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It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certainimpudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and describedmany thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to visit withoutgoing there. Open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the firstpicture-dealer's and you will find three or four high-coloured views of it. There isnotoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one has been there, and everyone has brought back a collection of photographs. There is as little mystery about theGrand Canal as about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as thepostman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that forthe true Venice-lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about hercertainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when thereshould be something new to say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having noinformation whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten the reader; I pretend only togive a fillip to his memory; and I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in lovewith his theme.6IMr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after extracting half a lifetime ofpleasure and an immeasurable quantity of fame from it. We all may do the same, after it hasserved our turn, which it probably will not cease to do for many a year to come. Meantimeit is Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps us to enjoy. He has indeed lately producedseveral aids to depression in the shape of certain little humorous-ill-humorous-pamphlets (the series of St. Mark's Rest) which embody his latest reflections on the subjectof our city and describe the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are numerousand deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have spoiled Venice would be to admitthat Venice may be spoiled-an admission pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty.Fortunately one reacts against the Ruskinian contagion, and one hour of the lagoon isworth a hundred pages of demoralised prose. This queer late-coming prose of Mr. Ruskin(including the revised and condensed issue of the Stones of Venice, only one little volume ofwhich has been published, or perhaps ever will be) is all to be read, though much of itappears addressed to children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and might besupposed to emanate from an angry governess.

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