make me feel as I do listening to part singing--I feel the amazing beauty
and revel in it.

And the evenings! My God! One might almost die of the strangeness of it.
One goes in a gondola ... warmth, stillness, stars.... There are no
horses in Venice, and so there is a silence here as in the open country.
Gondolas flit to and fro, ... then a gondola glides by, hung with
lanterns. In it are a double-bass, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and
cornet, two or three ladies, several men, and one hears singing and
music. They sing from operas. What voices! One goes on a little further
and again meets a boat with singers, and then again, and the air is
full, till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins and tenor voices,
and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.

Merezhkovsky, whom I have met here, is off his head with ecstasy. For us
poor and oppressed Russians it is easy to go out of our minds here in a
world of beauty, wealth, and freedom. One longs to remain here for ever,
and when one stands in the churches and listens to the organ one longs to
become a Catholic.

The tombs of Canova and Titian are magnificent. Here they bury great
artists like kings in churches; here they do not despise art as with us;
the churches provide a shelter for pictures and statues however naked they
may be.

In the Palace of the Doges there is a picture in which there are about ten
thousand human figures.

To-day is Sunday. There will be a band playing in St. Mark's Square....