The first Armenian I met with
here was sitting on a stone bench on the _Piazza di San Marco_, and this
brought forcibly to my recollection the Armenian in Schiller's
_Ghost-seer_.
These _Cafes_ and _Casinos_ on the _Piazza_ are open day and night. Ices
and coffee superiorly made and other refreshments of all kinds at very low
prices are to be had. Some of these _casinos_ are devoted to gaming. The
first families in Venice repair to the _Piazza_ in the evening after the
Opera, female as well as male. They promenade up and down the _Piazza_ or
sit down and converse in the _Cafes_ and _Casinos_ till a late hour. Few go
to bed in Venice in the summer time before six In the morning, so that
sleep seems for ever banished from the _Piazza_. Music and singing goes
forward in these _casinos_, and the ear is often charmed with the sound of
those delightful Venetian airs, whose simple melody ravishes the soul. The
Venetian dialect is very pleasing, and scarcely yields in harmony to the
Tuscan. It contains a great many Sclavonic words. It is the only dialect of
Italy that is at all pleasing to my ear, for I do not at all relish the
nasal twang and truncated terminations of the Piedmontese and Lombard
dialects, nor the semi-barbarous jargon of the Genoese and the Neapolitan
and, least of all, the execrable cacophony of the Bolognese.
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