Gouache, long resident in Rome, being asked what he knows of Roman families, replies, “Their palaces are historic. Their equipages are magnificent. That is all foreigners see of Roman families.” Who that has seen the great Leo carried through the grand sala, a vision of intellectual loveliness, will not recall it as he reads? “The wonderful face that seemed to be carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled and slowly turned from side to side as it passed by. The thin, fragile hand moved unceasingly, blessing the people.” “True,” said my friend, “his pages are delicious bits of the dead past. At every sentence we halt and find a memory. He has the sense of art, if Maupassant’s definition of it as ‘the profound and delicious enjoyment which rises to your heart before certain pages, before certain phrases’ be correct.” Dinner was finished. A check, Paulo. We rose and went. CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. Venice, that lovely city by the sea, has been described a thousand times by the painter’s brush, by the poet’s pen. It is the last bit of poetry left to us, in the ever increasing dulness of this world—the only place that one would expect to meet a goblin or a genial Irish fairy. It is not the intention of this paper to describe the queenly city. More than a thousand kodak fiends are daily doing that work, with the eagerness of a money-lender and the artistic sense of a fence painter. A city may, however, have many attractions, other than its magic beauty; nay, even a dull uninteresting place may become interesting from some great historic event that happened there, or from some impression caught and treasured in memory’s store-house. Venice has a charm for me other than the poetry that lurks in its every stone; it was there that I first dipped into one of those rare hooks whose charms grow around the heart soft and green as a vine-tendril.