Many of the churches and palaces of Venice and the adjoining mainland, and almost every public and private gallery throughout Europe, contain pictures purporting to be painted by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and others of that famous company. Hardly a great English house but boasts of a round dozen at least of such specimens, acquired in the days when rich Englishmen made the "grand tour" and substantiated a reputation for taste and culture by collecting works of art. These pictures resemble the genuine article in a specious yet half-hearted way. Their owners themselves are not very tenacious as to their authenticity, and the visit of an expert, or the ordeal of a public exhibition tears their pretensions to tatters. In the Academia itself the Bonifazio and Tintoretto rooms are crowded with imitations. The Ducal Palace has ceilings and panels on which are reproduced the kind of compositions initiated by the great artists, which make an effort to capture their gamut of colour and to master their scheme of chiaroscuro, copying them, in short, in everything except in their inimitable touch and fire and spirit. It would have been impossible for any men, however industrious and prolific, to have carried out all the work which passes under their names, to say nothing of that which has perished; but our surprise and curiosity diminish when we come to inquire systematically into the methods of that host of copyists which, even before the masters' death, had begun to ply its lucrative trade.