as if the waters had overtaken them. Everywhere else they reckon
with them--have chosen them; here alone the lapping seaway seems
to confess itself an accident.

[Illustration: PALAZZO MONCENIGO, VENICE]

There are persons who hold this long, gay, shabby, spotty
perspective, in which, with its immense field of confused
reflection, the houses have infinite variety, the dullest
expanse in Venice. It was not dull, we imagine, for Lord Byron,
who lived in the midmost of the three Mocenigo palaces, where the
writing-table is still shown at which he gave the rein to his
passions. For other observers it is sufficiently enlivened by so
delightful a creation as the Palazzo Loredan, once a masterpiece
and at present the Municipio, not to speak of a variety of other
immemorial bits whose beauty still has a degree of freshness.
Some of the most touching relics of early Venice are here--for it
was here she precariously clustered--peeping out of a submersion
more pitiless than the sea. As we approach the Rialto indeed the
picture falls off and a comparative commonness suffuses it.
There is a wide paved walk on either side of the Canal, on which
the waterman--and who in Venice is not a waterman?--is prone to
seek repose. I speak of the summer days--it is the summer Venice
that is the visible Venice. The big tarry barges are drawn up at
the fondamenta, and the bare-legged boatmen, in faded blue
cotton, lie asleep on the hot stones. If there were no colour
anywhere else there would be enough in their tanned
personalities. Half the low doorways open into the warm interior
of waterside drinking-shops, and here and there, on the quay,
beneath the bush that overhangs the door, there are rickety