startled into vivid remembrance. The cun-
ning 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 fasci-
nates 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,

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