d.

For a cool day, after too much idling in gondolas, there is a good walk,
tempered by an occasional picture, from the Custom House to S.
Sebastiano and back to S. Mark's. The first thing is to cross the Grand
Canal, either by ferry or a steamer to the Salute, and then all is easy.

The Dogana, as seen from Venice and from the water, is as familiar a
sight almost as S. Mark's or the Doges' Palace, with its white stone
columns, and the two giants supporting the globe, and the beautiful
thistledown figure holding out his cloak to catch the wind. Everyone who
has been to Venice can recall this scene and the decisive way in which
the Dogana thrusts into the lagoon like the prow of a ship of which the
Salute's domes form the canvas. But to see Venice from the Dogana is a
rarer experience.

No sooner does one round the point--the Punta della Salute--and come to
the Giudecca canal than everything changes. Palaces disappear and
shipping asserts itself. One has promise of the ocean. Here there is
always a huddle of masts, both of barges moored close together, mostly
called after either saints or Garibaldi, with crude pictures of their
namesakes painted on the gunwale, and of bigger vessels and perhaps a
few pleasure yachts; and as likely as not a big steamer is entering or
leaving the harbour proper, which is at the far end of this Giudecca
canal. And ever the water dances and there are hints of the great sea,
of which the Grand Canal, on the other side of the Dogana, is ignorant.

The pavement of the Zaterre, though not so broad as the Riva, is still
wide, and, like the Riva, is broken by the only hills which the Venetian
walker knows--the bridges. The first building of interest to which we
come is the house, now a hotel, opposite a little alfresco restaurant
above the water, which bears a tablet stating that it was Ruskin's
Venetian home. That was in his later days, when he was writing _Fors
Clavigera_; earlier, while at work on _The Stones of Venice_, he had
lived, as we have seen, near S. Zobenigo. Ruskin could be very rude to
the Venetians: somewhere in _Fors_ he refers to the "dirty population of
Venice which is now neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor
fisherman," and he was furious alike with its tobacco and its
steamboats; yet for all that, if ever a distinguished man deserved
honour at the hands of a city Ruskin deserves it from Venice. _The
Stones of Venice_ is such a book of praise as no other city ever ha