cities of Carthage, Rome, and Venice-Carthage in connection especially with the thoughts and study which led to the painting of the Hesperides' Garden, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of wealth; Rome, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of power; Venice, the death which attends the vain pursuit of beauty.

How strangely significative, thus understood, those last Venetian dreams of his become, themselves so beautiful and so frail; wrecks of all that they were once-twilights of twilight!

§ 32. Vain beauty; yet not all in vain. Unlike in birth, how like in their labor, and their power over the future, these masters of England and Venice-Turner and Giorgione. But ten years ago, I saw the last traces of the greatest works of Giorgione yet glowing, like a scarlet cloud, on the Fondaco de Tedeschi. And though that scarlet cloud (sanguigna e fiam

which one of the saddest and most tender is a little sketch of dawn, made in his last years. It is a small space of level sea shore; beyond it a fair, soft light in the east; the last storm-clouds melting away, oblique into the morning air; some little vessel-a collier, probably-has gone down in the night, all hands lost; a single dog has come ashore. Utterly exhausted, its limbs failing under it, and, sinking into the sand, it stands howling and shivering. The dawn-clouds have the first scarlet upon them, a feeble tinge only, reflected with the same feeble blood-stain on the sand.

The morning light is used with a loftier significance in a drawing made as a companion to the Goldau, engraved in the fourth volume. The Lake of Zug, which ripples beneath the sunset in the Goldau, is lulled in the level azure of early cloud; and the spire of Aart, which is there a dark point at the edge of the golden lake, is, in the opening light, seen pale against purple mountains. The sketches for these two subjects were, I doubt not, made from the actual effects of a stormy evening, and the next following daybreak ; but both with earnest meaning. The crimson sunset lights the valley of rock tombs, cast upon it by the fallen Rossberg; but the sunrise gilds with its level rays the two peaks which protect the village that gives name to Switzerland; and the orb itself breaks first through the darkness on the very point of the pass to the high lake of Egeri, where the liberties of the cantons were won by the battle-charge of Morgarten.

* I have engraved, at the beginning of this chapter, one of the fragments of these frescos, preserved, all imperfectly indeed, yet with some feeling of their nobleness, by Zanetti, whose words respecting them I have quoted in the text. The one I saw was the first figure given in his book; the one engraved in my Plate, the third, had wholly perished; but even this record of it by Zanetti is precious. What imperfections of form exist in it, too

meggiante, per cui le pitture cominciarono con dolce violenza a rapire il cuore delle genti) may, indeed, melt away into paleness of night, and Venice herself waste from her islands as a wreath of wind-driven foam fades from their weedy beach;-that which she won of faithful light and truth shall never pass away. Deiphobe of the sea,-the Sun God measures her immortality to her by its sand. Flushed, above the Avernus of the Adrian lake, her spirit is still seen holding the golden bough; from the lips of the Sea Sibyl men shall learn for ages yet to come what is most noble and most fair; and, far away, as the whisper in the coils of the shell, withdrawn through the deep hearts of nations, shall sound for ever the enchanted voice of Venice.

visibly, are certainly less Giorgione's than the translator's; nevertheless, for these very faults, as well as for its beauty, I have chosen it, as the best type I could give of the strength of Venetian art; which was derived, be it remembered always, from the acceptance of natural truth, by men who loved beauty too well to think she was to be won by falsehood.

The words of Zanetti himself respecting Giorgione's figure of Diligence are of great value, as they mark this first article of Venetian faith: "Giorgione per tale, o per altra che vi fosse, contrassegnolla con quella spezie di mannaja che tiene in mano; per altro tanto ci cercava le sole bellezze della natura, che poco pensando al costume, ritrasse qui una di quelle donne Friulane, che vengono per servire in Venezia; non alterandone nemmeno l'abito, è facendola alquanto attempata, quale forse ci la vedea; senza voler sapere che per rappresentare le Virtù, si suole da pittori belle è fresche giovani immaginare."

Compare with this what I have said of Titian's Magdalen. I ought in that place to have dwelt also upon the firm endurance of all terribleness which is marked in Titian's "Notomie" and in Veronese's "Marsyas." In order to understand the Venetian mind entirely, the student should place a plate from that series of the Notomie always beside the best engraving he can obtain of Titian's Flora."

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My impression is that the ground of the flesh in these Giorgione frescos had been pure vermilion; little else was left in the figure I saw. Therefore, not knowing what power the painter intended to personify by the figure at the commencement of this chapter, I have called her, from her glowing color, Hesperid Eglé.