STATUE OF VICTOR EMANUEL.
Venice is still victorious over Time. Despite her age, the City of the Sea is fascinating still. She has successfully defied a dozen centuries; she may perhaps defy as many more. All other cities in the world resemble one another. Venice remains unique. She is the City of Romance—the only place on earth to-day where Poetry conquers Prose. The marriage of the Adriatic and its bride has never been dissolved. She is to-day, as she has been for fourteen hundred years, a capital whose streets are water and whose vehicles are boats. She is an incomparable illustration of the poetical and the picturesque; and, were she nothing else, would still attract the world. But she is infinitely more. The hands of Titian and Tintoretto have embellished her. She wears upon her breast some architectural jewels unsurpassed in Italy. And, finally, the splendor of her history enfolds her like the glory of her golden sunsets, and she emerges from the waves of Time, that have repeatedly endeavored to engulf her, as do her marble palaces from the encircling sea.
THE RAILWAY STATION.
The charm of Venice begins even at what is usually the most prosaic of places—a railway station. For, to a city where there are no living horses, the iron horse at least has made its way; and by a bridge, two miles in length, Venice is now connected with the outer world by rail. A quick, delicious feeling of surprise comes over one to see awaiting him in the place of carriages a multitude of boats. The pleasing sense of novelty (so rare now in the world) appeals to us at once, and, with the joyful consciousness of entering on a long-anticipated pleasure, we seat ourselves within a gondola, and noiselessly and swiftly glide out into the unknown.
