sunsets alone are beautiful.  Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come.  And beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface.  There is no deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.

VII.—­AT THE LIDO

Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent.  It has two points for approach.  The more distant is the little station of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto.  With an ebb-tide, the water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like a river.  There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy, above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither.  The Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the personages of a century ago.  For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by pleasure-seekers.  An artist even now will select its old-world quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant’ Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant’ Elisabetta offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour’s contemplation of a limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant’ Elisabetta.  Our boat is left at the landing-place.  We saunter across the island and back again.  Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with them in the shade of the little osteria’s wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are welcome to the artist’s soul.  I have always held that in our modern life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense—­that sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us.  It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously felt.  Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality.  The keynote of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck.  A melody emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm.  The landscapes we have painted on our brain, no longer lack their central figure.  The life proper to the complex conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail, judged by this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.