her fall. Many others, however, survived this event in all their splendor,
but there is not one celebrated now as in other days. It is true that the
churches still parade their pomps in the Piazza on the day of Corpus
Christi; it is true that the bridges of boats are still built across the
Canalazzo to the church of Our Lady of Salvation, and across the Canal of
the Giudecca to the temple of the Redeemer, on the respective festivals of
these churches; but the concourse is always meagre, and the mirth is
forced and ghastly. The Italianissimi have so far imbued the people with
their own ideas and feelings, that the recurrence of the famous holidays
now merely awakens them to lamentations over the past and vague longings
for the future.

As for the carnival, which once lasted six months of the year, charming
hither all the idlers of the world by its peculiar splendor and variety of
pleasure, it does not, as I said, any longer exist. It is dead, and its
shabby, wretched ghost is a party of beggars, hideously dressed out with
masks and horns and women's habits, who go from shop to shop droning forth
a stupid song, and levying tribute upon the shopkeepers. The crowd through
which these melancholy jesters pass, regards them with a pensive scorn,
and goes about its business untempted by the delights of carnival.

All other social amusements have shared in greater or less degree the fate
of the carnival. At some houses conversazioni are still held, and it is
impossible that balls and parties should not now and then be given. But
the greater number of the nobles and the richer of the professional
classes lead for the most part a life of listless seclusion, and attempts
to lighten the general gloom and heaviness in any way are not looked upon
with favor. By no sort of chance are Austrians, or Austriacanti ever
invited to participate in the pleasures of Venetian society.