after all, I have reason to rejoice that instead
of bringing away from Venice a disagreeable impression of satiety,
disgust and melancholy, I have quitted it with feelings of admiration,
of deep regret, and undiminished interest.

Farewell, then, Venice! I could not have believed it possible that it
would have brought tears to my eyes to leave a place merely for its
own sake, and unendeared by the presence of any one I loved.

As Rovigo affords no other amusement I shall scribble a little longer.

Nothing can be more arbitrary than the Austrian government at Venice.
As a summary method of preventing robberies during the winter months,
when many of the gondoliers and fishermen are out of employ, the
police have orders to arrest, without ceremony, every person who has
no permanent trade or profession, and keep them in confinement and to
hard labour till the return of spring.

The commerce of Venice has so much and so rapidly declined, that Mr.
H---- told us when first he was appointed to the consulship, a hundred
and fifty English vessels cleared the port, and this year only five.
It should seem that Austria, from a cruel and selfish policy, is
sacrificing Venice to the prosperity of Trieste: but why do I call
that a cruel policy, which on recollection I might rather term
poetical and retributive justice?

The grandeur of Venice arose first from its trade in salt. I remember
reading in history, that when the king of Hungary opened certain
productive salt mines in his dominions, the Venetians sent him a
peremptory order to shut them up; and such was the power of the
Republic at that time, that he was forced to obey this insolent
command, to the great injury and impoverishment of his states. The
tables are now turned; the oppressor has become the oppressed.

The principal revenue derived from Venice is from the tax on houses,
there being no _land tax_. So rapid was the decay of the place, that
in two years seventy houses and palaces were pulled down; the
government forbade this by a special law, and now taxes are paid for
many houses whose proprietors are too poor to live in them.

There is no _society_, properly so called, at Venice; three old women
of rank receive company now and then, and it is any thing rather than
select.

Mr. F. told us at Venice, that on entering the states subject to
Austria, he had his Johnson's Dictionary taken from him, and could
never recover it; so jealous is the government of English