well as the dignity of the portico--in fact, to secure its existence as a sotto-portico at all--a new head had to be added to the Byzantine pillar to supply the theft at its foot. The incident is rich in suggestion of the achievement of the Venetian builders, of the delicate counterpoise and equilibrium, the ceaseless give-and-take required in this city of the sea. Venice was crowned queen, but her dominion could only be maintained by understanding and reverence of the element she ruled. To be glorious she had to be most humble; for the element she constrained is one no human power can subdue; it would kiss her feet, it would endow her with glory, but it would not surrender its life. A thousand times more glorious should be her dominion, but a thousand times more subtle must be her insight and her sway. Her finger must be ever on the pulse of this living force, she must hold the key of its temperament in her hand, she must know when to submit. The wedding of Venice and the sea was not the submersion of one personality in another, it was a union involving infinite tact, infinite insight and acceptance. We move forward again under the Ponte di Sant’ Antonin beside the Fondamenta dei Furlani or Friulani, to the little building at its further end, a sombre little building with heavily barred windows, but with a sculptured façade. Its outer door is never more than half open; it appears to admit visitors reluctantly, and, however bright the sunshine in the world outside, our first impression of San Giorgio dei Schiavoni is always gloomy. Only for two short hours, from ten to twelve in the morning, the chapel is open--short, because the sacristan keeps jealous watch upon the clock and, as if it were with the booming of the great gun from the royal palace that his true day began, hurries to close the remaining wing of the outer door, and bar the chapel into solitude and darkness. Carpaccio’s pictures were painted for the light. Their original home was not the Schiavoni chapel, but the School which, till 1451, the Confraternity of St. George and St. Triphonius owned in the convent of San Catterina in the northern extremity of Venice near the Fondamenta Nuova. The chapel of the Schiavoni needs more daylight, and even such as is obtainable is not freely enough admitted; but Carpaccio is a magician whose spell can release us from all consciousness of discomfort. The chapel is an intimate revelation of one of the most fascinating characters in Venetian history. It is the completest record of Carpaccio that exists, the series of paintings in which his imagination has the fullest range. It is not as a portrait painter of Venice and the Venetians that Carpaccio is here employed, his scope is wider and the whole spirit of his treatment is different. The _St. Ursula_ series is not lacking in subtle personal touches; but it is not intimate in the same degree as the _St. George_, and it does not touch the level of personal intensity of the _St. Jerome_.