more interesting
half-hour's voyage in the world. The guide books, as a rule, describe
both banks from the same starting-point, which is usually the Molo. This
seems to me to be a mistake, for two reasons. One is that even in a
leisurely gondola "all'ora" one cannot keep pace with literature bearing
on both sides at once, and the other is that since one enters Venice at
the railway station it is interesting to begin forthwith to learn
something of the city from that point and one ought not to be asked to
read backwards to do this. In this book therefore the left bank, from
the custom house to the railway station, is described first, and then
the other side returning from the station to the Molo.

The Grand Canal has for long had its steamers, and when they were
installed there was a desperate outcry, led by Ruskin. To-day a similar
outcry is being made against motor-boats, with, I think, more reason, as
I hope to show later. But the steamer is useful and practically
unnoticeable except when it whistles. None the less it was an
interesting experience in April of this year (1914) to be living on the
Grand Canal during a steamer strike which lasted for several days. It
gave one the quieter Venice of the past and incidentally turned the
gondoliers into plutocrats.

But there is a great difference between the steamers and the motor-boat.
The steamer does not leave the Grand Canal except to enter the lagoon;
and therefore the injustice that it does to the gondolier is limited to
depriving him of his Grand Canal fares. The motor-boat can supersede the
gondola on the small canals too. It may be urged that the gondolier has
only to become an engineer and his position will be as secure. That may
be true; but we all know how insidious is the deteriorating influence of
petrol on the human character. The gondolier even now is not always a
model of courtesy and content; what will he be when the poison of
machinery is in him?

But there are graver reasons why the motor-boat should be viewed by the
city fathers with suspicion. One is purely aesthetic, yet not the less
weighty for that, since the prosperity of Venice in her decay resides in
her romantic beauty and associations. The symbol of these is the gondola
and gondolier, indivisible, and the only conditions under which they can
be preserved are quietude and leisure. The motor-boat, which is always
in a hurry and which as it multiplies will multiply hooters and
whistles, must n