elements quite fail to correspond. One's confusion is the
greater because one doesn't know that everything may not really
have changed, even beyond all probability--though it's only in
America that churches cross the street or the river--and the
mixture of the recognisable and the different makes the ambiguity
maddening, all the more that the painter is almost as attaching
as he is bad. Thanks at any rate to the white church, domed and
porticoed, on the top of its steps, the traveller emerging for
the first time upon the terrace of the railway-station seems to
have a Canaletto before him. He speedily discovers indeed even in
the presence of this scene of the final accents of the Canalazzo-
-there is a charm in the old pink warehouses on the hot
fondamenta--that he has something much better. He looks up
and down at the gathered gondolas; he has his surprise after all,
his little first Venetian thrill; and as the terrace of the
station ushers in these things we shall say no harm of it, though
it is not lovely. It is the beginning of his experience, but it
is the end of the Grand Canal.

1892.





VENICE: AN EARLY IMPRESSION


There would be much to say about that golden chain of historic
cities which stretches from Milan to Venice, in which the very