y are at the present moment. It seems almost
impossible that any thing should take place to arrest the ruin which is
gradually consuming this renowned city. Some writers have asserted that
the lagoons around it are annually growing shallower by the depositions of
earth brought down by streams from the land, that they must finally become
marshes, and that their consequent insalubrity will drive the inhabitants
from Venice. I do not know how this may be; but the other causes I have
mentioned seem likely to produce nearly the same effect. I remembered, as
these ideas passed through my mind, a passage in which one of the sacred
poets foretells the desertion and desolation of Tyre, "the city that made
itself glorious in the midst of the seas,"

"Thy riches and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and thy pilots,
thy calkers and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war
that are in thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of
thy ruin."

I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities which I had seen, on the
24th of June, and took the road for the Tyrol. We passed through a level
fertile country, formerly the territory of Venice, watered by the Piave,
which ran blood in one of Bonaparte's battles. At evening we arrived at
Ceneda, where our Italian poet Da Ponte was born, situated just at the
base of the Alps, the rocky peaks and irregular spires of which,
beautifully green with the showery season, rose in the background. Ceneda
seems to have something of German cleanliness about it, and the floors of
a very comfortable inn at which we stopped were of wood, the first we had
seen in Italy, though common throughout the Tyrol and the rest of Germany.
A troop of barelegged boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and
swinging their books and slates in the air, passed under my window. Such a
sight you will not see in southern Italy. The education of the people is
neglected, except in those provinces which are under the government of
Austria. It is a government severe and despotic enough in all conscience,
but by providing the means of education for all classes, it is doing more
than it is aware of to prepare them for the enjoyment of free
institutions. In the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, as it is called, there are
few children who do not attend the public schools.

On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which
was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, res