coloured small shawls, rising in a peak above the masses of black hair, something after the style of the poke bonnet in fashion at home some years ago. Leaving Ferrara for Venice, you pass extensive rice fields, fed by irrigation channels, traversed by ridges of soil, which enclose shallow water; the country is a dead flat, but very fertile. The approach to Venice is as unique as the city itself; a railway viaduct for several miles brings you across a waste of lagoon water, dotted with islets of rough herbage, into a station which might be in any town, lit with electricity. Passing out from it, the scene changes, no street or road, no 'busses or any sort of vehicle; a canal with gondolas; no noise of traffic, scarcely any sound save the cries of the gondoliers as you turn sharp corners right up against the houses; "Premi; stali!" cries of warning to any boat coming from an opposite direction, equivalent to our starboard and port. We emerge into the Grand Canal, making for the Hotel Britannia, and then land on its steps. Next morning the same unusual surroundings; no noise whatever of traffic; there is not a wheeled vehicle, horse, mule, or ass in the city; only a subdued murmur of voices and the occasional swish of oars in the water. Out after breakfast for a walk, for you can walk in Venice through so-called streets, mere alley ways between lofty houses, and over innumerable little bridges crossing the network of canals which intersect the city, to the one large open space, the Piazza of St. Mark. At its further end stands the Church of St. Mark, crowned with numerous oriental domes, some-what dwarfed in appearance by the towering height of the Campanile, which rises three hundred and twenty-five feet. Inside the Church the walls and
