Canal reechoes the music of the parties of young girls as they drift along
in the scarcely moving boats, and sing the glories of the lagoons and the
loves of fishermen and gondoliers. In the Public Gardens they walk and
sing; and wandering minstrels come forth before the caffe, and it is hard
to get beyond the tinkling of guitars and the scraping of fiddles. It is
as if the city had put off its winter humor with its winter dress; and as
Venice in winter is the dreariest and gloomiest place in the world, so in
spring it is the fullest of joy and light. There is a pleasant bustle in
the streets, a ceaseless clatter of feet over the stones of the squares,
and a constant movement of boats upon the canals.

We say, in a cheap and careless way, that the southern peoples have no
_homes_. But this is true only in a restricted sense, for the
Italian, and the Venetian especially, makes the whole city his home in
pleasant weather. No one remains under a roof who can help it; and now, as
I said before, the fascinating out-door life begins. All day long the
people sit and drink coffee and eat ices and gossip together before the
caffe, and the soft midnight sees the same diligent idlers in their
places. The promenade is at all seasons the favorite Italian amusement; it
has its rigidly fixed hours, and its limits are also fixed: but now, in
spring, even the promenade is a little lawless, and the crowds upon the
Riva sometimes walk as far as the Public Gardens, and throng all the wider
avenues and the Piazza; while young Venice comes to take the sun at St.
Mark's in the arms of its high-breasted nurses,--mighty country-women,
who, in their bright costumes, their dangling chains, and head-dresses of
gold and silver baubles, stride through the Piazza with the high, free-
stepping movement of blood-horses, and look like the women of some elder
race of barbaric vigor and splendor, which, but for them, had passed away
from our puny, dull-clad times.