Paul Veronese and Tintoretto have done all this for a Mayor and
Corporation? These are awkward questions. None the less, there it is,
and the Doges' Palace, within, would impart no thrill to me were it not
for Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne."

Having paid for our tickets (for only on Sundays and holidays is the
Palace free) we take the Scala d'Oro, designed by Sansovino, originally
intended only for the feet of the grandees of the Golden Book. The first
room is an ante-room where catalogues are sold; but these are not
needed, for every room, or nearly every room, has hand-charts of the
paintings, and every room has a custodian eager to impart information.
Next is the Hall of the Four Doors, with its famous and typical
Titian--Doge Grimani, fully armed and accompanied by warriors,
ecstatically acknowledging religion, as symbolized by a woman, a cross,
and countless cherubim. Behind her is S. Mark with an expression of some
sternness, and beside him his lion, roaring.

Doges, it appears,--at any rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's
long life--had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this
kind of self-glorification in paint. Both here and at the Accademia we
shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian
administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by
Titian and Tintoretto, on terms of perfect intimacy with the hierarchy
of heaven. Sometimes they merely fraternize; sometimes they masquerade
as the Three Kings or Wise Men from the East; but always it is into the
New Testament that, with the aid of the brush of genius, they force
their way.

Modesty can never have been a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now,
when Venice is only a museum and show place. All the Venetians--the men,