see them crossing a bridge, pausing to lean over, or carried in the stream of passengers, they too seem endowed with a singular vitality; their passing and their standing still appear alike purposeful and portentous. What history might not be written by questioning the windows that look out on the side canals, or the tides that have ebbed and flowed in their channels? It would be a work of many volumes; for the private records of Venice are not lacking in fulness. The Piazza of Bellini’s _Procession of the Cross_ represents one side of Venetian life, its solemnity, its assurance, its pomp and colour; but the narrow waters know another side, the domestic festivities, the courtings, weddings and banquetings, and private hates. For she was strong in deeds of darkness as in deeds of light, and echoes of them still wash against the basements of her houses. Water is a safer confidant of blood than earth, and the waters of Venice have received their full share of such confidences. Ebbing tides washed out to sea the stains of violence and flowed in to pave the city anew, yet the atmosphere of the dark waterways is more enduring than material stains, and there is no dark deed of ancient Venice to which they may not still supply a realistic setting. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY, PIAZZETTA.] The gondolier’s stock of knowledge will carry us but a small way on the lesser rios. His catalogue is ready for the Grand Canal; he can carry the reader to the obvious points of interest the guide-book enumerates, but his information does not usually comprise even the most beautiful of the palaces of the side canals, and on the more familiar routes there is much to discover for oneself. Moreover there are aspects of a gondola tour which the guide-book cannot include, but which are none the less important for those who really wish to know the physiognomy of Venice. And one is the time of day at which it is to be taken. Venice is the city of light--more luminous than any other city; and if it is true that new light or shadow everywhere alters the aspect of familiar objects, it is infinitely truer in Venice where each moment witnesses the birth of some new and wonderful offspring of the light. If one, who has known the statue of Colleoni against the intense blue of the midday sky, comes on him suddenly when the Campo is in shadow and the Scuola di San Marco alone still receives the light upon the rare marble of its upper façade, he will find that, as the definition of the stern features is lost, a note of tenderness steals into the proud assertion of the face. It seems a fresh revelation of character, this change wrought by a new light in the known and familiar, and it is one of the peculiar creative gifts of Venice.