In Venice it is difficult to make choice of one route rather than another, when the means of transit is indeed an end in itself, and in some degree the same delight awaits us on every way we choose. We may pass hours on the Grand Canal merely combining enjoyment of its changefulness with a welcome monotony of rest; every moment the water is expressive, every moment it lives under some new impulse and reveals itself afresh. Carpaccio’s picture, _The Miracle of the Holy Cross_, is a marvellous rendering of the life of the Grand Canal; we are reminded of it again and again as we turn into the noble sweep of the waters at the angle of the Cà Foscari. The spirit and motion of Venice seem to be concentrated in the picture--the dark water alive with many gondolas, the fascination of the rhythmic movements of the rowers, at rest or sharply turning or slowly propelling. It has caught and embodied the genius of the canal--that ceaseless change and variation of angle which keeps it springing and full of life; that flowing spirit which unifies the palaces and waters of Venice in a conspiracy of beauty. Our gondola in some mysterious way enrols us in this conspiracy; through its motion we consent to the spirit of the place. We are not onlookers merely; the gondola pulses with the life of Venice; it is an instrument of her being. We feel as we move along that we are needed in the spectacle of Venice, that we have a share in the equilibrium which is of the essence of her power. There is no means of city transit that we can imagine to rival the gondola in its freedom from noise and jostling, in its realisation of comfort. But there are other reasons why it must remain the essential means of passage in Venice. From the gondola alone can we hope to realise how the city stands amid its waters, how living the relation between land and water is. These are not canals in the common sense of the word; they are living streams flowing among islands, each of which is individual, irregular, unique. Venice is not a tract of land cut into sections, large or small, by water, as is an inland city by its streets. A most vigilant watch was kept over the building of the houses that they should not transgress the law of the waters nor interfere with the relation of their currents to the islands. And this vigilance, perhaps, combined with the desire of each owner of land to make use of it to the last fragment, is responsible for the irregularities and varieties of angle which make the houses of Venice more individual than those of any other city. Usually a wall when it has once displayed to us its surface has finished its confidences; it has no reserves, no allurements; it is rigid and uncompromising. But one that breaks from the level, inclining its proud profile in response to the tide of the waterway below it, is a wall of far greater and more individual resources. It is only by gondola that we can appreciate this strong element of personality