In another, and rather desolate, canal in the outskirts of the city, wider than usual, and with a footpath at the side of the water, instead of having the walls of the houses running down into it, and forming its boundary, is the Palazzo Cicogna, which I remember gratefully because it is one of the few exceptions to the general rule of regularity. The whole design of this building is very irregular: a detached shaft at one angle supports a portion of the house which overhangs and forms a sort of open passage-way; to the right of this opening is a four-light shafted window, and then a plain wall pierced with two windows, each of a single ogee trefoiled light. The upper story has two single windows over the others, whilst over the larger windows and the passage-way is a large window conspicuous from its size and the peculiarity of its tracery. It is of six lights divided by very good shafts, and properly arched with pure and good trefoiled arches; above these, and inclosed within the perpetual indented or billeted string-course, is a complicated system of intersecting circles pierced at regular intervals with quatrefoils. The section of this upper part is very much thinner than that of the arches beneath. This window is in a most shaken and decayed state, and not likely, I fear, to be long preserved. The whole elevation is finished with a shallow cornice supported on corbels. A doorway on the Ponte San Tomà is quite worthy of a visit. It has the usual square opening of reddish marble, and above this is a pointed arch of moulded brick; the tympanum is filled in with a square carved centre panel, and the ground beyond this with quatrefoils of brick or tile very prettily disposed, and quite deserving of illustration. And now let us go back to the Grand Canal; we shall enter it by the side of the Palazzo Foscari, which, with two other contiguous palaces, occupies quite the post of honour at the bottom of the principal reach of the canal, and commands the whole view of its noble and ever-busy way to where the arch of the Rialto and another bend in the canal close in the view. We will go a few strokes only towards the Rialto, and then turn round to look at the palaces we have just passed. They certainly form a most magnificent group, and are in every way worthy of their conspicuous position. The palace at the junction of the two waters is that of the Foscari; the others belonged, I believe, to two of the Giustiniani family; and but a few yards up the canal, which runs by the side of the former, is one of the smaller remnants of Byzantine work already referred to. This group is so well known as scarcely to need any description--suffice it to say, therefore, that throughout these palaces the windows are shafted, and the glass is fixed in wooden frames behind the stonework. This is beyond all doubt what we ought to do; it is the only sensible and rational mode of adapting the system of traceried and shafted windows for domestic purposes, and