footsteps on the vast stone floors, they take a hasty departure,
finding themselves again, with a sense of release from danger, a
sense that the genius loci was a sort of mad white-washer
who worked with a bad mixture, in the bright light of the
campo, among the beggars, the orange-vendors and the
passing gondolas. Solemn indeed is the place, solemn and
strangely suggestive, for the simple reason that we shall
scarcely find four walls elsewhere that inclose within a like
area an equal quantity of genius. The air is thick with it and
dense and difficult to breathe; for it was genius that was not
happy, inasmuch as it, lacked the art to fix itself for ever. It
is not immortality that we breathe at the Scuola di San Rocco,
but conscious, reluctant mortality.

Fortunately, however, we can turn to the Ducal Palace, where
everything is so brilliant and splendid that the poor dusky
Tintoret is lifted in spite of himself into the concert. This
deeply original building is of course the loveliest thing in
Venice, and a morning's stroll there is a wonderful illumination.
Cunningly select your hour--half the enjoyment of Venice is a
question. of dodging--and enter at about one o'clock, when the
tourists have flocked off to lunch and the echoes of the charming
chambers have gone to sleep among the sunbeams. There is no
brighter place in Venice--by which I mean that on the whole there
is none half so bright. The reflected sunshine plays up through
the great windows from the glittering lagoon and shimmers and
twinkles over gilded walls and ceilings. All the history of
Venice, all its splendid stately past, glows around you in a
strong sealight. Everyone here is magnificent, but the great
Veronese is the most magnificent of all. He swims before you in a