as they are to secure the
Jenkins's gondolier, and as the gondola passes we see strange
faces at the windows--though it's ten to one we recognise them--
and the millionth artist coming forth with his traps at the
water-gate. The poor little patient Dario is one of the most
flourishing booths at the fair.

The faces in the window look out at the great Sansovino--the
splendid pile that is now occupied by the Prefect. I feel
decidedly that I don't object as I ought to the palaces of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their pretensions impose
upon me, and the imagination peoples them more freely than it can
people the interiors of the prime. Was not moreover this
masterpiece of Sansovino once occupied by the Venetian post-
office, and thereby intimately connected with an ineffaceable
first impression of the author of these remarks? He had arrived,
wondering, palpitating, twenty-three years ago, after nightfall,
and, the first thing on the morrow, had repaired to the post-
office for his letters. They had been waiting a long time and
were full of delayed interest, and he returned with them to the
gondola and floated slowly down the Canal. The mixture, the
rapture, the wonderful temple of the poste restante, the
beautiful strangeness, all humanised by good news--the memory of
this abides with him still, so that there always proceeds from
the splendid waterfront I speak of a certain secret appeal,
something that seems to have been uttered first in the sonorous
chambers of youth. Of course this association falls to the
ground--or rather splashes into the water--if I am the victim of
a confusion. Was the edifice in question twenty-three
years ago the post-office, which has occupied since, for many a