Venice, August 5. 1847. MY DEAR ----. * * * We staid at Verona one clear day: it has very interesting churches, and a noble river, the Adige, "exulting and abounding," as Byron says; and many Shakspearian associations, besides very quaint and mediæval bits of architecture. But my time is waxing short, and a greater attraction was near. So yesterday we _squudged_ ourselves into a merciless omnibus, which carried twelve insiders thirty miles in the space of six hours to the railway at Vicenza; and the said railway brought us on just in time to reach Venice by the last light of day. Very striking indeed is the approach to Venice, on a bridge two miles long over the Lagune, very striking because so appropriate to a city which is like no other. The evening was unfavourable, for it rained, which has scarcely happened to us before; notwithstanding, our excitement was great; I do not think I have felt so much curiosity about a place since I entered Rome nearly thirteen years ago, and could scarcely believe I was there. Though a great part of to-day has been rainy Venice does not disappoint me. The Doge's palace, the piazza, and piazzetta of St. Mark, and his church, are quite unique; so is the great canal, with its host of middle age palaces. We have been to-day both in the pozzi and the piombi, the ancient prisons of the republic, the former terrible for their darkness, the latter for their heat; both seldom disgorging the prisoner save to death; and what a death, at least in its circumstances, and in the case of political offenders. The cells were all cased in wood, with hardly any light; but when the criminal in politics had confessed his fault, and was condemned, he was transferred to another cell in the middle of the night, a foreign priest was admitted, received his confession, and absolved him. The priest issued from the cell, and turned to the left, the criminal to the right, and rounding a corner not a yard off, was placed on a seat, a cord passed round the neck, and strangled. Behind the seat a door opened, a gondola received his corpse (for it is just at the level of the water), carried it to the cemetery, and no one, wife or child, knew more of his destiny than this: that the invisible inquisition of state had laid its hand upon him, and that he _was not_. I said to the old guide, who had a fine Venetian head, "I suppose you do not regret not living in those times?" "But _I do_ regret it," he replied; "Venice was then a republic; there was more commerce, and life was easier; and it was just owing to her wise treatment of criminals that she maintained herself so long; and had she kept that treatment to the end, she would not have fallen: mine was a very ancient Venetian family. It is to foreigners," he added, "that I say all this; writers have greatly exaggerated about these prisons." As I stood on a spot at which hundreds of human beings, during the long course of that