Venice, when she was most glorious, did but catch and imprison in her stones those matchless harmonies of fleeting colour which the sun still lavishes upon her waters. And there is a season of the year which, with sun and mist co-operating, hangs once again her pale walls with their ancient splendour, and plays a noble part in the revival of the past. With the first days of autumn the scirocco begins to wind about the heart of her plants and creepers, and to steal into their veins. Swiftly they yield to the intoxication. Under the folds of the grey mist-mantle, they drink draught after draught of her brave wine. But another touch is needed to draw out the virtues of that liquor: after Circe, Apollo. He bends his look upon them, and they yield their stores, decking once more the walls of Venice with frescoes of scarlet, green and gold, paving once more her waterways with their old-accustomed pomp. In the Sacca della Misericordia this natural fresco has a peculiarly beautiful effect; for upon the spaces of water between the rafts that float there, the rich creepers, interwoven among the trees of the garden of the Spiriti, fling an enchanted carpet of chequered crimson and green upon a pale rose ground, covering the whole expanse, save for one space whereon is set the pale blue watermark of the sky. One may make rare studies here of the carpets and bright mats that are to be seen hung out in the pictures of the old Venetian masters. They did not copy from the East alone, or rather they copied from a greater East, whose treasures travel through a rarer element than water day after day to the shores of the western world. The complete stillness of the pools in the Sacca, undisturbed by any passing steamboat, and even unruffled by the motion of a gondola, through the protection of the intervening rafts, gives the rich pattern a durability unattainable in the waters of the canals. There is only, as it were, a faint breathing of the surface, enough to give perpetual interchange and commerce among the bold brush-strokes of colour--incessant, subtle weaving of new harmonies upon the ground-bass--the shadows deepening or relaxing, when sometimes an insect dips or a fish rises and starts a fairy circle at a touch that spreads among the colours until its delicate life is lost. [Illustration: A PALACE DOOR.]