cy between them and the sea. And thus the
villages seem standing on the air; and, to the east, there is a cluster
of ships that seem sailing on the land; for the sandy line of the Lido
stretches itself between us and them, and we can see the tall white
sails moving beyond it, but not the sea, only there is a sense of the
great sea being indeed there, and a solemn strength of gleaming light in
sky above.

Sec. V. The most discordant feature in the whole scene is the cloud which
hovers above the glass furnaces of Murano; but this we may not regret,
as it is one of the last signs left of human exertion among the ruinous
villages which surround us. The silent gliding of the gondola brings it
nearer to us every moment; we pass the cemetery, and a deep sea-channel
which separates it from Murano, and finally enter a narrow water-street,
with a paved footpath on each side, raised three or four feet above the
canal, and forming a kind of quay between the water and the doors of the
houses. These latter are, for the most part, low, but built with massy
doors and windows of marble or Istrian stone, square-set and barred with
iron; buildings evidently once of no mean order, though now inhabited
only by the poor. Here and there an ogee window of the fourteenth
century, or a doorway deeply enriched with cable mouldings, shows itself
in the midst of more ordinary features; and several houses, consisting
of one story only carried on square pillars, forming a short arcade
along the quay, have windows sustained on shafts of red Verona marble,
of singular grace and delicacy. All now in vain: little care is there
for their delicacy or grace among the rough fishermen sauntering on the
quay with their jackets hanging loose from their shoulders, jacket and
cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some
life in the scene, more than is usual in Venice: the women are sitting
at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses
sifting glass dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one
side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water,
from venders of figs and grapes, and gourds and shell-fish; cries partly
descriptive of the eatables in question, but interspersed with others of
a character unintelligible in proportion to their violence, and
fortunately so if we may judge by a sentence which is stencilled in
black, within a garland, on the whitewashed walls of nearly ever