We crossed the Po to the Austrian custom-house. Our trunks were turned inside out, our papers and books examined, our passports studied for flaws--as usual. After two hours of vexation, we were permitted to go on board the steamboat, thanking Heaven that our troubles were over for a week or two, and giving Austria the common benediction she gets from travellers. The ropes were cast off from the pier when a police retainer came running to the boat, and ordered our whole party on shore, bag and baggage. Our passports, which had been retained to be sent on to Venice by the captain, were irregular. We had not passed by Florence, and they had not the signature of the Austrian ambassador. We were ordered imperatively back over the Po, with a flat assurance, that, without first going to Florence, we never could see Venice. To the ladies of the party, who had made themselves certain of seeing this romance of cities in twelve hours, it was a sad disappointment, and after seeing them safely seated in the return shallop, I thought I would go and make a desperate appeal to the commissary in person. My nominal commission as _attaché_ to the Legation at Paris, served me in this case as it had often done before, and making myself and the honor of the American nation responsible for the innocent designs of a party of ladies upon Venice, the dirty and surly commissary signed our passports and permitted us to remand our baggage. It was with unmingled pleasure that I saw again the towers and palaces of Venice rising from the sea. The splendid approach to the Piazzetta; the transfer to the gondola and its soft motion; the swift and still glide beneath the balconies of palaces, with whose history I was familiar; and the renewal of my own first impressions in the surprise and delight of others, made up, altogether, a moment of high happiness. There is nothing like--nothing equal to Venice. She is the city of the imagination--the realization of romance--the queen of splendor and softness and luxury. Allow all her decay--feel all her degradation--see the "Huns in her palaces," and the "Greek upon her mart," and, after all, she is alone in the world for beauty, and, spoiled as she has been by successive conquerors, almost for riches too. Her churches of marble, with their floors of precious stones, and walls of gold and mosaic; her ducal palace, with its world of art and massy magnificence; her private palaces, with their fronts of inland gems, and balconies and towers of inimitable workmanship and riches; her lovely islands and mirror-like canals--all distinguish her, and will till the sea rolls over her, as one of the wonders of time. LETTER XXXVIII.