SOME ISLANDS OF THE LAGOONS.


Nothing can be fairer to the eye than these "summer isles of Eden" lying
all about Venice, far and near. The water forever trembles and changes,
with every change of light, from one rainbow glory to another, as with the
restless hues of an opal; and even when the splendid tides recede, and go
down with the sea, they leave a heritage of beauty to the empurpled mud of
the shallows, all strewn with green, disheveled sea-weed. The lagoons have
almost as wide a bound as your vision. On the east and west you can see
their borders of sea-shore and main-land; but looking north and south,
there seems no end to the charm of their vast, smooth, all-but melancholy
expanses. Beyond their southern limit rise the blue Euganean Hills, where
Petrarch died; on the north loom the Alps, white with snow. Dotting the
stretches of lagoon in every direction lie the islands--now piles of airy
architecture that the water seems to float under and bear upon its breast,
now

"Sunny spots of greenery,"

with the bell-towers of demolished cloisters shadowily showing above their
trees;--for in the days of the Republic nearly every one of the islands
had its monastery and its church. At present the greater number have been
fortified by the Austrians, whose sentinel paces the once-peaceful shores,
and challenges all passers with his sharp "_Halt! Wer da_!" and warns
them not to approach too closely. Other islands have been devoted to
different utilitarian purposes, and few are able to keep their distant
promises of loveliness. One of the more faithful is the island of San
Clemente, on which the old convent church is yet standing, empty and
forlorn within, but without all draped in glossy ivy. After I had learned