uld spend much time leaning upon the parapet of one side and the
other at the highest point. He will have it for the most part to
himself, for the Venetians prefer the middle way between the shops.
These shops are, however, very dull--principally cheap clothiers and
inferior jewellers--and the two outer tracks are better. From here may
best be seen the facade of the central Post Office, once the Fondaco dei
Tedeschi splendid with the frescoes of Giorgione and Titian. The
frescoes have gone and it is now re-faced with stucco. From here, too,
the beautiful palace of the Camerlenghi at the edge of the Erberia is
most easily studied. The Rialto bridge itself exerts no spell. It does
not compare in interest or charm with the Ponte Vecchio of Florence.

The busiest and noisiest part of Venice begins at the further foot of
the bridge, for here are the markets, crowded by housewives with their
bags or baskets, and a thousand busy wayfarers.

The little church of the market-place--the oldest in Venice--is S.
Giacomo di Rialto, but I have never been able to find it open. Commerce
now washes up to its walls and practically engulfs it. A garden is on
its roof, and its clock has stopped permanently at four.

It was in this campo that the merchants anciently met: here, in the
district of the Rialto, and not on the bridge itself, as many readers
suppose, did Antonio transact his business with one Shylock a Jew. There
are plenty of Jews left in Venice; in fact, I have been told that they
are gradually getting possession of the city, and judging by their
ability in that direction elsewhere, I can readily believe it; but I saw
none in the least like the Shylock of the English stage, although I
spent some time both in the New Ghetto and the Old by the Cannaregio.
All unwilling I once had the company of a small Jewish boy in a
gaberdine for the whole way from the New Ghetto to the steamboat station
of S. Toma, his object in life being to acquire for nothing a coin
similar to one which I had given to another boy who had been really
useful. If he avowed once that he was a starving Jewish boy and I was a
millionaire, he said it fifty times. Every now and then he paused for an
anxious second to throw a somersault. But I was obdurate, and embarking
on the steamer, left the two falsehoods to fight it out.

The two Ghettos, by the way, are not interesting; no traveller, missing
them, need feel that he has been in Venice in vain.

At the other