On the day when I arrived in Venice, as I was wandering down a lane beyond the Canareggio Canal, I found myself in the Jewish part of the city. It is a fetid and pestilential place. There is about it nothing pleasant, or wholesome, or attractive. The stonework is cracked and rotten. The houses, streaked with dirt, bend over into the water with the weight of years. Most of them are nine stories high, grimy and dirty, and speckled with green spots. There is not a straight line anywhere, and not a whole pane of glass--paper is the substitute. Now and then one sees a patch of plaster on a house; but for the most part the plaster has fallen away, revealing the crumbly red bricks beneath. It gives one a sickening feeling--this terrible poverty, solitude, and neglect. Everything is strange, sullen, mysterious. Men and women with curved noses and eyes set like burning coals in their pale faces glide noiselessly along with furtive glances. The children are half naked, and play about on benches in the streets. I have seen poverty-stricken Jewish quarters before, but never anything so sad as this. The sordidness and terrible despair of it make one's heart ache. There are no green fields and trees to alleviate the misery of the people. Yet, I suppose, the condition of the Jew was worse in the old days. Certainly the injustices and insults which once were prevalent do not occur now. The Christian to-day is on more or less friendly terms with the Jew. They meet one another on the exchange; they talk together, and partake of each other's hospitality. [Illustration: PALAZZI ON THE CANAL]