BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 243
Ebbing and flowing ; and the salt seaweed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the Sea
Invisible ; and from the land we went,
As to a floating city steering in
And gliding up her streets as in a dream."
Across the long viaduct that joins Venice to the main- land, the train glided over a world of swamp and marshy flats that reminded Dolly of the flats about the great river in Norfolk, where it enters into the wide sea. It suggested to Philip some faint memory of the Russian steppes, all unlike though it was ; and while Walter Milbanke found it more Dutch than English, he took especial interest in noting the impressions of the approach to fairyland made upon Philip and Dolly; for he and Jenny knew Italy well, and had already visited Venice on two occasions. Walter was theatrical in his tastes, and he found the approach to Venice like the preliminaries^ to the transformation scene of a Drury Lane pantomime, beginning with dark myste- rious gauzes, that suggest Cimmerian darkness, swamps, strange waters, and slithery shores of ooze and weed.
The moon shone upon the vast mud-banks. Far away there was a glimpse of sea ; and further still, a passing hint of a distant sail close upon the horizon ; but no city, no lofty campaniles, no silvery cupolas, no golden domes and towers; only a morass lighted by the moon, a flat watery waste, through which the panting locomotive seemed to feel its way; and at last when it glided into an ordinary railway station with gaslights and porters and all the other belongings of locomotive travel though they had arrived at the glorious city in the sea, to both Dolly and Philip it still seemed further away than ever.
" Mr. Milbanke," said a stalwart Italian, stepping up to the party, hat in hand.
" Ah ; Beppo ! " was Walter's response.
