English, whom we had often seen from our balcony in their gondolas, were
kind enough to pause before Titian's John the Baptist. It was attention
that the picture could scarcely demand in strict justice, for it hangs at
the end of a suite of smaller rooms through which visitors usually return
from the great halls, spent with looking at much larger paintings. As
these people stood gazing at the sublime figure of the Baptist,--one of
the most impressive, if not the most religious, that the master has
painted,--and the wild and singular beauty of the landscape made itself
felt through the infinite depths of their respectability, the father of
the family and the head of the group uttered approval of the painter's
conception: "Quite my idea of the party's character," he said; and then
silently and awfully led his domestic train away.

I am so far from deriding the criticism of this honest gentleman that I
would wish to have equal sincerity and boldness in saying what I thought--
if I really thought any thing at all--concerning the art which I spent so
great a share of my time at Venice in looking at. But I fear I should fall
short of the terseness as well as the candor I applaud, and should
presently find myself tediously rehearsing criticisms which I neither
respect for their honesty, nor regard for their justice. It is the sad
fortune of him who desires to arrive at full perception of the true and
beautiful in art, to find that critics have no agreement except upon a few
loose general principles; and that among the artists, to whom he turns in
his despair, no two think alike concerning the same master, while his own
little learning has made him distrust his natural likings and mislikings.
Ruskin is undoubtedly the best guide you can have in your study of the
Venetian painters; and after reading him, and suffering confusion and
ignominy from his theories and egotisms, the exercises by which you are
chastised into admission that he has taught you any thing cannot fail to
end in a humility very favorable to your future as a Christian. But even