Not at all pleased with my room at the Europa - have been looking for furnished apartments - visited the Palazzo Ducale - constructed of marble and richly ornamented with sculpture and bas reliefs - as a description of the works of art in architecture, sculpture & painting that I may see in Venice would necessarily be very long shall only mention a few that happen to attract my admiration the most - in ascending the grand stairs at the entrance are two fine statues of Mars & Neptune - by the first sculptor of the 16th century - Sandovino.

The saloon of the grand council is after the saloon of the Palazzo Vechio at Florence - perhaps the largest room in Europe, and magnificently adorned with statuary and paintings of the victories of the Venetians - by Titian - Tintoretto and other great masters— and also a number of other rooms - the tribunals of justice - and the ancient prisons underneath called the Pozzi - are deep, dark & gloomy - in several of them are names and writing scratched on the wall - as follows:

Non ti fidar di alamo, pendu e taci!
Se fuggir vuvi de spioni - insidie e lacci!
II puntirti, il pentute, nulla giova
Ma in valortuo, fa vera prova
Also Di chio me fido, guardami Dio
Di chi no mo fido, ma guadera io
M La Sta Csa Cca Rna
Io Francesso abiot Marco

It would appear the writer of the last was an ecclesiastic - and had probably been imprisoned as a spy or traitor - in the war the Venetians had with Rome in ___________ - the place where criminals were strangled and the door thro which the bodies were taken away in boats for interment - from one of the tribunals runs a passage, which leads to a bridge, elevated and over a canal, and thro which prisoners were conducted from the larger prisons adjoining the Ducal palace - this is called the Bridge of Sighs.