THE GRAND CANAL.
VENETIAN PALACES.
Who can forget his first glimpse of the Grand Canal? Seen at a favorable hour, the famous thoroughfare delights the senses as it thrills the heart. For two miles it winds through the city in such graceful lines that every section of its course reveals a stately curve. Upon this beautiful expanse the sun of Venice, like a cunning necromancer, displays most marvelous effects of light and shade, transforming it at different hours of the day into an avenue of lapis-lazuli, or emerald, or gold,—an eloquent reminder of the time when Venice was a paradise of pleasure, when life upon its liquid streets was a perpetual pageant, and this incomparable avenue its splendid promenade. Its curving banks are lined with palaces. They seem to be standing hand in hand, saluting one another gravely, as though both shores were executing here the movements of some courtly dance. These were originally the homes of men whose names were written in that record of Venetian nobility, called "The Book of Gold." Once they were marvels of magnificence; and viewed in the sunset light, or by the moon, they are so still. Under that enchanting spell their massive columns, marble balconies, and elegantly sculptured arches, seem as imposing as when the Adriatic's Bride was still a queen and wore her robes of purple and of gold.
A MARINE PORTE COCHÈRE.
To build such structures on the shifting sands was a stupendous undertaking; and what we cannot see of these Venetian palaces has cost much more than that which rises now above the waves. From every door broad marble steps descend to the canal, and tall posts, painted with the colors of the family, serve as a mooring place for gondolas, a kind of marine porte cochère. Each of these structures has its legend,—poetic, tragic or artistic; and these our gondolier successively murmurs to us in his soft Venetian dialect as we glide along the glittering highway.