most masterly finish with a kind of universal largeness of
feeling, and he who has it well in his memory will never hear the
name of Carpaccio without a throb of almost personal affection.
Such indeed is the feeling that descends upon you in that
wonderful little chapel of St. George of the Slaves, where this
most personal and sociable of artists has expressed all the
sweetness of his imagination. The place is small and
incommodious, the pictures are out of sight and ill-lighted, the
custodian is rapacious, the visitors are mutually intolerable,
but the shabby little chapel is a palace of art. Mr. Ruskin has
written a pamphlet about it which is a real aid to enjoyment,
though I can't but think the generous artist, with his keen
senses and his just feeling, would have suffered to hear his
eulogist declare that one of his other productions--in the Museo
Civico of Palazzo Correr, a delightful portrait of two Venetian
ladies with pet animals--is the "finest picture in the world." It
has no need of that to be thought admirable; and what more can a
painter desire?


VIII

May in Venice is better than April, but June is best of all. Then
the days are hot, but not too hot, and the nights are more
beautiful than the days. Then Venice is rosier than ever in the
morning and more golden than ever as the day descends. She seems
to expand and evaporate, to multiply all her reflections and
iridescences. Then the life of her people and the strangeness of
her constitution become a perpetual comedy, or at least a
perpetual drama. Then the gondola is your sole habitation, and