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captains in little trading-vessels. They buy it at so much a
bottle, without asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody
tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of which they
label one Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite
flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are
comprised under these two general heads is quite extraordinary.
The most limited range is probably from cool Gruel up to old
Marsala, and down again to apple Tea.

The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare
can well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to
live and walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind
of well, or breathing-place. The houses are immensely high,
painted in all sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state
of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They are commonly let off in
floors, or flats, like the houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or
many houses in Paris. There are few street doors; the entrance
halls are, for the most part, looked upon as public property; and
any moderately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune by
now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible for coaches to
penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded and
otherwise, for hire in divers places. A great many private chairs
are also kept among the nobility and gentry; and at night these are
trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of great
lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. The sedans and
lanthorns are the legitimate successors of the long strings of
patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling their little bells
through these confined streets all day long. They follow them, as
regularly as the stars the sun.

When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and
the Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day, when I
first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of
summer skies: which its narrow perspective of immense mansions,
reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness,
looking down upon the heavy shade below! A brightness not too
common, even in July and August, to be well esteemed: for, if the
Truth must out, there were not eight blue skies in as many
midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when,
looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of
deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and
haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate.

The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some of
them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier:
with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a
huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred
lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars,

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