from the windows, the most distant figures, are all treated with the same clearness and precision: to each its value is assigned. This fulness of meaning is one of the sources of his fascination for us: the fact that he has done a little thing means sometimes more to us, if we can come at the prompting purpose, than a pageant of main figures. It is like the side-flash of light which a seemingly irrelevant act casts sometimes on a personality. The fidelity of Bellini and Carpaccio to the facts of Venice fills us continually with fresh wonder: it is not the fidelity of copyists standing outside the scene they paint; their very heart is in its stones. As we watch Gentile’s gorgeous procession sweep like a stream from the gate of the Ducal Palace round the border of the Piazza, with the sound of trumpets, the rustle and swing of noble garments and the gleam of banners, we feel that the painter had heard and felt the triumph of the music, so marvellously has he conveyed its influence in these moving figures; we too hear the jubilation of it as the long tubes pass out and in. With the pictures of Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini before us we may do more than conjecture what manner of men they were who filled the foreground of contemporary Venice. We have not masses or dispositions of colour merely: we seem to move through a crowd of living beings or a gallery of portraits. No one could paint loungers as Carpaccio paints them; there is no monotony in their inaction; the faces are as various as the men--wonderful faces, some coarse, some refined, but almost all with that indefinable quality of pathos in their strength which is one of the essentials of beauty. There are perhaps comparatively few among them that would satisfy a conventional canon of beauty: their fascination lies in the rich combination of whimsical humour and strength, melancholy and wit; so eloquent are they, so quick with intelligence that we are little disposed to question their material perfection or imperfection. These citizens of Gentile Bellini, Mansueti and above all Carpaccio--since in him are realised a far greater variety of types--impress us profoundly as men of calm and steady purpose, who have lived, felt and prevailed. They are men of action, yet they are dreamers. And this was not from incapacity in Carpaccio to express vivid motions in feature or form. When he is more freely composing, as in the _Death of St. Ursula_, it would be hard to rival the brilliance and vivacity with which he has treated the turmoil of the one-sided fray. But these citizens--whether of Venice or of Ursula’s court is immaterial--seem to be governed by some internal harmony; there is a rhythm in their motions and in their standing still, which reflects the spirit of their time. We have only to compare them with the characters in Longhi’s eighteenth-century interiors to understand that a great change has taken place. Imagine Carpaccio and Bellini set to paint as primary interests the choosing of