Grand Hotel de l'Europe, on the Grand Canal. Grand Hotel d'Italie and Hotel Bauer, with a large terrace, on the Grand Canal.

Hotel de Rome and Pension Suisse, advantageously situated on the Grand Canal.

Hotel Beau Rivage, facing the Lagunes. Hotel d'Angleterre, Quai des Escalrons. Hotel Britannia, first-class hotel, with excellent accommodation.

Grand Hotel Vittoria; Hotel Luna.

Boarding House, 1159, Calle del Luganeglier.

Cafés: Florian and Suttil. English and French papers. Restaurant Francais, over the Café Militaire, Piazza San Marco. Fish here in great variety. Bauer-Grünwald.

Resident English Consul and American Consul. Church of England Service.-Every Sunday forenoon at eleven, at the residence of the chaplain, Palazzo Contarini Scrigni.

Presbyterian Service.-Next door to the American Consulate.

Reading Room.-Piazza St. Marco, in the Procuratie Vecchie, English and other newspapers by the week or month.

Conveyances.-Railway, to Udine and Nabresina enna and Trieste); to Verona and Milan,

"ival at Venice there is often confusion. you alight from the train call out the name of your hotel, and the porter belonging to it will engage a gondola and see to your baggage. Or, proceed to the canal, which is at the front of the station,

engage a gondola, return for your baggage, with a porter, to whom point out your gondola; 5 cents per package is expected as his fee. On leaving Venice (which is called a free port), all baggage is subject to be examined at the station before it is allowed to pass. A fee equal to the number of packages, say from 1 to 2 lire, will save a great deal of annoyance and time.

There are upwards of 4,000 gondolas at Venice. Gondolas, with one boatman, 1 lira the first hour, and 50 cents. for each successive hour; Omnibus gondolas, 25 cents.; ferry across Grand Canal, 6 cents. The gondolas at the railway terminus, one boatman, 2 lire (without luggage, 1 lira), two boatmen, 3 lira; these men load your baggage in the gondola, and deliver it at the door of your apartment, at the hotel. A good gondolier serves as valet de place. The tide rises two or three feet, but the port is gradually drying up.

Steamers to the station; and to Trieste, Ancona, Chioggia; office at the Piazzetta. The P. & O. Company run mail boats from here to Ancona and Brindisi, in connection with the Overland Route.

Post and Telegraph Offices on Piazza St. Marco. Bankers.-Blumenthal and Co., Traghetto. Theatres.-All near St. Mark's and the Rialto. Fenice, or Phoenix; Rossini, or Gallo; Apollo, near S. Luca's; Malibran, near S. Gian Grisostomo. Chemist.-Gampironi. The Capuchins of the Redemption distil a fine liquor, called acqua di melissa. The

The climate is healthy, though moist. saline exhalations create an atmosphere favourable to pulmonary complaints, scrofula, rickets, &c., for which sea-bathing is an excellent antidote. Venice is not a pleasant place when the rain comes down, or storms move the Adriatic. Then boats ply in St. Mark's and one may even get jammed in them under a bridge. fall of the year smells and mosquitoes abound, and cold winds blow from the Alps. Hartshorn or carbolic acid is an antidote for the "crawling animals, skipping animals, humming and flying animals, which then (says Thackeray) all have at the traveller at once.'

At the

Lombardi, Sammicheli, Falconetto, Sansovino, *Chief Objects of Notice.-Architecture, by the Palladio; besides Byzantine artists of an early date. Piazza of St. Mark, Cathedral, Palace, Bridge of Sighs, Campanile, Academy, Scalzi Church, Rialto, Madonna del Orto, S. Salvatore, S. Giorgio Maggiore (Palladio), Redentore Church, S. Sebastiano, S. Stefano, Frari, Scuola. S. Rocco, S. Zanipolo, S. Zaccaria, Arsenal, Salute Church, Fenice Theatre, S. Maria Formosa, Cà d'Oro, S. Trovaso Church, S. Francesa della Vigna (Palladio), Gesuiti Church, and Murano Glass Works.

Paintings by Mantegna. G. Bellini, Vivarini, Palma Vecchio, Titian (the Assumption), Pordenone, Veronese, Palma Giovane, Padovanino, S. Ricci, Bordone, Bassano, Del Piombo, Tintoretto, P. and Canaletto.

Sculpture by the Lombardi, Sansovino, and Canova, who was born and died in Venetian territory. Old furniture and canalettos are two branches of manufacture carried on here.

Venice is outside the lagoon, at the mouth of the Brenta, which, at high water, is a lake of some few feet depth; but at low water (the fall being about 2 feet) offers only a number of banks of sand and weed, in the middle of which are the streets, or canals, practicable for small boats or gondolas only. This lagoon, 5 miles long and 1 to 2 broad, is shut in from the sea by a tongue of land called the Lido, which has three fortified entrances.

The

About 150 Canals cut up the city into seventy or eighty little islands. The largest, called Canale Grande, and crossed by the Rialto Bridge, winds through the city in the form of an S. Another, called Canale Giudecca, divides the city from the suburbs of Guidecca Island. Near the north end of the Canale Grande is a small branch, called Cannareggio, leading towards Mestre. The smaller canals are joined together by upwards of 300 short Bridges, to facilitate the communication. houses are founded on millions of piles, their front or back being turned to a canal. Each door has a flight of steps to the water, and the gondolas are moored to the carved and painted side-posts. Drinking water is got from 180 public cisterns, supplied from the mainland by pipes laid along the railway, or from artesian wells, sunk in 1847. Venice comprises six sestieri, or administrative divisions, and has forty-one open places, of which S. Marco, or St. Mark, is the finest; twenty-nine parish churches, besides the patriarchal church, the churches of the Greeks, Armenians, and Protestants, and seven synagogues.

It has lost the glory and commercial importance it enjoyed in past times, when it boasted of twentyfour ships of the line and 200 armed galleys. It had a Bank (so called) as early as 1157. During 1815-17, upwards of seventy old palaces had been demolished by their owners, and many are still deserted, or converted into hotels and warehouses. Books are printed here. It is a free port (so-called) since 1829, but its harbour is gradually filling up.

The last scene in its fall is described in Daru's Histoire. Out of 537 patricians, only 200 at most refused to vote for the Treaty of May, 1797, which transferred the Venetian territory to Austria. The Doge's sword was received by an apothecary, who bore the historical name of Dandolo. The Golden Book and the Ducal ensigns were burnt, and as the French marched out the Austrians marched in.

The latest important event in its history was the revolution of 1848, when the Austrian garrison was driven out, and the Republic of St. Mark proclaimed under Manin and Tommaseo. On the defeat of Charles Albert, it was attacked by Radetzky and Haynau, and Venice once more came under the iron rule of Austria. But now a better state of things prevails; and here the King of Italy and the Austrian Emperor met as friends on the 5th

of April, 1873. A statue of Manin stands in Campo di S. Paterniano.

To the traveller who sees it for the first time, Venice presents a curious spectacle, with its marble palaces, buildings, and spires rising out of the water. It was begun in this manner when the ravages of Alaric and Attila (407-52) made the people fly from Aquileia, Padua, &c., on the mainland (which was called Venetia), and settle here, round a church built on the rivo alto, or Rialto. There are a few narrow quays and dry alleys between tall dark houses, where you may walk on foot, and where shops for meat, vegetables, jewellery, &c., are found, but they are not suitable for carriages and horses, which, being useless here, Their place is supplied by the Gondola, a gloomy-looking, high-prowed boat, shaped something like the lord mayor's barge. The word is of doubtful origin. It is first mentioned at Avignon, 12th century, and at Venice, in the Cronico di Altino, 1200.

are never seen.

The favourite colour of the gondola is sable. It is a

"long covered boat that's common here,

Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly,
Rowed by two rowers, each called gondolier.

It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,

Where none can make out what you say or do."-Byron. Some are used as floating shops, and even the beggars go about in gondolas. Gondoliers (called barcaroli) are found at several points, or traghetti, where the traffic is greatest. Though useful, and at times necessary, to reach certain quarters, and obtain good points of view, yet, the canals being bridged, every part of the city may be reached on foot, though footways are not to be found on the sides of all the canals. A steam gondola runs to the station.

In spite of its aquatic advantages, and the cheap convenience of its gondolas, the visitor, "accustomed to expatiate on terra firma," may soon grow impatient of the "moated imprisonment of a town where one's walks are incessantly crossed by a canal, and the thread of talk or thinking is cut at the steep steps of a bridge."-LORD BROUGHTON'S Italy.

CANALE GRANDE, or GRAND CANAL. Itinerary of objects to be noticed in going from the quay of St. Mark's to the railway station, 3 miles long, by gondola. The palaces marked * are in the pointed or Gothic style. The style of the Lombardi school is marked by richness and elegance. The palaces stand on massive stone basements of a simple uniform character, rising out of the sea, "but above the water they are as various as their architects. Some display the light elegance of Sansovino, others the exuberant ornament of Longhena, and a few the correct beauty of Palladio."-Forsyth. Most of them have two er three gates, with steps to the water, in the middle of their fronts, over which are finely decorated balconies and arcades, and the windows are generally arched, either Gothic pointed, or circular.

"Whilst other Italian cities have each ten or twelve prominent structures on which their claim to architectural fame is based, Venice numbers her specimens by hundreds, and the residence of the simple citizen is often as artistic as the palace of the proudest noble. No other city possesses such a school of architectural art as applied to domestic purposes; and if we look for types from which to originate a style suitable to our modern wants, it is among the Venetian examples of the early part of the sixteenth century."-Fergusson. The churches are profusely ornamented with marble, porphyry, alabaster, agate, jasper, mosaics, &c., more remarkable for richness than good taste.

"Canaletto and Stanfield are miraculous in their truth; Turner is very noble; but the reality itself is beyond all description of pen or pencil. I never saw the thing before that I should be afraid to describe; but to tell what Venice is I feel to be an impossibility."-Dickens, 1844.

The canals are "water streets" without footways on the sides. "You may (says Lord Broughton) from the back of most houses, and sometimes from the front, step from the hall door into your boat at once, and may row through the city almost the whole day without suspecting there are any streets in it; or you may wander through innumerable lanes and narrow alleys, like those of

London, without coming on a single canal or seeing the water once." The profound quiet of the canals and streets at night is very striking.

We shall notice the best buildings in a series of Tours which may be done on foot, or in gondola, according to circumstances, and may be varied at pleasure. The charge for a gondola is about 4s. a day of 10 hours, 30 lire a week.

The great point of attraction is the square of S. Marco, or St. Mark (the patron saint), on the south side of Venice, which, with the ancient cathedral and its belfry, the great palace of the Doge, the Moorish arcades and coffee houses, &c., figure so picturesquely in every view of this marvellous old city.

FIRST TOUR.

*Piazza S. Marco. This piazza or square is surrounded by magnificent edifices, all valuable as historical monuments of the rise and progress of the fine arts from the tenth century to the present day. On the east side are St. Mark's Cathedral, with its campanile and three pedestals for the Venetian flags; on the north side, the Procuratorie Vecchie and the Orologio Tower. The west side occupies the site of S. Geminiano's Church. On the south are the Procuratie and the Libreria, now the Royal Palace.

The dimensions of this piazza are about 580 feet Long by an average breadth of 230 feet. The Piazzetta (or little square), 320 feet by 150 feet, runs from the campanile down to the Mole at the water side, between the Doge's Palace on the east side and the Zecca on the west. On the Mole, or Quay, are the Colonne, or two pillars of St. Mark and St. Theodore, from which the quay runs past the Ponte della Paglia to the Riva dei Schiavoni and the Albergo Reale (formerly the Manimocenigo Palace), towards the arsenal, &c. On the three bronze pedestals (by Leopardi, of the sixteenth century) in front of St. Mark's-now carrying the Italian colours-the three standards of the subject kingdoms of Cyprus, Candia, and Morea used to fly. The Torre dell' Orologio, or clock-tower, at the corner of the Merceria, was built 1494 by P. Lombardo. It bears an astronomical clock, marked with the 24 hours, as usual in Italy; which has a gold and blue face, made by the Rinaldis of Reggio, and repaired in 1755. Two bronze Moors strike the hours, and above these are a bronze Virgin and the Lion of St. Mark. When the clock strikes two all the pigeons come down to be fed.

The picturesque Cathedral or *Duomo of S. Marco is Greek in shape, and purely Byzantine (or Constantinople) in style, having been begun in 976 by artists from that city, and finished 1071. It is supposed to have been copied from a church at Alexandria. The internal decorations, porticoes, &c., were finished in the next century. It is only 205 feet long by 164 feet through the transepts. It is eccentric when compared with later and more regular patterns, but it is exceedingly rich in detail, from the immense profusion of beautiful Oriental

marbles, bar-reliefs, and other sculpture, in bronze, gilding and mosaic, executed between the tenth and eighteenth centuries. The tessellated pavement is slightly undulating like the waves of the

sea.

It is surmounted by a heap of ten or twelve oval domes round the five larger centre ones, besides several pinnacles. The iron tie round the chief dome is called Sansovino's Girdle. They count about 500 pillars of verde antico, porphyry, serpentine, veined and other rare marbles; the exterior sides, basement, and pavement are encrusted with rich materials; in fact, all that is not gold, or bronze, or mosaic, is covered with Oriental marbles.

The façade presents in its recesses a numerous collection of columns, as valuable for the quality and variety of the marbles as for their Greek workmanship. There are five large gold mosaics in the lower recesses. The first two (to the right) represent the Raising of the Bones of St. Mark, at Alexandria (whence they were first brought), by P. Vecchio, 1650; the middle one is the Last Judgment, by P. Spagna; in the next is the Doge's reception of the Patron Saint's Relics, by L. de Pazzo, after S. Ricci; and the last is an old mosaic of the sixteenth century of the church itself.

The four mosaics in the upper vaults are the Descent from the Cross, the Descent into Limbo (or hell), the Resurrection, and the Ascension; all by L. Gaetano, from designs by M. Verona, about 1617. On one of the four bronze gates (to the left on entering) is the name of their artist, "M.CCC. Bertucius, Aurifex, Venetus, me fecit;" he being a Venetian gold worker of the day. In this façade are the famous four Horses of St. Mark (weighing only 1,860 lbs.), by Lysippus, bronzed, but preserving traces of their former gilding. They are the same which, after being cast at Chio and transferred to Athens, were sent to ornament the triumphal arches of Nero and Trajan, at Rome. They accompanied Theodosius to Byzantium, and in the from which they were moved to Paris, by Napoleon, thirteenth century were transported to Venice; to the top of the Arc du Carrousel, to be again returned in 1815 to their old place at Venice. This is alluded to in the gold inscription on the church porch. As with the famous Coronation Stone at Westminster, possession has been taken of them at various times, as an emblem of power or conquest. A near view should be had from the staircase.

Above the great door of the vestibule is St. Mark in his pontificals, by the Zuccati, after Titian's designs, in 1545. Below him are seven small mosaics of the tenth century, representing the Crucifixion and Burial of Christ, the work of the same artists, 1549. On two crescents to the right and left above the principal entrance, are the Resurrection of Lazarus, and the Burial of the Virgin, also by the Zuccati. In the tower side corners, the Four Evangelists; in the upper, eight Prophets; on the frieze, the Angels and Doctors; all by the same. "High up on the outside of the church we one evening observed two small lamps burn

ing, and on enquiry found they had been burning there about 200 years, in memory of a poor man who had been put to death for a murder, though he died protesting his innocence. After his execution, another man on his death-bed confessing that he had committed the deed and that the person unjustly put to death had been entirely ignorant of it, the Senate ordered these lamps to be kept burning as a sign of the innocence of the poor man, and in expiation for his unmerited death."-MISS CATLOW's Sketching Rambles.

To the right of the vestibule, in the Zeno Chapel, is an altar by the Lombardi, ornamented with a profusion of bronzes and marbles. Four large columns may be noticed of the greatest delicacy, and three bronzes of the Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter. In the middle are the bronze effigies of Cardinal J. B. Zeno.

A little further inside the principal door is one of the most ancient mosaics in the church, Christ between the Virgin and St. Mark, supposed to be as old as the eleventh century.

The great Arch of the Nave is encrusted with gold and marble mosaics in five divisions; the subjects taken from the Revelation. In the middle is Christ surrounded by seven candlesticks, by F. Zuccato, 1570. The vault of the vestibule, which is in a line with this arch, and is prolonged to the exterior façade, is equally full of mosaics, in five compartments. In this part is a porphyry holy water basin, the base of which is a Grecian altar, carved with dolphins and tridents, surmounted by another bas-relief, of children; the latter a work of the fifteenth century.

To the right of this is the Baptistery, ornamented with marbles, bas-reliefs, and other carvings, and with mosaics, executed for the most part about 1850. A mosaic of the Baptism of Christ, which covers the wall opposite to the door opening to the Piazetta, is said to be as old as the tenth or twelfth century. At the altar are a marble Virgin and two Angels; a marble chair, believed to have been carved at Alexandria; a bas-relief of the Baptism of Christ; and two bas-reliefs of St. Theodore and St. George. In the middle of the chapel is a large marble basin, with a bronze cover, ornamented with bas-reliefs, by two pupils of Sansovino, both of the sixteenth century; and a bronze statue of St. John the Baptist. On the walls are monuments of Doge Saranzo, and of Doge Enrico Dandolo, a successful leader in war against the Turks, and the writer of an excellent Chronicle of Venice, or History of the Republic, down to 1342.

In the right transept of the church is the Oratory of the Cross, formed by six rich columns, one of which is of rare black and white porphyry. On the wall to the left are delicate marbles, and a mosaic of Paradise, attributed to L. Gaetano, from designs by Pillotti.

In the Left Aisle (entering from the great door), is the Chapel of the Madonna de Mascoli, with a beautifully sculptured marble altar, of the thir

teenth or fourteenth century, and some excellent mosaics of the History of the Virgin, by M. Ciombono.

The Chapel of S. Isidore is covered with mosaics of the fourteenth century, representing the life of this saint. On the wall above the door is the genealogical tree of the Virgin, by N. Bianchini, from Salviati's designs, 1542. On the marble screen which separates it from the choir are fourteen marble statues of the Virgin and Apostles, carved in 1394 by the brothers J. and P. Massegna, of Venice. At the sides of the entrance to the choir are two rich marble seats, supported by costly pillars, and near them two small marble altars of delicate carving, said to be by P. Lombardo, 1470.

In the Choir itself are many seats ornamented with rich inlaid work, 1536; and two desks, with six bronze bas-reliefs of the life of St. Mark, by J. Sansovino. On the interior balustrades, near the high altar, are eight bronze figures-the Four Evangelists, by Sansovino; and Four Doctors, supposed to be by J. Calliari, or P. da Udine, 1614. The High Altar stands under a baldacchino or canopy, on four pillars of Greek marble, carved with various subjects of sacred history. This altar is remarkable for its two ancient paintings, one serving as a covering to the other. The first is in the Greek style, in oil, on wood, in fourteen divisions, relating to the Life of Christ, by Maestro Paolo, and his sons, Lucca and Giovanni, 1346, whose names are inscribed on it. He is the oldest of the Venetian school of painters; the next to him being Lorenzo of Venice, whose work is to be seen at the Academy. The second altar-piece, called the Pala d'Oro, is a Byzantine enamel on gold and silver plating, set off by chased work, pearls, cameos, and other precious stones. Behind the high altar is another altar, on clear spiral alabaster pillars; with bas-reliefs, in marble and gilt bronze; all by Sansovino.

The bas-reliefs in white marble, and on the bronze gate of the sacristy, are by Sansovino. They took him about twenty years to execute. Among the heads are those of Titian, P. Aretino, and Sansovino himself. The sacristy is richly adorned with mosaics and inlaid work, by Zuccato, Schiavone, &c., between 1520 and 1530.

In a disused chapel, opposite Madonna de Mascoli, is the Treasury of St. Mark, containing an assortment of the most esteemed relics; among them are pieces of the "true" cross, with a nail, the sponge, and the reed used at the Crucifixion; the knife which cut the bread at the Lord's Supper; the thigh-bone of St. John the Baptist; and innumerable relics of the patron saint; besides various trophies brought home from the taking of Constantinople. All the Doges were buried in St. Mark's before Martin Faliero's treason; but he and his successors were buried in their own churches. The Crypt is 81 feet by 91 feet.

"St. Mark's is a very singular pile. Though most of its materials came from Greece, their