I left Venice yesterday morning, on my way home, alone, I am sorry to say, for my two companions proceed to Bologna and Florence, and will not be back in England till the end of September. It seems to me quite a different thing now I have to go by myself; and the only comforting thought is, that every step brings me nearer home. I am not likely to lose much time on the road, and I hope to be with you on the day I mentioned in my last; viz., Tuesday, the 26th.--I meant to have written to you again from Venice, but our days went swiftly there, and when we returned in the evening I was too much tired for the exertion. Venice will remain as a strange and beautiful dream in my remembrance. After all that one had heard it required sight to realise a city rising out of the water on all sides, whose streets are canals, whose doors open by flights of stairs on the water, whose carriages are gondolas, and the most agreeable kind of carriage I ever was in; for one reclines in them most lazily, like lotos eaters, and sees palace and church, and all sorts of strange-looking heterogeneous buildings sweep gently by, in a sort of sleep; while every now and then comes a bit of semi-eastern architecture, rich ogee windows, and arcades which perfectly delighted me, and quite as often we wound through narrow, dirty, motionless canals, that seemed just suited to a purpose they no doubt often served,--the drowning troublesome bodies. But one sight we saw which you would have thoroughly entered into. On Sunday afternoon, as we got into a gondola, the gondolier informed us that he could not take us at the accustomed fare that evening, from six to eight, for it was his especial harvest time, that all the world went to the music on the Grand Canal. Accordingly, after looking for some time at the Euganean hills and Friuli mountains, which are a glorious sight to the north of Venice, we bade him take us to meet the music on the Grand Canal. This is about 200 feet wide, winds most beautifully through the city, having the Rialto bridge about the middle, and is bordered by the finest palaces. We soon met the Archduke's gondola, and behind it a great crowd of others covering the whole breadth of the canal, shouldering and elbowing each other, the gondoliers shouting, watching every one else's gondola as well as their own, applauding or blaming, as might be. Each boat has one man on a little covered deck near the stern, where he balances himself admirably, and mainly directs the boat, serving both as oar and rudder, and another not quite so near to the prow. In the middle ladies recline on cushions, and no Hyde Park carriage serves to set off beauty and fashion so well as those wicked barks of Venice, which have screened so many tricks both of man and woman, for so many hundred years. On this occasion, however, the part of the boat which serves for shelter, coolness, or concealment, as it may be,--that is, a sort of cabin, covered with crape, is taken away, and the cushions