Continuing their leisurely journey in this primitive manner, the rain finally ceasing, but the sky remaining overcast and the weather cold and wintry, they reached Chioggia, and "At 11.30, the towers and spires of Venice were seen at a distance before us rising from the sea." Venice, of course, was a delight to Morse's eye, but his nose was affected quite differently, for he says: "Those that have resided in Venice a long time say it is not an unhealthy place. I cannot believe it, for the odors from the canals cannot but produce illness of some kind. That which is constantly offensive to any of our organs of sense must affect them injuriously." Several severe thunderstorms broke over the city while he was there, and one was said to be the worst which had been known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. After describing it he adds: "I was at the Academy. The rain penetrated through the ceiling at the corner of the picture I was copying--'The Miracle of the Slave,' by Tintoret--and threatened injury to it, but happily it escaped." On June 19, he thus moralizes: "The Piazza of St. Mark is the great place of resort, and on every evening, but especially on Sundays or _festas_, the arcades and cafés are crowded with elegantly dressed females and their gallants. Chairs are placed in great numbers under the awnings before the cafés. A people that have no homes, who are deprived from policy of that domestic and social intercourse which we enjoy, must have recourse to this empty, heartless enjoyment; an indolent enjoyment, when all their intercourse, too, is in public, surrounded by police agents and soldiers to prevent excess. Hallam, in his 'Middle Ages,' has this just reflection on the condition of this same city when under the Council of Ten: 'But how much more honorable are the wildest excesses of faction than the stillness and moral degradation of servitude.' Quiet is, indeed, obtained here, but at what immense expense! Expense of wealth, although excessive, is nothing compared with the expense of morality and of all intellectual exercise." On June 23, he witnessed another thunderstorm from the Piazza of St. Mark:-- "The lightning, flashing in the dark clouds that were gathering from the Tyrolese Alps, portended another storm which soon burst over us and hastened the conclusion of the music. The lightning was incessant. I stood at the corner of the piazza and watched the splendid effects of lights and darks, in a moment coming and in a moment gone, on the campanile and church of St. Mark's. It was most sublime. The gilt statue of the angel on the top of the campanile never looked so sublime, seeming to be enveloped in the glory of the vivid light, and, as the electric fluid flashed behind it from cloud to cloud incessantly, it seemed to go and come at the bidding of the angel."