ness of their skins, by scarce lightly wiping
the very white powder from their faces, is a method no Frenchwoman of
quality would like to adopt; yet surely the Venetians are not
behind-hand in the art of gaining admirers; and they do not, like their
painters, depend upon _colouring_ to ensure it.

Nothing can be a greater proof of the little consequence which dress
gives to a woman, than the reflection one must make on a Venetian lady's
mode of appearance in her zendalet, without which nobody stirs out of
their house in a morning. It consists of a full black silk petticoat,
sloped just to train, a very little on the ground, and flounced with
gauze of the same colour. A skeleton wire upon the head, such as we use
to make up hats, throwing loosely over it a large piece of black mode or
persian, so as to shade the face like a curtain, the front being trimmed
with a very deep black lace, or souflet gauze infinitely becoming. The
thin silk that remains to be disposed of, they roll back so as to
discover the bosom; fasten it with a puff before at the top of their
stomacher, and once more rolling it back from the shape, tie it
gracefully behind, and let it hang in two long ends.

The evening ornament is a silk hat, shaped like a man's, and of the
same colour, with a white or worked lining at most, and sometimes _one
feather_; a great black silk cloak, lined with white, and perhaps a
narrow border down before, with a vast heavy round handkerchief of black
lace, which lies over neck and shoulders, and conceals shape and all
completely. Here is surely little appearance of art, no craping or
frizzing the hair, which is flat at the top, and all of one length,
hanging in long curls about the back or sides as it happens. No brown
powder, and no rouge at all. Thus without variety does a Venetian lady
contrive to delight the eye, and without much instruction too to charm,
the ear. A source of thought fairly cut off beside, in giving her no
room to shew taste in dress, or invent new fancies and disposition of
ornaments for to-morrow. The government takes all that trouble off her
hands, knows every pin she wears, and where to find her at any moment of
the day or night.

Mean time nothing conveys to a British observer a stronger notion of
loose living and licentious dissoluteness, than the sight of one's
servants, gondoliers, and other attendants, on the scenes and circles
of pleasure, where you find them, though never drunk, dead with