s are not commonly
companions. But this does not go to the bottom of the matter.

The Italians are industrious; they are compelled to be in order to pay
their taxes for the army and navy and get macaroni enough to live on. But
see what a long civilization has done for them. They have the manner of
laziness, they have the air of leisure, they have worn off the angular
corners of existence, and unconsciously their life is picturesque and
enjoyable. Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply and
with the least expense of physical energy. Those who have not money do
the same thing. This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; life
is reckoned by centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal place is Venice!
It is not only the most picturesque city in the world, rich in all that
art can invent to please the eye, but how calm it is! The vivacity which
entertains the traveler is all on the surface. The nobleman in his palace
if there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine of
curiosities, or a municipal office--can live on a diet that would make an
American workman strike, simply because he has learned to float through
life; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learned
to wait without much labor. The gliding, easy motion of the gondola
expresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummate
skill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canals
for an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest in
labor which we do not attain. What happiness there is in a dish of
polenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of those
apologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent--the
cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs five
minutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!
Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?
The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva del
Schiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabbering
and singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morning
light begins to make the lagoon opalescent. The traveler who lodges near
cannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn,
wafted by painted sails. In the heat of the day, when the fish will not
bite, comes the siesta. Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?
The shore of the R