golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field covered
with stars." In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice,[12]
the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line," being
presently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted
irregularly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete
detail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids." In
the still more miniature description of the original site of Venice[13]
we have the same method:

"The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath
the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor
and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the
tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a
questioning cry."

[Sidenote: His love of color.]

Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use of
color. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety of
colors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call the
reader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used in
describing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination
of the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence
as, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under
their blood-red mantle-folds"[14]--a glimpse of a Giorgione.

[Sidenote: His love of prose rhythm.]

He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves the
sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits no