omantic craft, and the poor fellow
has had to do it all himself, and did you hear how he was panting? and
do look at those dark eyes! And there you are! Writing, however,
strictly for unattended male passengers, or for strong-minded ladies,
let me say (having no illusions as to the gondolier) that every gondola
has its tariff, in several languages, on board, and no direct trip,
within the city, for one or two persons, need cost more than one franc
and a half. If one knows this and makes the additional tip sufficient,
one is always in the right and the gondolier knows it.

One of the prettiest sights that I remember in Venice was, one Sunday
morning, a gondolier in his shirt sleeves, carefully dressed in his
best, with a very long cigar and a very black moustache and a flashing
gold ring, lolling back in his own gondola while his small son, aged
about nine, was rowing him up the Grand Canal. Occasionally a word of
praise or caution was uttered, but for the most part they went along
silently, the father receiving more warmth from the consciousness of
successful paternity than we from the sun itself.

Gondoliers can have pride: but there is no pride about a rampino, the
old scaramouch who hooks the gondola at the steps. Since he too was
once a gondolier this is odd. But pride and he are strangers now. His
hat is ever in his hand for a copper, and the transference of your still
burning cigar-end to his lips is one of the most natural actions in the
world.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GRAND CANAL. I: FROM THE DOGANA TO THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, LOOKING TO
THE LEFT

The river of Venice--Canal steamers--Motor boats--Venetian nobility
to-day--The great architects--A desirable enactment--The custom house
vane--The Seminario and Giorgione--S. Maria della Salute--Tintoretto's
"Marriage in Cana"--The lost blue curtain--San Gregorio--The Palazzo
Dario--Porphyry--The story of S. Vio--Delectable homes--Browning in
Venice--S. Maria della Carita.

To me the Grand Canal is the river of Venice--its Thames, its Seine, its
Arno. I think of it as "the river." The rest are canals. And yet as a
matter of fact to the Venetians the rest are rivers--Rio this and Rio
that--and this the canal.

During a stay in Venice of however short a time one is so often on the
Grand Canal that a knowledge of its palaces should come early. For
fifteen centimes one may travel its whole length in a steamboat, and
back again for another fifteen, and there is no