When icicles start to form on the eaves you know the roads will be icy.

For the most beautiful description of the Lido, as well as of everything else Venetian, I recommend my reader to the best of travellers’ books, Mr. [William Dean] Howells’s “Venetian Life.” It was an added charm to the rare city to read this book in Venice; and were I a dogess of the fourteenth century, I would have a crystal casket enriched with gems made for my copy, and it should be locked with a mediæval gold key, such as Angelo wears and Rachel played with, in the tragedy which she introduced to us.

We followed the twain in breathless speed; and, not to be baulked at last after such a walk, ran rapidly down seaward by a long series of hanging terraces, communicating by short flights of abrupt laddery steps […]

Is the soul affiliated to God, or is it estranged and in rebellion?