e who have never been at Venice--by some such,
at least. For probably the fame of the celebrated _caffe_ may have
traveled across the Atlantic, just as many who have never crossed
it westward are no strangers to the name of Delmonico. Florian's,
however, in any case, deserves a word of recognition. It is the
principal, largest and most fashionable caffe on the Piazza di San
Marco. But the singular and curious specialty of the place is that it
has never been closed--no, not for five minutes--day or night, for
a period of more than a hundred and thirty years! Probably it is the
only human habitation of any sort on the face of the globe of which
that could be said.

But the caffe in itself is in many respects a specialty of Venetian
life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his
comedies, so abundantly rich in local coloring, will not have failed
to observe that the caffe plays a larger part in the life of Venice
than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes
a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his
accustomed caffe. Men of business write their letters and arrange
their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their
peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the
stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most
marked specialty of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the
native female aristocracy frequents the caffe. Indeed, I know no place
in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may
be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian's on a brilliant
midsummer moonlight night.

Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have
never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so
unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of
every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that
every traveler finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and
can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first
time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted
with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza
di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of
arcades that form the two long sides of the parallellogram which has
the gorgeous front of St. Mark's church occupying the entirety of one
of the shorter sides. Well, about halfway up the