Before leaving the subject of Venetian love-songs it may be as well to glance at a few points characteristic of the popular mind which it has not been convenient to touch upon in following the Venetian youth and maiden from the _prima radice_ of their love to its consecration at the altar. What, for instance, does the Venetian singer say of poverty and riches?--for there is no surer test of character than the way of regarding money and the lack of it. It is taken pretty well for granted at Venice as elsewhere, that inequality of fortune is a bar to matrimony. The poor girl says to her better-to-do lover, "Thou passest this way sad and grieving, thou thinkest to speak to my father, and on thy finger thou dost carry a little ring. But thy thought does not fall in with my thought, and thy thought is not worth a gazette. Thou art rich and I am a poor little one!" Here the girl puts all faith in the good intentions of her suitor: it is not his fault if her poverty divides them; it is the nature of things, against which there is no appeal. But there is more than one song that betrays the suspicion that if a girl grows poor her lover will be only too eager and ready to desert her. "My lady mother has always told me that she who falls into poverty loses her lover; loses friend and loses hope. The purse does not sing when there is no coin in it." Still, on the whole, a more high-minded view prevails. "Do not look to my being a poor man," says one lover, Che povata no guasta gentilissa, --"for poverty does not spoil or prevent gentle manners." A girl sings, "All tell me that I am poor, the world's honour is my riches; I am poor, I am of fair fame; poor both of us, let us make love." One is reminded of "how the good wife taught her daughter" in the old English poem of the fifteenth century: I pray the, my dere childe, loke thou bere the so well That alle men may seyen thou art so trewe as stele; Gode name is golde worth, my leve childe! A brave little Venetian maiden cries: "How many there are who desire fortune! and I, poor little thing, desire it not. This is the fortune I desire, to wed a youth of twenty-one years." One lover pines for riches, but only that he may offer them to his beloved: "Fair Marieta, I wish to make my fortune, to go where the Turk has his cradle, and work myself nearly to death, so that afterwards I may come back to thee, my fair one, and marry thee." Finally, a town youth says that if his country love has but a milk-pail for her dowry, what matters? De dota la me da quel viso belo!