Santa Maria dei Miracoli might well mark the limit of our tour; but if we go a short distance further into the Rio San Canciano we shall come on three examples of the earlier domestic architecture of Venice, which we shall do well not to miss. The first is a house by the Ponte Widmann, dating from the ninth century. It is exceedingly picturesque, with its long, low portico, and a profusion of Byzantine ornaments of most varied device on the walls--weird lions and birds and oriental beasts. The capitals of the window columns also are Byzantine, though the balconies are Renaissance. We can also distinguish, though it is immured, the ancient solario, or sun-terrace, which, in this house of old Venice, was evidently of considerable beauty and extent. Passing under another bridge after the Ponte Widmann, we come to the Ponte Pasqualigo, and landing at the calle on the left, we have on the right of us, only a few steps down, one of the oldest houses in Venice. So well cared for is it by its present owners that we seem not to be examining a relic, but to move in a living page of the past. On the morning we saw it, the sun was streaming into the court and falling on the Signora, who, in scarlet shawl, and with a brilliant kerchief round her head, was dozing in the sun. She rose and gave us a cordial welcome, and we climbed the outer stair, under an immense projecting roof, into the garden hanging above the court, full of sunshine and flowers; higher still, on the altana, was a bright line of clothing hung out to dry. The structure of the ancient roof overhanging the stair is very remarkable, with its secondary beams that jut horizontally under a long cross-beam running the whole length of the gallery. The rooms, which open out of one another from the terrace, are rich also in beams, though now for the most part covered with a foolish uniformity of ceiling. The floor of the reception room is, as usual, paved with small variegated stones, but it is remarkable for occasional little islands of mosaic, one of which, a tiny square of deep blue and gold set diamond-wise, is a veritable gem of colour. Worthy to rank with this hospitable, ample house of ancient Venice, is a courtyard opening on the water, into which we pass immediately from the Ponte Pasqualigo. The wooden barbicans of the projecting roof adjoining the portico rest on pillars of fine earliest Gothic, grave and strong and simple in their build. The sense that they are individuals bearing the burden of the beams is increased by the fact that it is not geometrically adjusted to their shoulders. It rests there because they are willing; there is an understanding, a _combinazione_ between beam and pillar, but the two were not mechanically made to fit. [Illustration: A SIDE CANAL.]