the particular thing as much as possible without at the same time
giving it, as we say, away. There are considerations,
proprieties, a necessary indirectness--he must use, in short, a
little art. No necessity, however, more than this, makes him warm
to his work, and thus it is that, after all, he hangs his three
pictures.


I

The evening that was to give me the first of them was by no means
the first occasion of my asking myself if that inveterate "style"
of which we talk so much be absolutely conditioned--in dear old
Venice and elsewhere--on decrepitude. Is it the style that has
brought about the decrepitude, or the decrepitude that has, as it
were, intensified and consecrated the style? There is an
ambiguity about it all that constantly haunts and beguiles. Dear
old Venice has lost her complexion, her figure, her reputation,
her self-respect; and yet, with it all, has so puzzlingly not
lost a shred of her distinction. Perhaps indeed the case is
simpler than it seems, for the poetry of misfortune is familiar
to us all, whereas, in spite of a stroke here and there of some
happy justice that charms, we scarce find ourselves anywhere
arrested by the poetry of a run of luck. The misfortune of Venice
being, accordingly, at every point, what we most touch, feel and
see, we end by assuming it to be of the essence of her dignity; a
consequence, we become aware, by the way, sufficiently
discouraging to the general application or pretension of style,
and all the more that, to make the final felicity deep, the
original greatness must have been something tremendous. If it be