half a league. We have made a
list of these palaces, not of all, but the most remarkable, and we do
not dare to transcribe it here on account of its length. It covers five
or six pages: Pierre Lombard, Scamozzi, Sansovino, Sebastiano Mazzoni,
Sammichelli, the great architect of Verona; Selva, Domenico Rossi,
Visentini, have drawn the plans and directed the construction of these
princely dwellings, without reckoning the unknown artists of the Middle
Ages who built the most picturesque and most romantic of them--those
which give Venice its stamp and its originality.

On both banks, facades altogether charming and beautifully diversified
succeed one another without interruption. After an architecture of the
Renaissance with its columns comes a palace of the Middle Ages in Gothic
Arab style, of which the Ducal Palace is the prototype, with its
balconies, lancet windows, trefoils, and acroteria. Further along is a
facade adorned with marble placques of various colors, garnished with
medallions and consoles; then a great rose-colored wall in which is cut
a large window with columnets; all styles are found there--the
Byzantine, the Saracen, the Lombard, the Gothic, the Roman, the Greek,
and even the Rococo; the column and the columnet; the lancet and the
semicircle; the fanciful capital, full of birds and of flowers, brought
from Acre or from Jaffa; the Greek capital found in Athenian ruins; the
mosaic and the bas-relief; the classic severity and elegant fantasy of
the Renaissance. It is an immense gallery open to the sky, where one can
study from the bottom of his gondola the art of seven or eight
centuries. What treasures of genius, talent, and money have been
expended on this space which may be traversed in less than a quarter of
an hour! What tremendous artists, but also what intelligent and
munificent patrons! What a pity that the patricians who knew how to
achieve such beautiful things no longer exist save on the canvases of
Titian, of Tintoretto, and du Moro!

Even before reaching the Rialto, you have, on the left, in ascending the
Canal, the Palace Dario, in Gothic style; the Palace Venier, which
presents itself by an angle, with its ornamentation, its precious
marbles and medallions, in the Lombard style; the Fine Arts, a classic
facade joined to the old Ecole de la Charite and surmounted by a figure
riding upon a lion; the Contarini Palace, in architectural style of
Scamozzi; the Rezzonico Palace with three superimp