And if, living constantly in Venice, you sometimes for a little while
forget how marvelous she is, at any moment you may be startled into vivid
remembrance. The cunning city beguiles you street by street, and step by
step, into some old court, where a flight of marble stairs leads high up
to the pillared gallery of an empty palace, with a climbing vine green and
purple on its old decay, and one or two gaunt trees stretching their heads
to look into the lofty windows,--blind long ago to their leafy
tenderness,--while at their feet is some sumptuously carven well, with the
beauty of the sculptor's soul wrought forever into the stone. Or Venice
lures you in a gondola into one of her remote canals, where you glide
through an avenue as secret and as still as if sea-deep under our work-day
world; where the grim heads carven over the water-gates of the palaces
stare at you in austere surprise, where the innumerable balconies are full
of the Absences of gay cavaliers and gentle dames, gossiping and making
love to one another, from their airy perches. Or if the city's mood is one
of bolder charm, she fascinates you in the very places where you think her
power is the weakest, and as if impatient of your forgetfulness, dares a
wilder beauty, and enthralls with a yet more unearthly and incredible
enchantment. It is in the Piazza, and the Austrian band is playing, and
the promenaders pace solemnly up and down to the music, and the gentle
Italian loafers at Florian's brood vacantly over their little cups of
coffee, and nothing can be more stupid; when suddenly every thing is
changed, and a memorable tournament flashes up in many-glittering action
upon the scene, and there upon the gallery of the church, before the
horses of bronze, sit the Senators, bright-robed, and in the midst the
bonneted Doge with his guest Petrarch at his side. Or the old Carnival,
which had six months of every year to riot in, comes back and throngs the
place with motley company,--dominoes, harlequins, pantaloni, illustrissimi
and illustrissime, and perhaps even the Doge himself, who has the right of
incognito when he wears a little mask of wax at his button-hole. Or may be