further interest to say, that it was among the tombs of the Hebrews
Cooper's ingenious Bravo had the incredible good luck to hide himself from
the _sbirri_ of the Republic; or to relate that it was the habit of
Lord Byron to gallop up and down the Lido in search of that conspicuous
solitude of which the sincere bard was fond.

One day of the first summer I spent in Venice (three years of Venetian
life afterward removed it back into times of the remotest antiquity), a
friend and I had the now-incredible enterprise to walk from one end of the
Lido to the other,--from the port of San Nicolo (through which the
Bucintoro passed when the Doges went to espouse the Adriatic) to the port
of Malamocco, at the southern extremity.

We began with that delicious bath which you may have in the Adriatic,
where the light surf breaks with a pensive cadence on the soft sand, all
strewn with brilliant shells. The Adriatic is the bluest water I have ever
seen; and it is an ineffable, lazy delight to lie and watch the fishing
sails of purple and yellow dotting its surface, and the greater ships
dipping down its utmost rim. It was particularly good to do this after
coming out of the water; but our American blood could not brook much
repose, and we got up presently, and started on our walk to the little
village of Malamocco, some three miles away. The double-headed eagle keeps
watch and ward from a continuous line of forts along the shore, and the
white-coated sentinels never cease to pace the bastions, night or day.
Their vision of the sea must not be interrupted by even so much as the
form of a stray passer; and as we went by the forts, we had to descend
from the sea-wall, and walk under it, until we got beyond the sentry's
beat. The crimson poppies grow everywhere on this sandy little isle, and
they fringe the edges of the bastions with their bloom, as if the "blood-
red blossoms of war" had there sprung from the seeds of battle sown in old