is struck so quietly that at first we may even be unconscious of its sounding. In the foreground on a narrow strip of pavement lies the body of St. Jerome. His head rests upon a stone and his long beard lies straight and smooth upon his breast. It is quite lifeless, this body, but the kneeling Brothers think their master is before them. There are wonderful character studies among these Brothers, sensual and simple and devout. Those Carpaccio has chosen to read the Office for the Dead are the most lifeless. The skull on the blasted tree trunk, which his love of the grotesque has inserted in the angle of the wall, seems a fit symbol of the sovereignty they acknowledge. But we have already noted the existence of another actor in the scene. In front of a little group of buildings under a broad rustic portico lies the lion, not inert like his master or like the monks who perform the rites of the dead, not now a suppliant, deprecating lion. His paw tears the ground, his head is raised; he roars in the agony of his bereavement. He is no longer feared, it seems; custom has staled the terrors of him. To the Brothers he is merely another animal of the menagerie, one of the last whims of Brother Jerome. Yet he understands that his master is not here in this square of the convent. He has long been content; but now the desert calls to him and he answers with the voice of the desert that he had unlearned for a while. We have mentioned only a few of the series of paintings in this wonderful chapel, and even of them the greater part has been left unsaid. Each picture requires the whole of the two hours, the Scuola allows, for study of them all; but, in coming to them from time to time for a few moments only, we may constantly discover some new token of their artist’s insight and understanding, some richness of composition, some delicacy of colour, some intimate detail of workmanship which makes us feel Carpaccio’s presence. The beauties of St. Jerome’s study are almost inexhaustible; the details of this exquisite room will reveal to us much of Carpaccio and of Venice. Nothing is in it by chance or because space has to be filled. The gold and rose of the apse, the marble of its pillars, the painted ceiling and richly bound manuscripts, the delicate bronzes, the colouring of the walls, the tiny white dog (forerunner of the lion), the crosier and crimson cushion, all are expressive. And there is one touch--for which we give thanks to the artist--unobtrusive but surely significant; the candles on either wall are held in the bronze fore-paws of a lion. This Chapel of the Schiavoni has not gone unscathed; during a fire that two years ago destroyed a warehouse on the opposite bank of the canal, the water from the engines poured through the roof of the chapel, injuring the pictures on the wall nearest the rio--the _Combat of St. George_ and his _Return with the Dragon_.