a
bank, which is technically called a bar. The coast of the Union
furnishes constant evidence of the truth of this theory, every river
having its bar, with channels that are often shifted, or cleared, by the
freshets, the gales, or the tides. The constant and powerful operation
of the south-eastern winds on one side, with the periodical increase of
the Alpine streams on the other, have converted this bar at the entrance
of the Venetian Lagunes, into a succession of long, low, sandy islands,
which extend in a direct line nearly across the mouth of the gulf. The
waters of the rivers have necessarily cut a few channels for their
passage, or, what is now a lagune, would long since have become a lake.
Another thousand years may so far change the character of this
extraordinary estuary as to convert the channels of the bay into rivers,
and the muddy banks into marshes and meadows, resembling those that are
now seen for so many leagues inland.

The low margin of sand that, in truth, gives all its maritime security
to the port of Venice and the Lagunes, is called the Lido di Palestrino.
It has been artificially connected and secured, in many places, and the
wall of the Lido (literally the beach), though incomplete, like most of
the great and vaunted works of the other hemisphere, and more
particularly of Italy, ranks with the mole of Ancona, and the sea-wall
of Cherbourg. The hundred little islands which now contain the ruins of
what, during the middle ages, was the mart of the Mediterranean, are
grouped together within cannon-shot of the natural barrier. Art has
united with nature to turn the whole to good account; and, apart from
the influence of moral causes, the rivalry of a neighboring town, which
has been fostered by political care, and the gradual filling up of the
waters, by the constant deposit of the streams, it would be difficult to
imagine a more commodious, or a safer haven when entered, than that
which Venice affords, even to this hour.

As all the deeper channels of the Lagunes have been preserved, the city
is intersected in every direction by passages, which from their
appearance are called canals, but which, in truth, are no more than so
many small natural branches of the sea. On the margin of these passages,
the walls of the dwellings arise literally from out of the water, since
economy of room has caused their owners to extend their possessions to
the very verge of the channel, in the manner that quays and