a dress, the stopping of a tooth, the guessing of a riddle, a dancing lesson, a toilette. These things were part of life, and superbly they would have done it; they painted lesser acts than these in the corner of their pictures, for every detail of the city life so jealously guarded by its rulers was precious to them. But the difference lies in the centre of interest. In the eighteenth century, the detail, the side light, the accessory of life has swelled into the principal subject, and the faces of the actors are vacant as never in Carpaccio. It is not so much that they are less beautiful, that they are often witless; but they are lacking in purpose, in subordination to a common control. The pulse of a great civic life no longer beats in them. We have considered hitherto the manner in which Venice used her elected medium of expression, how her painters had understood and interpreted the life of the city. We will turn now to ask what attitude towards the facts of life is reflected in their canvases. And here we will attempt again to illustrate, by certain examples, what aspects of life found most ready acceptance by the Venetian artists of the Renaissance. We may venture to seek an illustration of two of its broader aspects--one foreign, the other native to the mind of Venice as reflected in her life and in her art--in two sculptured figures by Antonio Rizzo in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace. These two figures, of Adam and Mars, are most original in conception. Adam holds the apple in his hand; it seems that he has just partaken of it and that, partaking, he has been initiated into a new vision. His beautiful clear-cut face is upturned; his lips are open; his hand seems to hold in the tumult of his heart. There is as yet no shame, no contrition, no sense of sin in Adam’s look, nor in his attitude, but the immense wonder of a new experience with its yet undetermined import; and through the ecstasy of his vision there breaks that strange pain of the mortal man whose body can scarcely support its spiritual burden. It seems almost as if Adam were receiving now that vision of the ages at whose threshold he stood; he has opened a door which can never again be shut; he has let in a flood which is beyond his control, and he is rapt in the contemplation. The other figure who fills with Adam a niche in the Arco Foscari is Mars, the god of war. His body is grandly moulded, stalwart and disciplined and ready for action; but there are no tempests in his look; there is no herculean development of muscle nor trampling vehemence as in the fresco of Veronese. Rizzo’s war-god is young, full of grace and beauty, with the dream also of a poet on his sensuous lips. He is majestic; his face is grave and thoughtful, with a strange sadness in its vigilant wisdom. He and Adam seem to strike together the accord of the Renaissance, the union of a great expectancy, an uncomprehended newness, with controlled and ordered purpose and the conviction of conquest.