differently, for he says: "Those that have resided in Venice a long time
say it is not an unhealthy place. I cannot believe it, for the odors from
the canals cannot but produce illness of some kind. That which is
constantly offensive to any of our organs of sense must affect them
injuriously."

Several severe thunderstorms broke over the city while he was there, and
one was said to be the worst which had been known within the memory of
the oldest inhabitant. After describing it he adds: "I was at the
Academy. The rain penetrated through the ceiling at the corner of the
picture I was copying--'The Miracle of the Slave,' by Tintoret--and
threatened injury to it, but happily it escaped."

On June 19, he thus moralizes: "The Piazza of St. Mark is the great place
of resort, and on every evening, but especially on Sundays or _festas_,
the arcades and cafes are crowded with elegantly dressed females and
their gallants. Chairs are placed in great numbers under the awnings
before the cafes. A people that have no homes, who are deprived from
policy of that domestic and social intercourse which we enjoy, must have
recourse to this empty, heartless enjoyment; an indolent enjoyment, when
all their intercourse, too, is in public, surrounded by police agents and
soldiers to prevent excess. Hallam, in his 'Middle Ages,' has this just
reflection on the condition of this same city when under the Council of
Ten: 'But how much more honorable are the wildest excesses of faction
than the stillness and moral degradation of servitude.' Quiet is, indeed,
obtained here, but at what immense expense! Expense of wealth, although
excessive, is nothing compared with the expense of morality and of all
intellectual exercise."

On June 23, he witnessed another thunderstorm from the Piazza of St.
Mark:--

"The lightning, flashing in the dark clouds that were gathering from the
Tyrolese Alps, portended another storm which soon burst over us and
hastened the conclusion of the music. The lightning was incessant. I
stood at the corner of the piazza and watched the splendid effects of
lights and darks, in a moment coming and in a moment gone, on the
campanile and church of St. Mark's. It was most sublime. The gilt statue
of the angel on the top of the campanile never looked so sublime, seeming
to be enveloped in the glory of the vivid light, and, as the electric
fluid flashed behind it from cloud to cloud incessantly, it seemed to go
and come at the biddi