A good plan for getting our ideas into order on going into a gallery is to take one master and look only at his works for a day or two, and then at the others of his school, else there is a terrible confusion of names, dates, periods, manners and subjects in our heads. This cannot always be accomplished, for in some choice collections there are but a few specimens of each master, though in the large ones there are always more than enough for a beginner's first day. It is best to begin with a comparatively modern master, and work back gradually, otherwise the eye is puzzled by inaccuracies of drawing, perspective, color. The early painters can hardly be expected to delight us at first: we are shocked by the unnatural proportions, the grotesque countenances. To cite an extreme case, the first view of Giotto's frescoes, where men and women with bodies of board, long jointless fingers, rigid plastered hair, and dark-rimmed slits for eyes whose oblique glance imparts an air of suspicion to the whole assembly, will suggest merely a notion of their grotesqueness. By and by we shall grow used to the deformities, and recognize the primitive truthfulness of attitude and expression, the spirit which animates these ungainly forms and faces, until at length we look at the painter with the eyes of his contemporaries, and judge him by the standards of his own time, on which his claims rest. Then we shall admire him. The Venetians of the sixteenth century are the easiest to look at, however much of their genius and wonderful skill be lost on a novice, for they knew as much about anatomy and perspective as any painter of to-day, and their men and women are such glorious creatures, with backgrounds of such stately architecture or such magnificent scenery, all displayed in a revel of color, that pleasure outruns comprehension in the beholder.