The people of Bologna have a kind of earnest yet haughty courtesy, very different from that of most of the Italians I have seen. They bow to the stranger, as he enters the _café_; and if they rise before him, the men raise their hats and the ladies smile and curtsy as they go out; yet without the least familiarity which could authorize farther approach to acquaintance. We have found the officers, whom we meet at the eating-houses, particularly courteous. There is something delightful in this universal acknowledgment of a stranger's claims on courtesy and kindness. I could well wish it substituted in our country, for the surly and selfish manners of people in public-houses to each other. There is neither loss of dignity nor committal of acquaintance in such attentions; and the manner in which a gentleman steps forward to assist you in any difficulty of explanation in a foreign tongue, or sends the waiter to you if you are neglected, or hands you the newspaper or his snuff-box, or rises to give you room in a crowded place, takes away, from me at least, all that painful sense of solitude and neglect one feels as a stranger in a foreign land.
We go to Ferrara to-morrow, and thence by the Po to Venice. My letter must close for the present.
VENICE--THE FESTA--GONDOLIERS--WOMEN--AN ITALIAN SUNSET--THE LANDING--PRISONS OF THE DUCAL PALACE--THE CELLS DESCRIBED BY BYRON--APARTMENT IN WHICH PRISONERS WERE STRANGLED--DUNGEONS UNDER THE CANAL--SECRET GUILLOTINE--STATE CRIMINALS--BRIDGE OF SIGHS--PASSAGE TO THE INQUISITION AND TO DEATH--CHURCH OF ST. MARC--A NOBLEMAN IN POVERTY, ETC., ETC.
You will excuse me at present from a description of Venice. It is a matter not to be hastily undertaken. It has also been already done a thousand times; and I have just seen a beautiful sketch of it in the public prints of the United States. I proceed with my letters.
The Venetian _festa_ is a gay affair, as you may imagine. If not so beautiful and fanciful as the revels by moonlight, it was more satisfactory, for we could see and be seen, those important circumstances to one's individual share in the amusement. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the links of the long bridge of boats across the Giudecca were cut away, and the broad canal left clear for a mile up and down. It was covered in a few minutes with gondolas, and all the gayety and fashion of Venice fell into the broad promenade between the city and the festal island. I should think five hundred were quite within the number of gondolas. You can scarcely fancy the novelty and agreeableness of this singular promenade. It was busy work for the eyes to the right and left, with the great proportion of beauty, and the rapid glide of their fairy-like boats. And the _quietness_ of the thing was so delightful--no crowding, no dust, no noise but the dash of oars and the ring of merry voices; and we sat so luxuriously upon our deep cushions the while, threading the busy crowd rapidly and silently, without a jar or touch of anything but the yielding element that sustained us.