The school of Venice, though one of the earliest in Europe to cherish reviving arts, has added little of intellectual or noble to their progressive culture. Here they have never flourished in the genial soil of popular institutions. A haughty and jealous, yet luxurious and unpatriotic aristocracy, converted the arts into instruments of private gratification--instead of turning them to national ornament. Hence sculpture has been little cultivated, architecture more, though in peculiar style, and painting most of all. But while the sacredness of religion, or the manliness of history, has occupied the Italian pencil generally, of the older masters especially, Venice has sent forth her lordly senators, splendid banquets, and naked beauties. From the twelfth century, we have already seen, a movement might be discerned in the arts of Venice. Her school of painting begins to attract notice under Antonello da Messina, who introduced oil colors. The Bellinis carried out his improvements; and as pupils of the youngest, we discover Giorgione and Titian, who, with Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Sebastian del Piombo, Schiavone, and Bassano, were the chief masters of this school. But of Venetian painting the great ornament is Titian, whose name is synonymous with the characteristic of the native school--fine coloring. From this, however, we are not to suppose, as is too frequently done, that he was wanting in the higher principles of his profession. The alleged imperfection of his design will not often be detected, and only in momentary action of the parts; for in the more common modifications of form, it is faultless, and of inanimate nature the drawing and painting of his landscapes is unrivalled. In expression he is the most historical of all painters, his portraits being second only to those of Raphael. In careful imitation of natural effect, he is equal to the most pains-taking of the Dutch school; yet, with such grandeur and breadth in the masses, that, as has been justly remarked, the most imperfect sketch in which the original disposition in this respect is preserved, will present a character of high art. The chief defect of Titian was in composition and poetical fancy; he penetrated the very secrets of nature in all her varied effects and minutest shades of tone and hue--but he neither made selections of her forms, nor possessed the power of correcting her defects, by an ideal standard. In this mastery of coloring, three principles may be remarked; first, the interposing medium between the eye and the object is supposed to be a mellow golden light; secondly, the most glowing and gorgeous lights are produced, not so much by rich local tints as by the general conduct of the whole piece, in which the gradations of tone are almost evanescent, yet in their strongest hues powerfully contrasted. Hence the final splendor is effected rather by painting in under-tones, than by lavishing on particular spots the whole riches of the palette.