noticeable in the prices of the same dishes, as in the substitution of
cheaper varieties of food. At the best eating-houses, the Gallic
traditions bear sway more or less, but in the poorer sort the cooking is
done entirely by native artists, deriving their inspirations from the
unsophisticated tastes of exclusively native diners. It is perhaps
needless to say that they grow characteristic and picturesque as they grow
dirty and cheap, until at last the cook-shop perfects the descent with a
triumph of raciness and local coloring. The cook-shop in Venice opens upon
you at almost every turn,--everywhere, in fact, but in the Piazza and the
Merceria,--and looking in, you see its vast heaps of frying fish, and its
huge caldrons of ever-boiling broth which smell to heaven with garlic and
onions. In the seducing windows smoke golden mountains of _polenta_
(a thicker kind of mush or hasty-pudding, made of Indian meal, and
universally eaten in North Italy), platters of crisp minnows, bowls of
rice, roast poultry, dishes of snails and liver; and around the
fascinating walls hang huge plates of bronzed earthenware for a lavish and
a hospitable show, and for the representation of those scenes of Venetian
story which are modeled upon them in bass-relief. Here I like to take my
unknown friend--my scoundrel facchino or rascal gondolier--as he comes to
buy his dinner, and bargains eloquently with the cook, who stands with a
huge ladle in his hand capable of skimming mysterious things from vasty
depths. I am spell-bound by the drama which ensues, and in which all the
chords of the human heart are touched, from those that tremble at high
tragedy, to those that are shaken by broad farce. When the diner has
bought his dinner, and issues forth with his polenta in one hand, and his
fried minnows or stewed snails in the other, my fancy fondly follows him
to his gondola-station, where he eats it, and quarrels volubly with other
gondoliers across the Grand Canal.

A simpler and less ambitious sort of cook-shop abounds in the region of