Now comes a new pleasure,--for even in dreamy Venice mortals are still doomed to eat,--and to-night we leave our better-loved Zattere to meet friends at the Café Florian, with its frescos and mirrors and cosey cabinets, from which, while being served, we catch glimpses of the fast-filling square. The lights are multiplying; the concerts of violins and harps, and the songs of the singers are beginning. The flower-girls are tying their nosegays or weaving garlands, and gazing wistfully at the windows of the brilliant little shops; and hundreds of figures pass and repass, now in the shadow and now in the light. But even this dinner will end. The delicious sorbet and the fragrant coffee are, all too soon, things of the past. However, we do not stay to regret them, since this evening affords one of the rare opportunities to see La Fenice open in summer. It is always entertaining to watch the coming and going of the gondolas to and from this theatre; but at this season, when most of the wealthy Venetians are away on the mainland, the audience is not brilliant, the play not very good, and we are glad to be back in the Piazza for an hour beneath the summer moon, and then to walk home through the crooked _calli_, that seem more like the make-believe of the stage than like {318} real life. There are corners so dark that they might well be used for an ambush. But we have no enemies in Venice, and so by aid of Giacomo's lanthorn may safely explore these narrow ways at any hour we choose, and hang the pictures of them in our mental gallery to look at and think about when thousands of miles away. For who that loves Venice ever forgets her? and that which in her midst seems dreamlike and unreal, with time and distance crystallizes into the sharpest and clearest of memories. On such a night as this impassionedly The old Venetian sung these verses rare, "That Venice must of needs eternal be, For Heaven had looked through the pellucid air, And cast its reflex in the crystal sea, And Venice was the image pictured there." I hear them now, and tremble, for I seem As treading on an unsubstantial dream. Who talks of vanished glory, of dead power, Of things that were, and are not? Is he here? Can he take in the glory of this hour, And call it all the decking of a bier? No, surely as on that Titanic tower The Guardian Angel stands in æther clear, With the moon's silver tempering his gold wing, So Venice lives, as lives no other thing. LORD HOUGHTON. {319} CHAPTER XVII. HISTORIANS AND SCHOLARS.