The children play in the side streets just as you do except that they swim in the water instead of running on the ground. Even the babies are in the water fastened to the door-steps by a rope around their little bodies. How they do coo and gurgle as they paddle their little hands and feet like young frogs! Turner shows in this picture the Grand Canal filled with ships from other countries with gaily colored flags fluttering in the breeze. Do you see the tower at the left in the picture? That is the Campanile, the bell-tower. This wonderful tower fell down flat in 1902. I talked with a man who has a store just opposite the tower, a few weeks after it fell. He said to me: "I thought it would fall on my store and destroy everything. It began to tip; then all at once it fell flat just where it stood." The Venetians soon built it up again. When Napoleon, the great French emperor, took Venice, he rode up the inclined plane of this tower on his horse and stood on the very top overlooking the sea. [Illustration: FIG. 28. THE GRAND CANAL. TURNER. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City] THE SONG OF THE LARK JULES ADOLPHE BRETON (1827-1906) Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing, With clouds and sky above thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind! WORDSWORTH Can you not almost hear this girl singing? The sun is just coming up. The lark is rising in the sky, singing! The girl has come out to work in the fields; a peasant girl. Barefooted, barehanded, she stands straight like a soldier of work with her head lifted to drink in the morning air as she sings. One morning early I was driving through the country roads in the south of England when larks began to rise from the fields where the workmen were, just like this lark from the French field, and how they did sing! I stopped and listened, watching them go up higher and higher, their song growing fainter and fainter, and then they disappeared. Where did they go? Let us ask this French peasant girl. Do you think that she can tell us? If she cannot, who can? [Illustration: FIG. 29. SONG OF THE LARK. BRETON. Courtesy of the Art Institute, Chicago] THE HOLY NIGHT ANTONIO ALLEGRA DA CORREGGIO (1494?-1534) It is a wonderful story, the story of the Holy Night. The mother and father had traveled a long way; and when they came to Bethlehem every place was taken so they found a bed in a cave. In the night a baby boy came to the mother, and she "wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in an inn. And there was in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around about them; and they were sore afraid.