The Dogana, as seen from Venice and from the water, is as familiar a sight almost as S. Mark's or the Doges' Palace, with its white stone columns, and the two giants supporting the globe, and the beautiful thistledown figure holding out his cloak to catch the wind. Everyone who has been to Venice can recall this scene and the decisive way in which the Dogana thrusts into the lagoon like the prow of a ship of which the Salute's domes form the canvas. But to see Venice from the Dogana is a rarer experience. No sooner does one round the point--the Punta della Salute--and come to the Giudecca canal than everything changes. Palaces disappear and shipping asserts itself. One has promise of the ocean. Here there is always a huddle of masts, both of barges moored close together, mostly called after either saints or Garibaldi, with crude pictures of their namesakes painted on the gunwale, and of bigger vessels and perhaps a few pleasure yachts; and as likely as not a big steamer is entering or leaving the harbour proper, which is at the far end of this Giudecca canal. And ever the water dances and there are hints of the great sea, of which the Grand Canal, on the other side of the Dogana, is ignorant. The pavement of the Zaterre, though not so broad as the Riva, is still wide, and, like the Riva, is broken by the only hills which the Venetian walker knows--the bridges. The first building of interest to which we come is the house, now a hotel, opposite a little alfresco restaurant above the water, which bears a tablet stating that it was Ruskin's Venetian home. That was in his later days, when he was writing _Fors Clavigera_; earlier, while at work on _The Stones of Venice_, he had lived, as we have seen, near S. Zobenigo. Ruskin could be very rude to the Venetians: somewhere in _Fors_ he refers to the "dirty population of Venice which is now neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor fisherman," and he was furious alike with its tobacco and its steamboats; yet for all that, if ever a distinguished man deserved honour at the hands of a city Ruskin deserves it from Venice. _The Stones of Venice_ is such a book of praise as no other city ever had. In it we see a man of genius with a passion for the best and most sincere work devoting every gift of appraisement, exposition, and eulogy, fortified by the most loving thoroughness and patience, to the glory of the city's architecture, character, and art.