down-turned face to penetrate the depths of the green water. The negro, stripped, and ready for a plunge, who stands quaking on the lowest step of a wooden landing-stage opposite, affords a delightful foil to the Brothers who swim with such careless proficiency despite their encumbering robes. If he would but look up, he would see that his courage need not be put to the test--that the lost treasure is already sailing triumphantly ashore. [Illustration: A VENETIAN BRIDGE.] To identify the exact scene of the picture, we shall do well to pass into the Rio San Lorenzo from the Rio del Pestrin and take up our stand a little beyond the Ponte San Lorenzo at about the point of Bellini’s wooden bridge. Looking back we have now in front of us the present Ponte San Lorenzo in place of Bellini’s beautiful three-arched bridge, spanning the canal between the long fondamenta on our left, and the campo and Church of San Lorenzo, which are still--as in the picture--wedged between the buildings on our right. The minute private fondamenta also, where in the picture kneel two of the foremost of the procession, is still in existence. On our left is the fondamenta in front of Bellini’s beautiful frescoed house, and beyond it several houses of irregular heights, as in the picture, while the horizon on this side is still filled by the main features of Bellini’s background--another Palazzo Capello bounded on three sides by water, the Rio Pestrin, the Rio San Lorenzo, and the Rio San Giovanni Laterano. The palace retains some of its grandeur; it is easily recognisable by its shape, though to-day it is one storey higher. The Capello arms are still to be seen on it, but it has been robbed of most of its glories of marble and colour. There is a certain melancholy as well as a fascination in attempting to reconstruct the scene of the picture. In the Gallery, when we are face to face with the frescoed houses that we may only see foreshortened, we long to join the spectators across the rio and complete those tantalising fragments of centaurs and figures on horseback that combine with more conventional ornaments to decorate the palace on the fondamenta. But now we are face to face with reality, the frescoes are no more. With the exception of the Palazzo Capello it is only the shape and relative position of the houses that assures to us their identity.