in Venice—you may see, perhaps twenty
with brown or blue hulls, and with gaily-striped
awnings. You may be sure at once, that these
are not regular Venetian gondolas, and that
they are not rowed by regular Venetian
gondoliers. When the night comes, you shall see
whence they spring. You shall find them
moored to the yellow and black-striped posts of
the Austrian domination, and then it shall be
revealed to you that they belong to Governors-
General, Military Commandants, Chiefs of Haupt-
Directoriums, and other yellow moustached
members of the abhorred tribe of Tedeschi.
They are manned by pudding-faced men in
uniform, no more like gondoliers than I am to
Endymion; Carls and Ludwigs, not Giacomos
and Paolos. Also shall you see prowling about
the water-streets, at all hours of the day and
night, barges and cutters belonging to the
Austrian war-steamers which are moored off the
Arsenal, or the island of St. George the Great.
There are a great many forts about Venice, and
a great many Croat soldiers to garrison them.

The boatmen who go out to sea, who coast
along the Adriatic seaboard, and sometimes cross
the gulf to the Turkish littoral, are brightly clad
enough, and delight in coloured striped shirts,
scarlet and sky-blue caps, sashes, and other
accessories of salt-water dandyism. Picturesque
and bizarre creatures they still are, barefooted
and open-chested, and they lounge and sprawl
and grovel in the most romantic attitudes all
about and over St. Mark's Place, and the Mole
and the Riva, and every inch of quay or stairs
that offers room for lazing upon. They are often
ragged, but in justice I must admit that they
are all very clean, and have a manlier, worthier
look than the aquatic scamps who decorate the
Chiaja at Naples. Your gondolier is quite
another character. I was prepared for all kinds
of disappointments in Venice from the romantic
point of view and underwent, as it turned out,
very few; for the real Venice is, to my mind,
twenty times more astounding than the ideal
one; but I cannot avert the acknowledgment
that the actual gondolier is a sad destroyer of
illusions. He is not the least like the personage
you fondly imagined him to be. His ordinary
head covering is a felt hat of the pattern known
as wide-awake. He wears no sash. He patronises
a shooting-jacket. His pantaloons are by
no means out of the common. The sole romantic
feature in his attire is a negative one—the
general absence of shoes and stockings. My
particular gondolier—he of the poodle—was a
dandy; but in what did his dandyism consist?
In a laced front to his shirt—such a shirt as I
could have purchased for twelve francs fifty, in
the Passage des Panoramas, Paris; in a resplendent
watch-guard, and a bunch of charms. I
was woefully disappointed. I turned to the
poodle, seeking consolation. He flapped his
tail against the prow, with the wag mournful.
"What would you have?" he seemed to ask.
"Venice is not what it used to be." I turned
with a sigh; when a ray of relief shot through
me. The gondolier wore a pretty cameo in the
band of his wide-awake. That was something.
Presently I gave him a cigarette, and thanking
me with the frank and dignified courtesy which
it strikes me favourably distinguishes the Italians
from the French, he inserted my gift in a
meerchaum tube with an amber mouthpiece. I am
afraid the tube was made at Vienna; but it bore
the Lion of St. Mark carved in the meerschaum,
and that was something more.

Goethe, fifty years ago, Byron and Rogers,
forty years ago, noticed that the gondoliers had
ceased to sing. They are, indeed, songless. I
never heard when in company with the poodle,
or elsewhere, any barcaroles, any ritornellas,
any recitations from Tasso or Ariosto. The
gondolier is, however, by no means mute. He is
an exceedingly merry fellow, and for centuries
has been renowned as a wag. A thick volume
might be collected of the droll sayings of these
Hansom cabbies of the sea. The stranger, it is
true, does not understand much of his facetiæ,
for he converses mainly in the soft and flowing
Venetian dialect, which dulcifies "padre" into
"pare," "madre" into "mare," and abbreviates
"casa" to " ca." Then he has his professional
gondolier's language, the origin, structure, and
syntax of which must alike remain mysterious
to those who are not to the Venetian manner
bom. The most salient points in the vocabulary
seemed to me:

First. " Ayéhehi!" This is when he
approaches the corner of a canal; it is intended
as a warning to any unseen gondolier who may
be coming round the said corner.

Next. "Tai!" or "Tahyi!" This is when
he has turned the corner, and is an aviso to
any comrade who is close on his heels.

Last. " Allajevaismayfachayeh-eh-eh!" ad libitum.
This is a very complex and prolonged
sound, like the sweep of an oar, and is employed
when a gondolier wishes to cut through a group
of boats collected together, in order to land. As
the cry is prolonged, they divide, and allow him
to pass. How these sounds are spelt, or what
they really mean, I have not the remotest
notion; and I question whether the gondoliers
themselves are much better informed. It is
probable that their forefathers have cried
"Ayéhehi" and "Tayhi," and "Allajevaismayfachayeh-
eh-eh," ever since the days of blind
old Dandolo, if not longer.

Fouling is almost unknown in the navigation
of the canals. The gondoliers drive their boats,
if the term will be permitted me, with exquisite
skill and accuracy. When, in rare instances, a
slight bump occurs, there is a slanging match
of moderate intensity between the gondoliers.
There is one form of objurgation invariably and
plentifully made use of. It is "Figlio di—"
I need not particularise. Have you never
observed in what terms of reverential affection
foreigners are accustomed to speak of their
mothers; and have you never observed how ready
they are to take away the characters of other
people's mothers when they are quarrelling?"

I was cockney enough, just now, to speak of
the gondoliers as the Hansom cabbies of the