toft caddies, seemed,
among its lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled butterfly.
There was, farther, a gold chain of his mother's, spun of that same
sun-pollen, so thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped through the
fingers like light, yet so strong that it carried a heavy pendant which
seemed held in air as if by magic. MAGIC! That was the word which the
thought of Venice evoked. It was the kind of place, Tony felt, in which
things elsewhere impossible might naturally happen, in which two and two
might make five, a paradox elope with a syllogism, and a conclusion give
the lie to its own premiss. Was there ever a young heart that did not,
once and again, long to get away into such a world as that? Tony, at
least, had felt the longing from the first hour when the axioms in
his horn-book had brought home to him his heavy responsibilities as a
Christian and a sinner. And now here was his wish taking shape before
him, as the distant haze of gold shaped itself into towers and domes
across the morning sea!

The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony's governor and bear-leader, was just
putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon
on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.'s anchor rattled
overboard. Tony, in his haste to be ashore, would have made one plunge
with the anchor; but the Reverend Ozias, on being roused from his
lucubrations, earnestly protested against leaving his argument in
suspense. What was the trifle of an arrival at some Papistical
foreign city, where the very churches wore turbans like so many
Moslem idolators, to the important fact of Mr. Mounce's summing up his
conclusions before the Muse of Theology took flight? He should be happy,
he said, if the tide served, to visit Venice with Mr. Bracknell the next
morning.

The next morning, ha!--Tony murmured a submissive "Yes, sir," winked at
the subjugated captain, buckled on his sword, pressed his hat down
with a flourish, and before the Reverend Ozias had arrived at his next
deduction, was skimming merrily shoreward in the Hepzibah's gig.

A moment more and he was in the thick of it! Here was the very world of
the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and bubbling
with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed in fantastic
painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as fantastic: a bawling,
laughing, jostling, sweating mob, parti-coloured, parti-speeched,
crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like