, so
that while his family name is almost forgotten he is still known as
Giorgione.

There was much of the poet nature about Giorgione, and his love of
music was intense. He composed his own songs and sang them to his own
music upon the lute, and indeed it seemed as if there were few things
which this Great George could not do. But it was his painting that was
most wonderful, for his painted men and women seemed alive and real,
and he caught the very spirit of music in his pictures and there held
it fast.

Giorgione early became known as a great artist, and when he was quite a
young man he was employed by the city of Venice to fresco the outside
walls of the new German Exchange. Wind and rain and the salt sea air
have entirely ruined these frescoes now, and there are but few of
Giorgione's pictures left to us, but that perhaps makes them all the
more precious in our eyes.

Even his drawings are rare, and the one you see here is taken from a
bigger sketch in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence. It shows a man in
Venetian dress helping two women to mount one of the niches of a marble
palace in order to see some passing show, and to be out of the way of
the crowd.

There is a picture now in the Venice Academy said to have been painted
by Giorgione, which would interest every boy and girl who loves old
stories. It tells the tale of an old Venetian legend, almost forgotten
now, but which used to be told with bated breath, and was believed to
be a matter of history. The story is this:

On the 25th of February 1340 a terrible storm began to rage around
Venice, more terrible than any that had ever been felt before. For
three days the wild winds swept her waters and shrieked around her
palaces, churning up the sea into great waves and shaking the city to
her very foundations. Lightning and thunder never ceased, and the rain
poured down in a great sheet of grey water, until it seemed as if a
second flood had come to visit the world. Slowly but surely the waters
rose higher and higher, and Venice sunk lower and lower, and men said
that unless the storm soon ceased the city would be overwhelmed. No one
ventured out on the canals, and only an old fisherman who happened to
be in his boat was swept along by the canal of San Marco, and managed
with great difficulty to reach the steps. Very thankful to be safe on
land he tied his boat securely, and sat down to wait until the storm
should cease. As he sat there watching the lightning a