Some of the many writers upon Venice have found the scene "theatrical"; others assert that the influence of Venice is sad, while others again declare that the city provokes hilarity of spirits in a magical way. Whatever the nature of the spell, it is strong, and few escape it. Ruskin, Byron, the Brownings, and Henry James, are among the souls to whom Venice has appealed with the force of a personality. The spirit of Venice has been felt by thousands of travellers. Its pictures--for every street is a picture--remain deeply graven on the mind's tablet. Perhaps there is nothing made by man to float upon the waters more graceful in its lines than a gondola. To think of Venice, is to recall these gliding, swan-like, silent craft, that ply upon the innumerable waterways. Like ghosts by night they steal along in the deep shadows of the palaces, impelled by boatmen whose every attitude is a study in lissome grace. To lie in a gondola, while the attendant noiselessly propels the stately skiff with his pliant oar, is to realise romance and the perfection of leisurely locomotion. What can be said of the sunsets, the almost garish colouring of sea and sky, and the witchery of reflection upon tower and roof? What can be written for the thousandth time of the resplendent churches, the rich gilding, the noble façades, the hundred picturesque windings of the canals between houses, each one of them a subject for the artist's brush? Is there any other city that grips us in every sense like Venice? The eyes and the mind grow dazed and bewildered with the beauty and the colour, till the scene seems almost unreal, a fantasy of the brain under the influence of a drug. The student of life and the philosopher will find here matter for cogitation, tinged maybe with seriousness, even sadness. Venetian history is not all glorious, and the city to-day has its social evils, like every other populous place on the globe. There are beggars, many of them, artistic beggars, no doubt; but they are often diseased and always unclean. Yet even the dirty faces of the alleys, in this city of loveliness, have, according to artists, a value and a harmony. There is the same obvious, sordid poverty here as in London or Manchester. But the dress of the people, even if ragged, is bright, and the faces, even though wrinkled and haggard, fit the scene and the setting in the estimate of the painter. If your habit is analytic and critical, you will find defects in the modern life of Venice that cannot be hidden. The city is not prosperous in our British sense of the word. There is an air of decayed grandeur, an impression that existence in this town of exquisite art is not happiness for the swarm of indigents that live in the historic purlieus.