it still lingers in their ears, they yield themselves entranced. Here
the youth is naked, the maid clothed and adorned--a reversal, this, of
Giorgione's _Fête Champêtre_ in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, where the
women are undraped, and the amorous young cavaliers appear in complete
and rich attire. To the right are a group of thoroughly Titianesque
amorini--the winged one, dominating the others, being perhaps Amor
himself; while in the distance an old man contemplates skulls ranged
round him on the ground--obvious reminders of the last stage of all, at
which he has so nearly arrived. There is here a wonderful unity between
the even, unaccented harmony of the delicate tonality and the mood of
the personages--the one aiding the other to express the moment of pause
in nature and in love, which in itself is a delight more deep than all
that the very whirlwind of passion can give. Near at hand may be
pitfalls, the smiling love-god may prove less innocent than he looks,
and in the distance Fate may be foreshadowed by the figure of weary Age
awaiting Death. Yet this one moment is all the lovers' own, and they
profane it not by speech, but stir their happy languor only with faint
notes of music borne on the still, warm air.

[Illustration: _The Three Ages. Bridgewater Gallery. From the Plate in
Lafenestre's "Vie et Oeuvre du Titien" (May, Paris.)_]

The _Sacred and Profane Love_ of the Borghese Gallery is one of the
world's pictures, and beyond doubt the masterpiece of the early or
Giorgionesque period. To-day surely no one will be found to gainsay
Morelli when he places it at the end of that period, which it so
incomparably sums up--not at the beginning, when its perfection would be
as incomprehensible as the less absolute achievement displayed in other
early pieces which such a classification as this would place after the
Borghese picture. The accompanying reproduction obviates all necessity