little town, with an inexplicable charm in its decay. The city arms are
still displayed upon the public buildings (for Murano was ruled,
independently of Venice, by its own council); and the heraldic cock, with
a snake in its beak, has yet a lusty and haughty air amid the ruin of the
place.

The way in which the spring made itself felt upon the lagoon was full of
curious delight. It was not so early in the season that we should know the
spring by the first raw warmth in the air, and there was as yet no
assurance of her presence in the growth--later so luxuriant--of the coarse
grasses of the shallows. But somehow the spring was there, giving us new
life with every breath. There were fewer gulls than usual, and those we
saw sailed far overhead, debating departure. There was deeper languor in
the laziness of the soldiers of finance, as they lounged and slept upon
their floating custom houses in every channel of the lagoons; and the
hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling to each other as their wont is, had
an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves in echo. Over all, the heavens
had put on their summer blue, in promise of that delicious weather which
in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate
seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at
home--days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with
unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;--but we do not have, week
after week, month after month, that

"Blue, unclouded weather,"

which, at Venice, contents all your senses, and makes you exult to be
alive with the inarticulate gladness of children, or of the swallows that
there all day wheel and dart through the air, and shriek out a delight too
intense and precipitate for song.