with her child in her arms at the cabin-door, to the bronze boy who
figures in play at her feet with a small yellow dog of the race already
noticed in charge of the fuel-boats from Dalmatia. The father of the
family, whom we take to be the commander of the vessel, occupies himself
gracefully in sitting down and gazing at the babe and its mother. It is an
old habit of mine, formed in childhood from looking at rafts upon the
Ohio, to attribute, with a kind of heart-ache, supreme earthly happiness
to the navigators of lazy river craft; and as we glance down upon these
people from our balcony, I choose to think them immensely contented, and
try, in a feeble, tacit way, to make friends with so much bliss. But I am
always repelled in these advances by the small yellow dog, who is rendered
extremely irascible by my contemplation of the boat under his care, and
who, ruffling his hair as a hen ruffles her feathers, never fails to bark
furious resentment of my longing.

Far different from the picture presented by this boat's progress--the
peacefulness of which even the bad temper of the small yellow dog could
not mar--was another scene which we witnessed upon the Grand Canal, when
one morning we were roused from our breakfast by a wild and lamentable
outcry. Two large boats, attempting to enter the small canal opposite at
the same time, had struck together with a violence that shook the boatmen
to their inmost souls. One barge was laden with lime, and belonged to a
plasterer of the city; the other was full of fuel, and commanded by a
virulent rustic. These rival captains advanced toward the bows of their
boats, with murderous looks,

"Con la test'alta e con rabbiosa fame,
Si che parea che l'aer ne temesse,"

and there stamped furiously, and beat the wind with hands of deathful