do so. His air is grave, but not severe; there is even, at times, a
certain playfulness in his manner, possibly attributable to sciampagnin.
His curling black locks, together with his velveteen jacket and
pantaloons, are oiled and glossy, and his beard is cut in the French-
imperial mode. His personal presence is unwholesome, and it is chiefly his
moral perfection as a vagabond that makes him fascinating. One is so
confident, however, of his fitness for his position and business, and of
his entire contentment with it, that it is impossible not to exult in him.

He is not without self-respect. I doubt, it would be hard to find any
Venetian of any vocation, however base, who forgets that he too is a man
and a brother. There is enough servility in the language,--it is the
fashion of the Italian tongue, with its _Tu_ for inferiors,
_Voi_ for intimates and friendly equals, and _Lei_ for
superiors,--but in the manner there is none, and there is a sense of
equality in the ordinary intercourse of the Venetians, at once apparent to
foreigners.

All ranks are orderly; the spirit of aggression seems not to exist among
them, and the very boys and dogs in Venice are so well-behaved, that I
have never seen the slightest disposition in them to quarrel. Of course,
it is of the street-boy--the _biricchino_, the boy in his natural,
unreclaimed state--that I speak. This state is here, in winter, marked by
a clouded countenance, bare head, tatters, and wooden-soled shoes open at
the heels; in summer by a preternatural purity of person, by abandon to
the amphibious pleasure of leaping off the bridges into the canals, and by
an insatiable appetite for polenta, fried minnows, and water-melons.

When one of these boys takes to beggary, as a great many of them do, out
of a spirit of adventure and wish to pass the time, he carries out the