from the festival. Processions from all the parishes in Venice are formed. In the body of the church the Gondoliers muster in their Sunday flannel shirts, black and white checks, mauve, blue, and red, with blue scarves for the waist. The women and others sit in the circular ambulatory which runs round the building. Services go on all day, whilst outside, in the small space that the island affords, there is a sort of fair, stalls for the sale of refreshments—wine, coffee, hot fish, pastry, and fruit. The large flat-bottomed fishing and cargo boats with their coloured sails are a beautiful sight in the Grand Canal where it opens out into the sea,—flat-bottomed, capable of crossing the innumerable shoals which surround Venice, keelless, but with a large deep rudder that steadies them in the open sea; the principal sail, which is very large, at the stern, brilliantly coloured, in white, orange and red, and occasionally a pale sea-green.
From Venice we went to Ravenna, somewhat out of the usual tourist route; an old-world, semi-deserted place, practically in the same state as it was in the Middle Ages. Guides beset you in every town, and are mostly a nuisance, but here we came across probably the only one in the place, very intelligent, but unable to speak English. We had scarcely sat down to lunch in a primitive Italian hotel, the Spado d'Oro, "The Golden Sword," than he entered the room, and produced various testimonials. "Could he read English?" "Oh no, but he knew they spoke well of him." The first we glanced at was from a well-known composer of songs, Maud Valerie White: "You' may trust the bearer; he is well up in the history of the place; in fact, he is a regular brick." "Yes," he said, "her Excellency who wrote that was a grand English Signora."
