The next palace is the hideous Barbarigo della Terrazza, with a better facade on the Rio S. Polo: now a mosaic company's head-quarters, but once famous for its splendours, which included seventeen Titians, now in Russia; and then the Rio S. Polo and the red Capello Palace where the late Sir Henry Layard made his home and gathered about him those pictures which now, like the Darius, belong to our National Gallery. Next it is the Vendramin, with yellow posts and porphyry enrichment, and then the desolate dirty Querini, and the Bernardo, once a splendid palace but now offices, with its Gothic arches filled with glass. The Rio della Madonnetta here intervenes; then two Dona palaces, the first dating from the twelfth century. A traghetto is here and a pretty calle, and soon we come to one of the palaces which are shown to visitors, the Papadopoli, once the Coccina-Tiepolo, with blue posts and in the spring a Judas-tree red in the garden. My advice to those who visit such palaces as are shown to the public is not to go alone. The rigours of ceremonial can be tempered to a party, and the efficient and discreet French major-domo is less formidable to several visitors than to one. The principal attraction of the Papadopoli Palace is two carnival pictures by Tiepolo; but the visitor is also shown room after room, sumptuous and unliveable in, with signed photographs of crowned heads on ormolu tables. The Rio dei Meloni, where is the Palazzo Albrizzi to which Byron used to resort as a lion, runs by the Papadopoli. At the other corner is the Businello, a nice solid building with two rows of round window-arches. Then the tall decayed Rampinelli and, followed by a calle, the Ramo Barzizza, and next the Mengaldo, with a very choice doorway and arches, now a statuary store; then the yellow Avogadro, now an antiquity dealer's and tenements, with a fondamenta; then a new building, and we reach the fine red palace adjoining the Casa Petrarca, with its ramping garden. These two palaces, which have a sottoportico beneath them leading to S. Silvestro, stand on the site of the palace of the Patriarchs of Grado, who had supreme ecclesiastical power here until the fifteenth century, when the Patriarchate of Venice was founded with a residence near S. Pietro in Castello. From this point a fondamenta runs all the way to the Rialto bridge. The buildings are not of any particular interest, until we come to the last one, with the two arches under it and the fine relief of a lion on the facade: once the head-quarters of the tithe collectors. People have come mostly to speak of the Rialto as though it was the bridge only. But it is the district, of which the bridge is the centre. No longer do wealthy shipowners and merchants foregather hereabouts; for none exist. Venice has ceased to fetch and carry for the world, and all her energies are now confined within her own borders. Enough to live and be as happy as may be! [Illustration: DOORWAY OF S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE]