Piazza San Marco. Its ground-level, under the Procuratie, is belted with a
glittering line of shops and caffe, the most tasteful and brilliant in the
world, and the arcades that pass round three of its sides are filled with
loungers and shoppers, even when there is music by the Austrian bands;
for, as we have seen, the purest patriot may then walk under the
Procuratie, without stain to the principles which would be hopelessly
blackened if he set foot in the Piazza. The absence of dust and noisy
hoofs and wheels tempts social life out of doors in Venice more than in
any other Italian city, though the tendency to this sort of expansion is
common throughout Italy. Beginning with the warm days of early May, and
continuing till the _villeggiatura_ (the period spent at the country
seat) interrupts it late in September, all Venice goes by a single impulse
of _dolce far niente_, and sits gossiping at the doors of the
innumerable caffe on the Riva degli Schiavoni, in the Piazza San Marco,
and in the different squares in every part of the city. But, of course,
the most brilliant scene of this kind is in St. Mark's Place, which has a
night-time glory indescribable, won from the light of uncounted lamps upon
its architectural groups. The superb Imperial Palace--the sculptured,
arcaded, and pillared Procuratie--the Byzantine magic and splendor of the
church--will it all be there when you come again to-morrow night? The
unfathomable heaven above seems part of the place, for I think it is never
so tenderly blue over any other spot of earth. And when the sky is blurred
with clouds, shall not the Piazza vanish with the azure?--People, I say,
come to drink coffee, and eat ices here in the summer evenings, and then,
what with the promenades in the arcades and in the Piazza, the music, the
sound of feet, and the hum of voices, unbroken by the ruder uproar of
cities where there are horses and wheels--the effect is that of a large
evening party, and in this aspect the Piazza, is like a vast drawing-room.

I liked well to see that strange life, which even the stout, dead-in-