Surely, though, there is a golden mean? I wish neither to be frozen nor boiled, and there can be no doubt but that the heating of most Continental trains is excellent, the power of application being left to the traveller.

The journey by the St. Gotthard was delightful, the day brilliant, and the frost keen, while we watched the fleeting panorama of icebound peaks and snow-powdered pines from the cushions of our comfortable carriage.

The glory of winter left us as we left the Swiss mountains and dropped down into the fertile flats of Northern Italy, and at Milan all was raw chilliness and mud.

Nothing can well be more depressing than wet and cheerless weather in a land obviously intended for sunshine.

We slept at Milan, and the next day set forth in heavy rain towards Venice. The miserable ranks of distorted and pollarded trees stood sadly in pools of yellow-stained water, or stuck out of heaps of half-melted and uncleanly snow.

No colour; no life anywhere, excepting an occasional peasant plodding along a muddy road, sheltering himself under the characteristic flat and bony umbrella of the country.

At Peschiera we had promise of better things. The weather cleared somewhat, revealing ranges of white-clad hills around Garda…. But, alas! at Verona it rained as hard as ever, and we made our way from the railway station at Venice, cowering in the coffin-like cabin of a damp and extremely draughty gondola, while cold flurries of an Alpine-born wind swept across the Grand Canal.

Sunshine is absolutely necessary to bring out the real beauty of Italy. This is particularly the case in Venice, where light and life are required to dispel the feeling of sadness so sure to creep over one amid the signs of long-past grandeur and decaying magnificence.

On a grey and wintry day one is chiefly impressed by the dank chilliness of the palaces on the Grand Canal, whose feet lie lapped in slimy water; the lovely tracery of whose windows shows ragged and broken, whose stately guest-chambers are in the sordid occupation of the dealer in false antiques, and whose motto might be "Ichabod," for their glory has departed.

It is five-and-twenty years since I was last in Venice, and I can truly say that it has not improved in that long time. The loss of the great Campanile of St. Mark is not compensated for by the gain of the penny steamer which frets and fusses its prosaic way along the Grand Canal, or blurts its noisome smoke in the very face of the Palace of the Doges.

Well! A steady downpour is dispiriting at any time, excepting when one is snugly at home with plenty to do, and it is particularly so to the unlucky traveller who has to live through half-a-dozen long hours intervening between arrival at and departure from Venice on a cold, dull, wintry afternoon.

The sombre gondola writhed its sinuous course and deposited us all forlorn in the near neighbourhood of the Piazza San Marco. Splashing our way across, and pushing through the crowd of greedy fat pigeons, we entered the world-famous church. I know my Ruskin, and I feel that I should be lost in wonder and admiration—I am not.

The gloom—rich golden gloom if you will—of the interior oppresses me; it is cavernous. A service is being held in one of the transepts, and the congregation seems noisier and less devout than I could have believed possible. My thoughts fly far to where, on its solitary hill, the noble pile of Chartres soars majestic, its heaven-piercing spires dominating the wide plain of La Beauce. In fancy I enter by the splendid north door and find myself in the pillared dimness softly lighted by the great window in the west. This seems to me to be the greatest achievement of the Christian architect, noble alike in conception and in execution.

There is no means of procuring a cold more certain than lingering too long in a cold and vault-like church or picture gallery, so we adjourned to the Palazzo Daniele, now a mere hotel, where we browsed on the literature—chiefly cosmopolitan newspapers—until it was time to start for Trieste.

The journey is not an attractive one, as we seemed to be perpetually worried by Custom-house authorities and inquisitive ticket-collectors! If possible, the wary traveller should so time his sojourn at Venice as to allow him to go to Trieste by steamer. The Hôtel de la Ville at Trieste is not quite excellent, but 'twill serve, and we were remarkably glad to reach it, somewhere about midnight, having left Milan soon after seven in the morning!

Trieste itself is rather an engaging town; at least so it seemed to us when we awakened to a fresh, bright morning, a blue-and-white sky overhead, and a copious allowance of yellow mud under foot!

There were various final purchases to be made. Our deck chairs were with the heavy luggage, which the passenger by Austrian Lloyd only gets at Port Saïd, as it is sent from London by sea; so a deck chair had to be got, also a stock of light literature wherewith to beguile the long sea hours.

A visit to our ship—the Marie Valerie—showed her to be a comfortable-looking vessel of some 4500 tons. She was busily engaged in taking in a large cargo, principally for Japan, and she showed no signs of an early departure. Her nominal hour for starting was 4 P.M., but the captain told us that he should not sail until next morning. So we descended to examine our cabin, and found it to be large and airy, but totally deficient in the matter of drawers or lockers.

Well! we shall have to keep everything in cabin trunks, and "live in our boxes" for the next three weeks.

There was cabin accommodation for twenty passengers, but at dinner we mustered but nine. This is, of course, the season when all right-minded folks are coming home from India, and we never expected to find a crowd; still, nine individuals scattered abroad over the wide decks make but a poor show.

The first meal on board a big steamer is always interesting. Every one is quietly "taking stock" of his, or her, neighbours, and forming estimates of their social value, which are generally entirely upset by after experience.

Of our fellow-passengers there were only five whose presence affected us in any way. A young Austrian, Herr Otto Frantz, with his wife, going out as first secretary of legation to Tokio; Major Twining, R.E., and his wife; and Miss Lungley, a cosmopolitan lady, who makes Kashmir her headquarters and Rome her annexe.

We became acquainted with each other sooner than might have been expected, by reason of an exploit of the stewardess—a gibbering idiot. The night was cold, so several of the ladies, following an evil custom, sent forth from their cabins those vile inventions called hot bottles. Only two came back…, and then the fun began. The stewardess, who speaks no known tongue, played "hunt the slipper" for the missing bottles through all the cabins, whence she was shot out by the enraged inhabitants until she was reduced to absolute imbecility, and the harassed stewards to gesticular despair.

The missing articles were, I believe, finally discovered and routed out of an unoccupied bed, where they had been laid and forgotten by the addle-pated lady, and peace reigned.

We sailed from Trieste early on the morning of the 28th of February, and steamed leisurely on our way. The Austrian Lloyd's "unaccelerated" steamers are not too active in their movements, being wont to travel at purely "economical speed," and so we were given an excellent view of some of the Ionian Islands, steaming through the Ithaca channel, with the snow-tipped peak of Cephalonia close on our starboard hand.

Then, leaving the far white hills of the Albanian coast to