San Elena was once an exceedingly lovely island. It lies near to the city, and is only a short distance from the public gardens. The grave of Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, at once an empress and a saint, is said to have been here. There was also a very beautiful Gothic cloister. Now the old monastery walls have been pulled down, and a hideous iron factory has been erected; the quiet convent cemetery has been dug up, and the crosses have been thrown aside to make way for iron-girded workshops. For expeditions on the lagoons it is always well to choose a pearly, silvery-grey day, when everything is delicate in colour and mellowed by a semi-transparent haze. The lagoons are not always grey and calm. They have their moods. I have seen a fair green sea grow black beneath a sudden storm. Sometimes Venice will appear blue and rosy, the smooth sea as green as in Canaletto's pictures, the white cupolas of Santa Maria della Salute and the silver domes of St. Mark's standing out as on an azure background. Then great masses of grey clouds will come up, the sea is festooned with foam, and black gondolas skim over the water like swallows flying before a storm. Sometimes the sky is clear and the light vivid, the water shines like silver, and one cannot tell the horizon from the sea; the islands appear like brown specks, and the ships seem to be sailing in the sky. At others the sea, under an east wind, is cold and hard as steel. In winter the lagoons are wrapped in damp mists, so thick that, however good a navigator you may be, you must needs lose your way; steamers and gondolas loom out and then disappear, swallowed up by the dense wall of vapour, and the shipping looks ghostly, tall and gaunt. [Illustration: SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE]