nsus, taken two years
ago, it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand, and it
diminishes daily. The commerce and the official employments, which were
to be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have both expired.
Most of the patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually
disappear, had not the government, alarmed by the demolition of
seventy-two, during the last two years, expressly forbidden this sad
resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian nobility are now
scattered and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the banks of the
Brenta, whose palladian palaces, have sunk, or are sinking, in the
general decay. Of the 'gentil uomo Veneto,' the name is still known,
and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self, but he is
polite and kind. The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss
of their aristocratical forms, and too despotic government--they think
only on their vanished independence. They pine away at the remembrance,
and on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humour. Venice
may be said, in the words of the scripture, 'to die daily;' and so
general and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a
stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation, expiring
as it were before his eyes. So artificial a creation having lost that
principle which called it into life and supported its existence, must
fall to pieces at once, and sink more rapidly than it rose."

Captain Medwin relates Lord Byron's detestation of Venice in unmeasured
terms. He likewise tells of his Lordship performing here one of those
aquatic feats in which he greatly prided himself; and the Countess
Albrizzi mentions a similar incident: "He was seen, on leaving a palace
situated on the grand canal, instead of entering his gondola, to throw
himself, with his clothes on, into the water, and swim to his house."

The Countess, who became acquainted with his Lordship at Venice, also
narrates a few particulars of the mode in which he passed his time in
that city: Amongst his peculiar habits was that of never showing himself
on foot. "He was never seen to walk through the streets of Venice, nor
along the pleasant banks of the Brenta, where he spent some weeks of the
summer; and there are some who assert that he has never seen, excepting
from a window, the wonders of the Piazza di San Marco,[2] so powerful in
him was the desire of not showing himself to be deformed in any part of
his