The very colour of his skin seems to have flowed through him with his blood; he is abjectly grey when dragged on to the Piazza. This transformation of the dragon is a great feat, the greater when we remember that even when he first appears, the virtue is beginning to go out of him, his claws are already beating the air with growing impotence. This first picture of the St. George series is the most complete lyric of Carpaccio’s that we possess; it is an episode of high romance, and its landscape is conceived in the spirit of romantic fantasy. We have noted elsewhere the treatment of the buildings, the way the city, which at first sight seems of a dreamlike quality, like the port whence St. Ursula’s prince sets out, defines itself gradually as a solid, fortified citadel, half hidden behind oriental watch-towers. But we have still to note the inspiration with which Carpaccio has unified these defences with the grand sweep of the coast-line. The huge cliffs which enclose the bay on the left, stretching out to the yellow light, are worthy to rank with those in Turner’s _Ulysses and Polyphemus_. The landscape to the right of the bay is freer and more fanciful. A cupolaed duomo crowns the cliff behind the princess. Men and horses move on the huge projecting rock, joined to the main cliff only by a natural arch and by a high-swung delicate bridge. The houses among the trees and the horsemen moving over the dizzy bridge enhance the romantic strangeness of effect. The framing by this rugged arch of a full-rigged vessel upon the open sea is one of Carpaccio’s happiest fancies. The devastated shore, the sea flowing into the city, the yellow of the sky above the horizon passing into a troubled paleness of cloud-flecked blue, the wind-driven vessel on the high sea, the suggestion of vast ocean spaces--all these combine in the imaginative grandeur of effect. The second picture of the series, _St. George’s Return_, is very different in atmosphere. It is filled with sunlight, the trampling of victory and the sound of music. Its keynote is victorious joy and pomp of festival, sounded in the spacious sunniness of the Piazza and the horizon of slope and mountains beyond; sustained in the buildings that surround the square and the airy pinnacles and balconies crowded with onlookers, and in the flags that fly round the octagonal building winging it with air. The radiant flowered brocades compete with the trappings of the horses to perfect the scene; and through it, and round it, sounds the music of drum and trumpet from the turbaned band which forms a background to the royal party, drawing them, as it were, into the sweep of the central square where St. George officiates. All moves to the measure of glad yet solemn music; here is no lightning stroke, no sudden motion; the muscles of action are relaxed, in slow measure the horses paw the ground. The third picture, _The Baptism of King and Princess_, is still pervaded with music. The musicians lead in the scene; the