The variety of costume is another very agreeable spectacle at Venice.  Here you meet with Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Moors, Sclavonians and Armenians, all in their respective national costumes.  The first Armenian I met with here was sitting on a stone bench on the Piazza di San Marco, and this brought forcibly to my recollection the Armenian in Schiller’s Ghost-seer.

These Cafes and Casinos on the Piazza are open day and night.  Ices and coffee superiorly made and other refreshments of all kinds at very low prices are to be had.  Some of these casinos are devoted to gaming.  The first families in Venice repair to the Piazza in the evening after the Opera, female as well as male.  They promenade up and down the Piazza or sit down and converse in the Cafes and Casinos till a late hour.  Few go to bed in Venice in the summer time before six In the morning, so that sleep seems for ever banished from the Piazza.  Music and singing goes forward in these casinos, and the ear is often charmed with the sound of those delightful Venetian airs, whose simple melody ravishes the soul.  The Venetian dialect is very pleasing, and scarcely yields in harmony to the Tuscan.  It contains a great many Sclavonic words.  It is the only dialect of Italy that is at all pleasing to my ear, for I do not at all relish the nasal twang and truncated terminations of the Piedmontese and Lombard dialects, nor the semi-barbarous jargon of the Genoese and the Neapolitan and, least of all, the execrable cacophony of the Bolognese.

I visited of course the Arsenal and the Doge’s Palace.  The apartments in the latter are very spacious and ornamented in the Gothic taste of grandeur.  The chamber of the Council is peculiarly magnificent.  There is a good deal of tapestry and some fine paintings and statues:  among the former I particularly noticed an allegorical picture, representing the triumph of Venice over the league of Cambray.  Venice is represented by the winged Lion, and the powers of the Coalition are pourtrayed by various other beasts.  Among the latter is a beautiful group in marble representing Ganymede and the Eagle.  The terror depicted in the countenance of the beautiful boy, and the passion that seems to agitate the Eagle, are surprizingly well pourtrayed.

The principal theatre at Venice, the Teatro Fenice, is not open; but I have visited the other theatres, and among other things witnessed the representation of a new opera, call’d Il Lupo d’Ostende.  The piece itself was rather interesting; but the music was feeble and did not seem to give general satisfaction.  The singing is in general very good at Venice, but in scenery, dresses and decorations the theatres here are far inferior to those of Milan and Naples.

I find the air of Venice very hot and unpleasant, arising from the exhalation from the canals; and it appears to me as if I were on board of an enormous ship.  I begin to pant for terra firma and green fields.