For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town, because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the houses, and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or skimming in and out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid of the impression that there was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet, and that the river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water mark on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish.

In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago.  It is easy, then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair ladies—­with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon the rich argosies of Venetian commerce—­with Othellos and Desdemonas, with Iagos and Roderigos—­with noble fleets and victorious legions returning from the wars.  In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless—­forgotten and utterly insignificant.  But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations of the earth.

          “There is a glorious city in the sea;
          The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
          Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed
          Clings to the marble of her palaces. 
          No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
          Lead to her gates!  The path lies o’er the sea,
          Invisible:  and from the land we went,
          As to a floating city—­steering in,
          And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
          So smoothly, silently—­by many a dome,
          Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
          The statues ranged along an azure sky;
          By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
          Of old the residence of merchant kings;
          The fronts of some, tho’ time had shatter’d them,
          Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
          As tho’ the wealth within them had run o’er.”

What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice?  The Bridge of Sighs, of course—­and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark, the Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark.

We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal Palace first—­a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian poetry and tradition.  In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we wearied our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the one thing that strikes all strangers forcibly—­a black square in the midst of a gallery of portraits.