Christmas and New Year's, and as he received eggs at every house, it was a
problem with us, unsolved to this hour, how he carried them all, and what
he did with them.) Not the least among the Paron's causes for self-
gratulation was the non-appearance at his new abode of two local
newspapers, for which in an evil hour he subscribed, which were delivered
with unsparing regularity, and which, being never read, formed the keenest
reproach of his imprudent outlay and his idle neglect of their contents.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE BALCONY ON THE GRAND CANAL.


The history of Venice reads like a romance; the place seems a fantastic
vision at the best, from which the world must at last awake some morning,
and find that after all it has only been dreaming, and that there never
was any such city. There our race seems to be in earnest in nothing.
People sometimes work, but as if without any aim; they suffer, and you
fancy them playing at wretchedness. The Church of St. Mark, standing so
solidly, with a thousand years under the feet of its innumerable pillars,
is not in the least gray with time--no grayer than a Greek lyric.

"All has suffered a sea-change
Into something rich and strange,"

in this fantastic city. The prose of earth has risen poetry from its
baptism in the sea.