as though the colour of Venetian waters were
vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a rough, hoarse voice,
which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god, might have screamed in
storm or whispered raucous messages from crests of tossing billows.

I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the
lagoons was humanised; the spirit of the saltwater lakes had appeared
to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I
was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.

Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. It is a quiet
place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian,
lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would
fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had
left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet,
knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not
affirm so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which
seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from
San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes.
Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with
their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and
rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and
defile these habitations of the dead:

Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.

Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing-path; and
one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian
marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a
Christian dog.

VIII.--A VENETIAN RESTAURANT

At the end of a long glorious day, unhappy is that mortal whom the
Hermes of a cosmopolitan hotel, white-chokered and white-waistcoated,
marshals to the Hades of the _table-d'hote_. The world has often
been compared to an inn; but on my way down to this common meal I
have, not unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their
separate stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit
to a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race,
preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the
waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too
frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet--[Greek: hadou
mageiros]--cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in
Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to