"musical intervals in human existence--filled with people with intent faces listening to music, to the sound of water, to time as it flies" (Pater: "The School of Giorgione," _Fortnightly Review_, October 1877, reprinted in the third edition of _The Renaissance_). The landscapes of Giorgione have the same quality of quickened life. "Most painted landscapes leave little power to call up the actual physical sensations of the scenes themselves, but Giorgione's never fail to produce this effect; they speak directly to the sensations, making the beholder feel refreshed and soothed, as if actually reclining on the grass in the shade of the trees, with his mind free to muse on what delights it most. In so far as poetry may be compared to painting, Giorgione's feeling for landscape suggests Keats" (Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court_, p. 13). Giorgione's pictures may be described as showing us golden moments of a golden age. His life, as told by Vasari and Ridolfi, corresponds with this ideal, which also was in exact accordance with the spirit of the times. Many readers will remember that it is with a mention of Giorgione that Ruskin prefaces his noble description of Venice in the days of the early Renaissance: "Born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young George of Castelfranco--of the Brave Castle; stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was--Giorgione. Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore; of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city, and became himself as a fiery heart to it?" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 1). He spent his childhood at Castelfranco, "where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically with something of a park-like grace to the plain." "Giorgione's ideal of luxuriant pastoral scenery, the country of pleasant copses, glades and brooks, amid which his personages love to wander or recline with lute and pipe, was derived, no doubt, from these natural surroundings of his childhood." Close by his birthplace is Asolo, whence the word _asolare_, "to disport in the open air; to amuse oneself at random" (see Browning's _Asolando_). Giorgione "found his way early into a circle of notable persons--people of courtesy, and became initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of dress, which are best understood there. Not far from his home lived Catherine of Cornaro, formerly Queen of Cyprus, and up in the towers which still remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous _condottiére_--a picturesque remnant