EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 75, 25 February 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

IN VENICE. The ship drops anchor and there, right ahead, are the two columns whch were once crowned with the Lion of St. Mark and St. Theodore trampling a dragon under foot. Over the scene immediately ahead— the Piezzetta front of the Doges’ Palace, the library, the Campanile, rises the blue and gold clock tower, supreme above a memorable vista. We come up the Grand Canal. It is a mirror tor a sapphire sky, for buildings known for centuries as wonders or their kind, for ships and gondolas. Many of the gondolas are biack —they swarm about us, the gondoliers clamouring ior a fare. Of course, we may come by train—and it so we rush at once into the Venice behind the scenes, tlie back of the mask, and this perhaps is not so happy a beginning. The bridge leaves the mainland at Mestro, and we come two and a-half miles to the Queen of the Adriatic, finding her ratuer bedraggled at first. But is is not enough to see Venice by train or from a steamer. We have to glide slowly along lier medley of waterways Our cratt seems insecure. We step into it nervously. Fore and aft it rises up in a curve. Our gondolier smiles and sings and seems the most careless fellow that ever had charge of anything so important as bur own safety. But he never makes a mistake.

Under the bridges, between the houses withl their green shutters and window boxes and sunny balconies and shady awnings, by tiny quays and iront doors and dark passages, in and out and round about •we go, passing the dignitary and the vegetable seller and happy tolk on honeymoon. Wherever we go, there is a broad and liquid street along which we slip without a sound. -There are derelict palaces—Venice has passed her noon. There is water lapping broken steps. There are sculptured portals. There are narrow ways between gaunt houses, and little tunnels under branches—a momentary shadow and then into tlie sunshine again !—(G.)