Didst ever see a Gondola?  For fear
      You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly: 
    ’Tis a long covered boat that’s common here,
      Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly. 
    Rowed by two rowers, each call’d “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.

    And up and down the long canals they go,
      And under the Rialto shoot along,
    By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
      And round the theatres, a sable throng,
    They wait in their dusk livery of woe,—­
      But not to them do woeful things belong,
    For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,
    Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done.

Those useful ciceroni in Venice, the Signori Carlo and Sarri, seem to have had Byron’s description in mind.  “She is all black,” they write of the gondola, “everything giving her a somewhat mysterious air, which awakens in one’s mind a thousand various thoughts about what has happened, happens, or may happen beneath the little felze.”

It is pleasant to think that, no matter upon what other Italian experiences the sentiments were founded, the praise of Italy in the following stanzas was written in a room in the Mocenigo Palace, looking over the Grand Canal upon a prospect very similar to that which we see to-day:—­

    With all its sinful doings, I must say,
      That Italy’s a pleasant place to me,
    Who love to see the Sun shine every day,
      And vines (not nailed to walls) from tree to tree,
    Festooned, much like the back scene of a play,
      Or melodrama, which people flock to see,
    When the first act is ended by a dance
    In vineyards copied from the South of France.

    I like on Autumn evenings to ride out,
      Without being forced to bid my groom be sure
    My cloak is round his middle strapped about,
      Because the skies are not the most secure;
    I know too that, if stopped upon my route,
      Where the green alleys windingly allure,
    Reeling with grapes red wagons choke the way,—­
    In England ’twould be dung, dust or a dray.

    I also like to dine on becaficas,
      To see the Sun set, sure he’ll rise to-morrow,
    Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as
      A drunken man’s dead eye in maudlin sorrow,
    But with all Heaven t’himself; the day will break as
      Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow
    That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers
    Where reeking London’s smoky cauldron simmers.

    I love the language, that soft bastard Latin
      Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
    And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
      With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
    And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
      That not a single accent seems uncouth,
    Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
    Which were obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all.