from the "Pa'ty" traveling alone with his opera-glass and satchel, to the
party which fills a gondola with well-cushioned English middle age, ruddy
English youth, and substantial English baggage. We have learnt to know
them all very well: the father and the mother sit upon the back seat, and
their comely girls at the sides and front. These girls all have the honest
cabbage-roses of English health upon their cheeks; they all wear little
rowdy English hats, and invariable waterfalls of hair tumble upon their
broad English backs. They are coming from Switzerland and Germany, and
they are going south to Rome and to Naples, and they always pause at
Venice a few days. To-morrow we shall see them in the Piazza, and at
Florian's, and St. Mark's, and the Ducal Palace; and the young ladies will
cross the Bridge of Sighs, and will sentimentally feed the vagabond
pigeons of St. Mark which loaf about the Piazza and defile the sculptures.
But now our travelers are themselves very hungry, and are more anxious
than Americans can understand about the table-d'hote of their hotel. It is
perfectly certain that if they fall into talk there with any of our
nation, the respectable English father will remark that this war in
America is a very sad war, and will ask to know when it will all end. The
truth is, Americans do not like these people, and I believe there is no
love lost on the other side. But, in many things, they are travelers to be
honored, if not liked: they voyage through all countries, and without
awaking fervent affection in any land through which they pass; but their
sterling honesty and truth have made the English tongue a draft upon the
unlimited confidence of the continental peoples, and French, Germans, and
Italians trust and respect private English faith as cordially as they hate
public English perfidy.

They come to Venice chiefly in the autumn, and October is the month of the
Sunsets and the English. The former are best seen from the Public Gardens,
whence one looks westward, and beholds them glorious behind the domes and