Italian Hours

The honour of representing the plan and the place at their best might perhaps appear, in the Cityof St.

Mark, properly to belong to the splendid square which bears the patron's name and which isthe centre of Venetian life so far (this is pretty well all the way indeed) as Venetian life is a matter ofstrolling and chaffering, of gossiping and gaping, of circulating without a purpose, and of staring-too often with a foolish one-through the shop-windows of dealers whose hospitality makes theirdoorsteps dramatic, at the very vulgarest rubbish in all the modern market.

If the Grand Canal,however, is not quite technically a "street," the perverted Piazza is perhaps even less normal; and Ihasten to add that I am glad not to find myself studying my subject under the international arcades,or yet (I will go the length of saying) in the solemn presence of the church.

For indeed in that case Iforesee I should become still more confoundingly conscious of the stumbling-block that inevitably,even with his first few words, crops up in the path of the lover of Venice who rashly addresseshimself to expression. "Venetian life" is a mere literary convention, though it be an indispensablefigure.

The words have played an effective part in the literature of sensibility; they constituted thirtyyears ago the title of Mr. Howells's delightful volume of impressions; but in using them to-day oneowes some frank amends to one's own lucidity.

Let me carefully premise therefore that so often asthey shall again drop from my pen, so often shall I beg to be regarded as systematically superficial.