the Emperor of Austria.  The first business was to get a gondola for ourselves and luggage; thus, at the very first reducing to the character of a mere cab that picturesque species of conveyance—­I, the conductor of the party, wondering all the time how much those two cowled villains would charge me.  Seated there with my two ladies, we speedily proceeded along the Grand Canal towards the hotel last mentioned, to try if we could obtain accommodation in it.  It was curious to land from a boat at the steps of a house, and walk from the sea into the hall.  It was dazzling to see the splendour of the building, with its fine marble vestibule within, and its superb staircases.  We did not find in it, however, exactly the range of rooms we required, and we after all returned along the canal, and tried the Hôtel de l’Europe, a similar, but somewhat plainer house, where we got apartments to our mind.

I was curious at first to study the arrangements of houses and streets in Venice.  Here I found that what had once been the palace of a noble, presented, first, a ground-floor about three feet above the medium level of the Adriatic, composed of a broad vestibule crossing through from front to rear, with the inferior apartments on each side; second, a floor of good apartments, with an open hall in the centre right over the vestibule—­this hall adorned with pictures; third, a similar good floor, with another hall in the centre, which had been the banqueting or dining-room, and was now used as the salle-a-manger of the hotel—­and this salle had balconied windows at one end looking out upon the canal.  There was, I suppose, a fourth floor of inferior rooms, but there I never had occasion to be.  Most of the rooms, looking out at the sides of the building into narrow lanes, were ill-lighted:  only those having windows to the front were light or cheerful.  The walls, staircases, and floors, were all of marble—­the proportions large, and the decorations elegant.  The date, ‘Jan. 1676,’ appeared over an inner door in the salle.

A side-door in the rear of the house gave me exit for a walk into the town.  I found myself in a paved lane, here called a calle, with good houses on each side.  It led me into a wider lane, which had all the characters of a street, excepting that it was comparatively narrow, and only traversed by people on foot.  Here I found shops of many kinds, but almost all on a small scale; as also many stalls for the sale of fruit and other petty articles.  Following this way to the right, I soon came to the outside of the great square, which is the principal public place in the city.  It was but necessary to go through a wide passage, to find myself in the Piazza—­that well-known paved and arcaded quadrangle, which we have seen so often in pictures; the far extremity being closed by the singular church of St Mark, while close by rose the lofty campanile and the three tall flag-staffs.  We sauntered for an hour about this grand central region, viewing