The Grand Canal is to Venice what the Strand is to London, the Rue Saint-Honoré to Paris, and the Alcala to Madrid,--the principal artery for the circulation of the whole city. Its form is that of a double S, reversed, the sweep of which bounds the city around St. Mark’s while the upper point borders upon the isle of Santa-Chiara, and the lower point at the Custom-House, near the canal of the Giudecca. This S is cut about the middle by the bridge of the Rialto. [Illustration: THE FOSCARI PALACE, ITALY.] The Grand Canal of Venice is the most marvellous thing in the world. No other city can present so beautiful, so bizarre and so fairy-like a spectacle: perhaps you may find elsewhere remarkable specimens of architecture, but never placed in such picturesque conditions. Here, every palace has a mirror in which to admire her own beauty, just like a feminine coquette. The superb reality is repeated in a charming reflection. The water lovingly caresses the feet of those beautiful façades whose brows are kissed by a clear light and are rocked in two skies. The little boats and the large barks which can come up close to them seem moored on purpose to produce effective dark spots, or foregrounds for the convenience of scene-painters and water-colourists. In drifting along by the Custom-House, which, with the Palace Giustiniani (to-day the _Hôtel de l’Europe_) marks the entrance of the Grand Canal, throw a glance at those skeleton-like heads of horses sculptured in the square and dumpy cornice which supports the globe of Fortune. Does this peculiar ornament mean that the horse was useless in Venice (you get rid of him at the Custom-House) or rather is it not a pure caprice of ornamentation? This explanation seems to me the best, for I do not wish to fall into the symbolical exaggeration with which I have been reproaching others. I have already described the Salute, which I can see from my window and which does not require any attention after having seen Canaletto’s picture, which is, perhaps, the painter’s masterpiece. But here I experience embarrassment. The Grand Canal is the true Golden Book in which all the Venetian nobility has signed its name upon the monumental façades. Each stone of the walls has a story to tell; each house is a palace; each palace, a masterpiece with a legend: at each stroke of the oar, the gondolier mentions a name which was as well-known at the time of the Crusades as it is to-day; and this on the right and left for a length of more than half a league.