arrive from Trieste packed with
Austrian tourists awfully arrayed. Some hundreds have to return to
Trieste at 2 o'clock; other hundreds remain till night. The beautiful
word Venezia, which we cheapen but not too cruelly to Venice and the
French soften to Venise, is alas! to Teutonic tongues Venedig.

The Venetians reach the Square first, smart, knowing, confident,
friendly, and cheerful; then the Germans and Austrians, very obviously
trippers; and then, after their hotel dinners, at about quarter past
nine, the English: the women with low necks, the men in white shirts,
talking a shade too loud, monarchs of all they survey. But the
honeymooners are the best--the solicitous young bridegrooms from
Surbiton and Chislehurst in their dinner-jackets and black ties; their
slender brides, with pretty wraps on their heads, here probably for the
last or the first time, and so determined to appear Continental and
tolerant, bless their hearts! They walk round and round, or sit over
their coffee, and would be so happy and unselfconscious and clinging
were it not for the other English here.

The fine republicanism of Venice is nowhere so apparent as on band
nights. Such aristocrats as the city holds (and judging from the
condition of the palaces to-day, there cannot be many now in residence)
either look exactly like the middle classes or abstain from the Piazza.
The prevailing type is the well-to-do citizen, very rarely with his
women folk, who moves among street urchins at play; cigar-end hunters;
soldiers watchful for officers to salute; officers sometimes returning
and often ignoring salutes; groups of slim upright Venetian girls in the
stately black shawls, moving, as they always do, like queens; little
uniformed schoolboys in "crocodiles"; a policeman or two; a party from
the country; a workman with his wife and babies (for though the
Venetians adore babies they see no incongruity in keeping them up till
ten o'clock); epauletted and cockhatted gendarmes; and at intervals,
like ghosts, officials from the arsenal, often alone, in their spotless
white linen.

Every type of Venetian is seen in the Square, save one--the gondolier.
Never have I seen a gondolier there, day or night: not because it is too
grand for him, but it is off his beat. When he has done his work he
prefers the wine shops of his own sestiere. No thought of any want of
welcome would deter him, for Venice is republic to the core. In fact one
might go farther and