BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 24$
hooded decks. Walter had been minute in his instructions, " for," said he, " I always remember my poor father's first and last visit to Venice ; it was winter, but daylight ; the gondola to him was a floating hearse ; to enter it when it is in its full panoply of service you have to back into it ; my father lost his hat in doing so ; the weather was wet and cold, it rained, the palace where he was lodged was chilled with a little charcoal stove ; the next day he left the city in the sea ; and there you have the prosiest possible idea of Venice."
" Walter, be stiH," said Mrs. Milbanke ; " the relation of the reminiscence is like throwing a stone at a lovely monument ; don't you see we are afloat ? "
" I only wanted to cap Philip's disappointment at the start ; to put the finishing touch to the mudbanks and the stark prosy realism of the railway station."
Philip made no reply, for by this time they were in those quiet streets,
" As in a dream
So smoothly, silently by many a dome Mosque-like, and many a stately portico, The statues ranged along an azure sky ; By many a pile in more than Eastern pride, Of old the residence of merchant kings ; The fronts of some, though Time had shattered them, Still glowing with the richest hues of art, As though the wealth within them had run o'er."
Philip said not a word. Dolly's hand had somehow found its way to his. She sat beside him. He was wrapped in the spell of his first sight of Venice. She, too, felt the strange witchery of it. Dolly's was not exactly a poetical nature ; but like the dullest of us she had her moments when the mind soars and feels a consciousness of its di- vinity.
The air was balmy. There was no breeze. The moon shone steadily down upon them. It was an azure sky as
