The people of Bologna have a kind of earnest yet haughty courtesy, very different from that of most of the Italians I have seen. They bow to the stranger, as he enters the _café_; and if they rise before him, the men raise their hats and the ladies smile and curtsy as they go out; yet without the least familiarity which could authorize farther approach to acquaintance. We have found the officers, whom we meet at the eating-houses, particularly courteous. There is something delightful in this universal acknowledgment of a stranger's claims on courtesy and kindness. I could well wish it substituted in our country, for the surly and selfish manners of people in public-houses to each other. There is neither loss of dignity nor committal of acquaintance in such attentions; and the manner in which a gentleman steps forward to assist you in any difficulty of explanation in a foreign tongue, or sends the waiter to you if you are neglected, or hands you the newspaper or his snuff-box, or rises to give you room in a crowded place, takes away, from me at least, all that painful sense of solitude and neglect one feels as a stranger in a foreign land. We go to Ferrara to-morrow, and thence by the Po to Venice. My letter must close for the present. LETTER XXXI. VENICE--THE FESTA--GONDOLIERS--WOMEN--AN ITALIAN SUNSET--THE LANDING--PRISONS OF THE DUCAL PALACE--THE CELLS DESCRIBED BY BYRON--APARTMENT IN WHICH PRISONERS WERE STRANGLED--DUNGEONS UNDER THE CANAL--SECRET GUILLOTINE--STATE CRIMINALS--BRIDGE OF SIGHS--PASSAGE TO THE INQUISITION AND TO DEATH--CHURCH OF ST. MARC--A NOBLEMAN IN POVERTY, ETC., ETC. You will excuse me at present from a description of Venice. It is a matter not to be hastily undertaken. It has also been already done a thousand times; and I have just seen a beautiful sketch of it in the public prints of the United States. I proceed with my letters.