ed for seeing the Bucentoro; had heard and read every
thing I fancy that could have been thought or said upon the subject,
from the sullen Englishmen who rank it with a company's barge floating
up the Thames upon my Lord Mayor's day, to the old writers who compare
it with Theseus's ship; in imitation of which, it is said, this calls
itself the very identical vessel wherein Pope Alexander performed the
original ceremony in the year 1171; and though, perhaps, not a whole
plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often
careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing
ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in
saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I
saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will
deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their
own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a
withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same
person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty
years before--when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to
confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would not
know him again now; though while she lived, he was never out of her
arms.

Vain wisdom all! and false Philosophy,
Which finds no end, in wandering mazes lost.

And better is it to travel, as Dr. Johnson says Browne did, from one
place where he saw little, to another where he saw no more--than write
books to confound common sense, and make men raise up doubts of a Being
to whom they must one day give an account.

We will return to the Bucentoro, which, as its name imports, holds two
hundred people, and is heavy besides with statues, columns, &c. The top
covered with crimson velvet, and the sides enlivened by twenty-one oars
on each hand. Musical performers attend in another barge, while
foreigners in gilded pajots increase the general show. Mean time, the
vessel that contains the doge, &c. carries him slowly out to sea, where
in presence of his senators he drops a plain gold ring into the water,
with these words, _Desponfamus te mare, in fignum veri perpetuique
dominii_.[Footnote: We espouse thee, O sea! in sign of true and
perpetual dominion.]

Our weather was favourable, and the people all seemed happy: when the
ceremony is put off from day to day, it naturally damps their spirits,
and produces