and the proceedings of the Inquisition were always jealously watched by members of the Senate, who would not have permitted any unfair interference with the liberties of those under the protection of the State. The real offence was the introduction of the German soldiers, who were peculiarly obnoxious to the Venetians; but Veronese did not care what the subject was as long as it gave him an excuse for a great _spectacle_. Brought to bay, he gave the true answer: "My Lords, I have not considered all this. I was far from wishing to picture anything disorderly. I painted the picture as it seemed best to me and as my intellect could conceive of it." It meant that Veronese painted in the way that he considered most artistic, without even remembering questions of religion, and in this he summed up his whole æsthetic creed. He was set at liberty on condition that he took out one or two of the most offending figures. The "Feast in the House of Levi" (as he named it after the trial) is the finest of all his great scenic effects. The air circulates freely through the white architecture, we breathe more deeply as we look out into the wide blue sky, and such is the sensation of expansion, that it is hardly possible to believe we are gazing at a flat wall. Titian's backgrounds are a blue horizon, a burning twilight. Veronese builds marble palaces, with rosy shadows, or columns blanched in the liquid light. His personages show little violent action. He places them in noble poses in which they can best show off their magnificent clothes, and he endows his patricians, his goddesses, his sacred persons, with a uniform air of majestic indolence.