UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 85 



the merchants, and shipwrights, and sailors who 

 hring home from distant countries the articles 

 requisite to colour the cloth, and the dyer, who, 

 by the aid of chemistry, compounds them ; and 

 lastly, the farmer who cultivates the humble 

 teasels. See, Bertha, what a prodigious number 

 of heads and hands are thus toiling for the ac- 

 complishment of a single object, and, though all 

 impelled by individual interest, yet all co-opera- 

 ting for the general good." 



4/i. As I am still paying for my imprudence, 

 and confined to my room, kind Mary has been 

 entertaining me with the conversation she had 

 heard below stairs, and particularly with Mr. 

 Maude's account of Venice. Nothing in Italy 

 so much struck his imagination, as the view of 

 that city, with all her towers and pinnacles 

 rising from the sea, where, the poet said, 



" Venice sits in state, throned on her hundred isles!" 

 But now it has a most melancholy appear- 

 ance : the port, which in times of prosperity 

 was crowded with shipping, is now almost 

 empty ; and the muddy canals which intersect 

 the town in every direction, are no longer 

 enlivened by multitudes of gondolas gliding 

 swiftly through the water. The showy palaces 

 which rise from the sides of these watery streets, 

 were once adorned with all that painting and 

 sculpture could perform ; but they are now 



i 



