xtraordinary,
affecting from the many associations and remembrances excited in the
mind. Pleasure and wonder are tinged with a melancholy interest; and
while the imagination is excited, the spirits are depressed.

The morning we left Padua was bright, lovely, and cloudless. Our drive
along the shores of the Brenta crowned with innumerable villas and gay
gardens was delightful; and the moment of our arrival at Fusina, where
we left our carriages to embark in gondolas, was the most auspicious
that could possibly have been chosen. It was about four o'clock: the
sun was just declining towards the west: the whole surface of the
_lagune_, smooth as a mirror, appeared as if paved with fire;--and
Venice, with her towers and domes, indistinctly glittering in the
distance, rose before us like a gorgeous exhalation from the bosom of
the ocean. It is farther from the shore than I expected. As we
approached, the splendour faded: but the interest and wonder grew. I
can conceive nothing more beautiful, more singular, more astonishing,
than the first appearance of Venice, and sad indeed will be the hour
when she sinks (as the poet prophesies) "into the slime of her own
canals."

The moment we had disembarked our luggage at the inn, we hired
gondolas and rowed to the Piazza di San Marco. Had I seen the church
of St. Mark any where else, I should have exclaimed against the bad
taste which every where prevails in it: but Venice is the proper
region of the fantastic, and the church of St. Mark--with its four
hundred pillars of every different order, colour, and material, its
oriental cupolas, and glittering vanes, and gilding and
mosaics--assimilates with all around it: and the kind of pleasure it
gives is suitable to the place and the people.

After dinner I had a chair placed on the balcony of our inn, and sat
for some time contemplating a scene altogether new and delightful. The
arch of the Rialto just gleamed through the deepening twilight; long
lines of palaces, at first partially illuminated, faded away at length
into gloomy and formless masses of architecture; the gondolas glided
to and fro, their glancing lights reflected on the water. There was a
stillness all around me, solemn and strange in the heart of a great
city. No rattling carriages shook the streets, no trampling of horses
echoed along the pavement: the silence was broken only by the
melancholy cry of the gondoliers, and the dash of their oars; by the
low murmur of hu