tremity of a canal, with long steps on each side
down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black
with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the
black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be
real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at
first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat
and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any
water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or
three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a
stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as
if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.

Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the
side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose
patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows
keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In
front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west,
the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen
purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,
feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward
still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate
angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in
ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera.
Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable.
The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the
banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an
expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we
might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm
southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing
but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to
let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above
all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of
the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings,
which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be
the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale,
and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;
but the object which first catches the e