“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs;
      A palace and a prison on each hand: 
      I saw from out the wave her structures rise
      As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: 
      A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
      Around me, and a dying glory smiles
      O’er the far times, when many a subject land
      Look’d to the winged lion’s marble piles,
    Where Venice sat in state, throned in her hundred isles.”

But, whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene might, under other circumstances, have inspired me with, the mood of mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the very reverse of what might have been expected.  The exuberant gaiety of my companion, and the recollections,—­any thing but romantic,—­into which our conversation wandered, put at once completely to flight all poetical and historical associations; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one of uninterrupted merriment and laughter till we found ourselves at the steps of my friend’s palazzo on the Grand Canal.  All that had ever happened, of gay or ridiculous, during our London life together,—­his scrapes and my lecturings,—­our joint adventures with the Bores and Blues, the two great enemies, as he always called them, of London happiness,—­our joyous nights together at Watier’s, Kinnaird’s, &c. and “that d——­d supper of Rancliffe’s which ought to have been a dinner,”—­all was passed rapidly in review between us, and with a flow of humour and hilarity, on his side, of which it would have been difficult, even for persons far graver than I can pretend to be, not to have caught the contagion.

He had all along expressed his determination that I should not go to any hotel, but fix my quarters at his house during the period of my stay; and, had he been residing there himself, such an arrangement would have been all that I most desired.  But, this not being the case, a common hotel was, I thought, a far readier resource; and I therefore entreated that he would allow me to order an apartment at the Gran Bretagna, which had the reputation, I understood, of being a comfortable hotel.  This, however, he would not hear of; and, as an inducement for me to agree to his plan, said that, as long as I chose to stay, though he should be obliged to return to La Mira in the evenings, he would make it a point to come to Venice every day and dine with me.  As we now turned into the dismal canal, and stopped before his damp-looking mansion, my predilection for the Gran Bretagna returned in full force; and I again ventured to hint that it would save an abundance of trouble to let me proceed thither.  But “No—­no,” he answered,—­“I see you think you’ll be very uncomfortable here; but you’ll find that it is not quite so bad as you expect.”