Chioggia is one of the greater islands. It has a large town with an immensely broad street and a wide canal. Here is the most famous and most picturesque fish-market of all suburban Venice. In it one comes across the finest Venetian types, magnificent models for painters, bronzed Giorgione figures and black-eyed swarthy women. Their dialect is beautiful, far more so than that of Venice proper; and at night Ariosto is read publicly in the streets by a musical sweet-voiced Chiozzotto. Here the dramatist Goldoni lived, and the painter Rosalba Carrera, and the composer Giuseppe Zarlino. Chioggia reminds one of the Jewish quarter in the east end of London. The people, mostly fishermen, are extremely poor. This is the place for colour. There is colour everywhere--in the sails of the boats, in the costume of the people, and even in the red cotton curtains of the churches. Unfortunately, one's stay there was brief--because of the insects. A fisherman in Chioggia took us for a sail. We had bargained for an hour's journey; but we had not been out for more than ten minutes before he landed us on the rocks and demanded five francs. We were entirely at his mercy, and were forced to concede; but his action struck us as being high-handed. Sometimes the fishermen of Chioggia, if they are so inclined, will tell you tales of Angelica and Orlando, and the pageant of the Carolingian myth. Torcello is one of the most interesting islands of the lagoon. It is seven miles from Venice, and a pathway is made to it through the sea by stakes. The island is for the most part a waste of wild sea moor. Grey and lifeless in colour, it is a desolate place, and you feel as if you were at the end of the world. At one time it was extremely populous; but now it is impossible to live there, because the marshes breed malaria. Any count whose title and estates the Venetians deem improbable they call "the count from Torcello." One passes six miles of the most beautiful scenery on the way thither. The entrance is by a canal, and the banks on either side are covered with dwarf bushes and lilac trees. Thirteen hundred years ago the grey moorland looked much as it does now--except that where a city stood the cattle feed, what was once the piazza of the city is a grassy meadow, and a narrow pathway is the only street. Two hundred years after the invasion of Attila, the inhabitants of Aquileia and Altinum, with their most precious possessions, flew from their houses to the island of Torcello. Now there is scarcely a sign of human habitation; and only the ruins of an old quay, an ancient well, foundations of marble buildings, a great church, and a campanile, are left to show what at one time was a populous city, which was called the mother of Venice. By the remains of these buildings one can see that they were constructed by men in great distress, seeking a shelter, yet not wishing to attract the eyes of their enemies by their splendour. The