We then returned to our inn to prepare for our departure.  How I regret to leave Venice! not the less because I cannot help it.

Rovigo, Nov. 3. We left Venice in a hurry yesterday, slept at Padua, and travelled this morning through a most lovely country, among the Enganean hills to Rovigo, where we are very uncomfortably lodged at the Albergo di San Marco.

I have not yet recovered my regret at leaving Venice so unexpectedly; though as a residence, I could scarce endure it; the sleepy canals, the gliding gondolas in their “dusk livery of woe”—­the absence of all verdure, all variety—­of all nature, in short; the silence, disturbed only by the incessant chiming of bells—­and, worse than all, the spectacle of a great city “expiring,” as Lord Byron says, “before our eyes,” would give me the horrors:  but as a visitor, my curiosity was not half gratified, and I should have liked to have stayed a few days longer—­perhaps after all, I have reason to rejoice that instead of bringing away from Venice a disagreeable impression of satiety, disgust and melancholy, I have quitted it with feelings of admiration, of deep regret, and undiminished interest.

Farewell, then, Venice!  I could not have believed it possible that it would have brought tears to my eyes to leave a place merely for its own sake, and unendeared by the presence of any one I loved.

As Rovigo affords no other amusement I shall scribble a little longer.

Nothing can be more arbitrary than the Austrian government at Venice.  As a summary method of preventing robberies during the winter months, when many of the gondoliers and fishermen are out of employ, the police have orders to arrest, without ceremony, every person who has no permanent trade or profession, and keep them in confinement and to hard labour till the return of spring.

The commerce of Venice has so much and so rapidly declined, that Mr. H——­ told us when first he was appointed to the consulship, a hundred and fifty English vessels cleared the port, and this year only five.  It should seem that Austria, from a cruel and selfish policy, is sacrificing Venice to the prosperity of Trieste:  but why do I call that a cruel policy, which on recollection I might rather term poetical and retributive justice?

The grandeur of Venice arose first from its trade in salt.  I remember reading in history, that when the king of Hungary opened certain productive salt mines in his dominions, the Venetians sent him a peremptory order to shut them up; and such was the power of the Republic at that time, that he was forced to obey this insolent command, to the great injury and impoverishment of his states.  The tables are now turned; the oppressor has become the oppressed.

The principal revenue derived from Venice is from the tax on houses, there being no land tax.  So rapid was the decay of the place, that in two years seventy houses and palaces were pulled down; the government forbade this by a special law, and now taxes are paid for many houses whose proprietors are too poor to live in them.