People go into the Chapel of the Rosary here to see the painting of
Titian, representing The Death of Peter Martyr. Behind it stands a
painting of equal size by John Bellini,--the Madonna, Child, and Saints,
of course,--and it is curious to study in the two pictures those points in
which Titian excelled and fell short of his master. The treatment of the
sky in the landscape is singularly alike in both, but where the greater
painter has gained in breadth and freedom, he has lost in that indefinable
charm which belonged chiefly to Bellini, and only to that brief age of
transition, of which his genius was the fairest flower and ripest fruit. I
have looked again and again at nearly every painting of note in Venice,
having a foolish shame to miss a single one, and having also a better wish
to learn something of the beautiful from them; but at last I must say,
that, while I wondered at the greatness of some, and tried to wonder at
the greatness of others, the only paintings which gave me genuine and
hearty pleasure were those of Bellini, Carpaccio, and a few others of that
school and time.

Every day we used to pass through the court of the old Augustinian convent
adjoining the church of San Stefano. It is a long time since the monks
were driven out of their snug hold; and the convent is now the head-
quarters of the Austrian engineer corps, and the colonnade surrounding the
court is become a public thoroughfare. On one wall of this court are
remains--very shadowy remains indeed--of frescos painted by Pordenone at
the period of his fiercest rivalry with Titian; and it is said that
Pordenone, while he wrought upon the scenes of scriptural story here
represented, wore his sword and buckler, in readiness to repel an attack
which he feared from his competitor. The story is very vague, and I hunted
it down in divers authorities only to find it grow more and more
intangible and uncertain. But it gave a singular relish to our daily walk