by the tumults generated by the violence and ambition of the ruling families. A reflection of the gracious and placid life the Venetians led will be apparent to all who may observe and compare the art of Venice with the art of Milan, or Florence, or Naples. What a contrast is there between that charming idyll which Titian has made of the marriage of St. Catherine,[11] a group full of joy, and beauty, and sunlight, and set in the midst of one of those delightful sub-alpine landscapes which he painted with such rare skill and insight, and the many other renderings of the same subject by Lombard or Tuscan masters, who, almost invariably, put on the canvas some foreshadowing of the coming tragedy in the shape of the boding horror of the toothed wheel! The Madonnas of Carpaccio and Bellini are stately ladies, well nourished, and having about them that unmistakable air of distinction which grows up with the daily use and neighbourhood of splendid and luxurious modes of life. There is no doubt a look of gravity and holiness upon their handsome faces, but there is no sign, either in the pose or in the glance of them, that they are conscious of any embarrassment, and it would take a very keen eye to discern a trace of quasi-divinity, or of any trouble aroused by the caress of the mysterious child, or of the burden of that “intolerable honour” which has been thrust upon them unsought—a mood which latter-day preachers have detected in renderings of the same theme conceived and executed in the more emotional atmosphere of the Val d’Arno. Take these Venetian Madonnas out of their pictured environment, and put on them a gala dress and sumptuous jewels, and one will find a bevy of comely dames who might well have kept company with the Signora Lucretia of the “Notti” in the fair garden at Murano, and listened to some sprightly story from Messer Pietro Bembo or from Messer Antonio Molino; or they might have gone out with the youths and damsels of whom Browning sings, “Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to midday, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?”