osed orders; the
triple Giustiniani Palace, in the style of the Middle Ages, in which
resides M. Natale Schiavoni, a descendant of the celebrated painter
Schiavoni, who possesses a gallery of pictures and a beautiful daughter,
the living reproduction of a canvas painted by her ancestor; The Foscari
Palace, recognizable by its low door, by its two stories of columnets
supporting lancets and trefoils, where in other days were lodged the
sovereigns who visited Venice, but now abandoned; the Balbi Palace, from
the balcony of which the princes leaned to watch the regattas which took
place upon the Grand Canal with so much pomp and splendor, in the palmy
days of the Republic; the Pisani Palace, in the German style of the
beginning of the fifteenth century; and the Tiepolo Palace, very smart
and relatively modern. On the right, there nestles between two big
buildings, a delicious little palace which is composed of a window and a
balcony; but such a window and balcony! A guipure of stone, of scrolls,
of guillochages, and of open-work, which would seem possible of
execution only with a punching machine upon one of those sheets of paper
which cover baptismal sugar-plums, or are placed upon globes of lamps.
We greatly regretted not having twenty-five thousand francs about us to
buy it, since that was all that was demanded for it....

The Rialto, which is the most beautiful bridge in Venice, with a very
grandiose and monumental air, bestrides the canal by a single span with
a powerful and graceful curve. It was built in 1691, under the Dogeship
of Pasquale Cigogna, by Antonio da Ponte, and replaced the ancient
wooden drawbridge. Two rows of shops, separated in the middle by a
portico in the form of an arcade and permitting a glimpse of the sky,
burden the sides of the bridge, which can be crossed by three paths;
that in the center and the exterior passageways furnished with
balustrades of marble.

Around the Bridge of the Rialto, one of the most picturesque spots of
the Grand Canal, are gathered the oldest houses in Venice, with
platformed roofs, on which poles are planted to hang banners; their long
chimneys, their bulging balconies, their stairways with disjointed
steps, and their plaques of red coating, the fallen flakes of which lay
bare the brick walls and the foundations made green by contact with the
water. There is always near the Rialto a tumult of boats and gondolas
and of stagnant islets of tied-up craft drying their ta