degli Schiavoni, but confining ourselves to the St. Ursula series, we shall find a notable illustration in the buildings seen through the water-gate in the _Return of the Embassy_, and in the great Renaissance loggia which fills so conspicuous a place in the foreground, and to which airiness and light have been imparted by its great arches, by the water washing round its base, and by the spring of the bridge that connects it with the campo where the King sits under his canopy. Most striking of all, perhaps, is the subtle architectural treatment by which, in the great threefold scene of the Prince’s departure, his meeting with Ursula and their blessing by the King, Carpaccio has bestowed an atmosphere of remoteness, almost of fairy strangeness on the English harbour with its castles and walls and motley buildings soaring far up the rocky hillside into the sky, an atmosphere entirely distinct from the upper-world light and joyousness of the contrasting court of Ursula’s father. There is an element of his native landscape that Carpaccio incorporated with singular felicity, and which is peculiarly prominent in his pictures--namely the shipping of Venice. In the great trilogy of the Prince’s departure the vessels are a masterpiece: there is nothing to surpass them in this kind. Carpaccio seems to have realised to the full their varied elements of beauty: their static properties, their weight and substance and the symmetry of their frame, combined with all the radiant light and spring of swelling sail and rigging and flag and countless trappings: all that goes to make a sailing ship a thing of music. And it is not only vessels rigged and ready to float in triumph on the high seas that Carpaccio depicts: there is a vessel also _in squero_, with all the song gone from it, one might think, lying uneasily on its side with its huge mast aslant across the harbour tower. It is noteworthy that all the vessels of the English King seem in course of repair; there is something in their semi-skeleton condition which singularly reinforces the dream effect that we have noticed in this portion of the picture, and the triumphant vessel that would seem to belong to the gay town on our right is united in feeling to the shadow city on the left by the exceeding mystery and beauty of its reflection. This picture supplies us with another instance of the way in which Venice operated as an inspiration in the work of Carpaccio, even when he was not directly portraying the city itself. The beautiful effect of a drawbridge over a great water, such as he knew familiarly in Venice, had impressed itself on his mind: adapting it to the requirements of his scene, he reproduces the bridge of Rialto in the city of the English King, not forgetting the significance of a crowning figure in white at the apex of the arch. We cannot indeed afford to miss a detail in Carpaccio: there is never any crowding nor taking refuge in vagueness. The varieties of shipping, the flags hung