Guardian, and to tell her that God will guide her heart to-morrow, and put His own answer on her lips, concerning her marriage. Shall not such angel be crowned with light, and strew her chamber with lilies? There is no glory round his head; there is no gold on his robes; they are of subdued purple and gray. His wings are colourless—his face calm, but sorrowful,—wholly in shade. In his right hand he bears the martyr’s palm; in his left, the fillet borne by the Greek angels of victory, and, together with it, gathers up, knotted in his hand, the folds of shroud [101] with which the Etrurians veil the tomb. He comes to her, “in the clear light of morning;” the Angel of Death. You see it is written in the legend that she had shut close the doors of her chamber. They have opened as the angel enters,—not one only, but all in the room,—all in the house. He enters by one at the foot of her bed; but beyond it is another—open into the passage; out of that another into some luminous hall or street. All the window-shutters are wide open; they are made dark that you may notice them,—nay, all the press doors are open! No treasure bars shall hold, where this angel enters. Carpaccio has been intent to mark that he comes in the light of dawn. The blue-green sky glows between the dark leaves of the olive and dianthus in the open window. But its light is low compared to that which enters behind the angel, falling full on Ursula’s face, in divine rest. In the last picture but one, of this story, he has painted her lying in the rest which the angel came to bring; and in the last, is her rising in the eternal Morning. For this is the first lesson which Carpaccio wrote in his Venetian words for the creatures of this restless world,—that Death is better than their life; and that not bridegroom rejoices over bride as they rejoice who marry not, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God, in Heaven. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. I. Affairs of the Company. Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum. There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not to them.