Che immenso affar!
Sora l'acqua camminar!

But after all the disagreeable winter, which hardly commences before
Christmas, and which ends about the middle of March, is but a small part
of the glorious Venetian year; and even this ungracious season has a
loveliness, at times, which it can have nowhere but in Venice. What
summer-delight of other lands could match the beauty of the first Venetian
snow-fall which I saw? It had snowed overnight, and in the morning when I
woke it was still snowing. The flakes fell softly and vertically through
the motionless air, and all the senses were full of languor and repose. It
was rapture to lie still, and after a faint glimpse of the golden-winged
angel on the bell-tower of St. Mark's, to give indolent eye solely to the
contemplation of the roof opposite, where the snow lay half an inch deep
upon the brown tiles. The little scene--a few square yards of roof, a
chimney-pot, and a dormer-window--was all that the most covetous spirit
could demand; and I lazily lorded it over that domain of pleasure, while
the lingering mists of a dream of new-world events blent themselves with
the luxurious humor of the moment and the calm of the snow-fall, and made
my reverie one of the perfectest things in the world. When I was lost the
deepest in it, I was inexpressibly touched and gratified by the appearance
of a black cat at the dormer-window. In Venice, roofs commanding pleasant
exposures seem to be chiefly devoted to the cultivation of this animal,
and there are many cats in Venice. My black cat looked wonderingly upon
the snow for a moment, and then ran across the roof. Nothing could have
been better. Any creature less silent, or in point of movement less
soothing to the eye than a cat, would have been torture of the spirit. As
it was, this little piece of action contented me so well, that I left
every thing else out of my reverie, and could only think how deliciously
the cat harmonized with the snow-covered tiles, the chimney-pot, and the