One's first impressions are always those which one remembers longest, and one's first impressions of Venice are surpassingly beautiful. In the train, arriving, you catch glimpses of flashes of light in the darkness, more strangely fantastic than anything you could imagine; you traverse a long causeway stretching over the lagoon; you see the water on either side of you, jet black, stretching on indefinitely; the train seems to float on air; you cannot see the bridge--nothing but sky and water. You arrive at a large terminal station, and step into the gondola which is to take you into Venice. Into most cities one arrives in a whirl and shriek of engines amid smoke and bustle; but Venice is different. One arrives in a gondola. The water is of a clear pale green; the banks are scrubby grass and mud. One watches the silver prow of the gondola as it shoots forward, the sea air blowing keen and salt. You realise that you are in a wide canal, and that there are buildings on either side of you, looming up white and gaunt, with here and there a lantern glimmering at their base. It is strange to see a city rising thus out of the sea. Venice seems double: one sees it in the substance and in the reflections on the water. After gliding along for some time you turn up narrow water lanes, devious and branching, running by low stonework, very complicated in their turnings. There are doors with water creeping up their steps, striped posts looking like spectres, and arches everywhere. Strange figures, like phantoms in a dream, appear in the gloom; black gondolas, like funeral biers, lie silently at the base of the houses; and the water laps dully at the steps. The silence of the waterways is deathlike after the rush and noise of a long journey; each shape that passes looks ghostly in the dim light; it is like a city of eternal sleep, a city of death. What a perfect background it would make for melodrama or for tragedy! No crime or intrigue could be too terrible to happen within those unfathomable shadows! A brigand might pass within that heavy half-opened oak door silently and unnoticed. A corpse with a stiletto buried in its breast might be gliding by in that black gondola. One would be quite surprised and somewhat shocked on lifting the felce to discover a fat and florid tradesman returning from supper with a friend. Venice is not a fitting background for such a sordid everyday scene. She is much better suited to the romances of Maturin, Lewis, and Ann Radcliffe; to the Great Bandit, the stories of the Three Inquisitors, the Council of Ten, masked spies, and pitfalls. [Illustration: THE SALUTE AT SUNSET]