in the formation of their character. And
of that character, as I have said, the final note is playfulness.
In spite of difficulties, their life has never been stern enough to
sadden them. Bare necessities are marvellously cheap, and the pinch
of real bad weather--such frost as locked the lagoons in ice two years
ago, or such south-western gales as flooded the basement floors of
all the houses on the Zattere--is rare and does not last long. On the
other hand, their life has never been so lazy as to reduce them to
the savagery of the traditional Neapolitan lazzaroni. They have had
to work daily for small earnings, but under favourable conditions,
and their labour has been lightened by much good-fellowship among
themselves, by the amusements of their _feste_ and their singing
clubs.

Of course it is not easy for a stranger in a very different social
position to feel that he has been admitted to their confidence.
Italians have an ineradicable habit of making themselves externally
agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and
wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think _Signori_
like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises
up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the
more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our
advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by
the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It
is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or
a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less
insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower
class have received through centuries from their own nobility, makes
attempts at fraternisation on the part of gentlemen unintelligible to
them. The best way, here and elsewhere, of overcoming these obstacles
is to have some bond of work or interest in common--of service on the
one side rendered, and goodwill on the other honestly displayed. The
men of whom I have been speaking will, I am convinced, not shirk their
share of duty or make unreasonable claims upon the generosity of their
employers.

* * * * *

_A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS_

I.--THE SESTIERE DI SAN POLO

There is a quarter of Venice not much visited by tourists, lying as
it does outside their beat, away from the Rialto, at a considerable
distance from the Frari and San Rocco, in wh