all, the wonder of
those pictures which decked her walls. The very names of Giorgione and
Titian sounded like magic in his ears. They seemed to open out before
him a wonderful new Paradise, where stately men and women clad in the
richest robes moved about in a world of glowing colour.

At last the day came when he was to see the city of his dreams, and
enter into that magic world of Art. What delight it was to study those
pictures hour by hour, and learn the secrets of the great masters. It
was the best teaching that heart could desire.

No one in Venice took much notice of the quiet, hard-working young
painter, and he worked on steadily by himself for some years. But at
last his chance came, and he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of
the church of St. Sebastian; and when this was finished Venice
recognised his genius, and saw that here was another of her sons whom
she must delight to honour.

These great pictures of Veronese were just the kind of work to charm
the rich Venetians, those merchant princes who delighted in costly
magnificence. Never before had any painter pictured such royal scenes
of grandeur. There were banqueting halls with marble balustrades just
like their own Venetian palaces. The guests that thronged these halls
were courtly gentlemen and high-born ladies arrayed in rich brocades
and dazzling jewels. Men-servants and maidservants, costly ornaments
and golden dishes were there, everything that heart could desire.

True, there was not much room for religious feeling amid all this
grandeur, although the painter would call the pictures by some Bible
name and would paint in the figure of our Lord, or the Blessed Virgin,
among the gay crowd. But no one stopped to think about religion, and
what cared they if the guests at the 'Marriage Feast of Cana' were
dressed in the rich robes of Venetian nobles, and all was as different
as possible from the simple wedding-feast where Christ worked his first
miracle.

So the fame of Paolo Veronese grew greater and greater, and he painted
more and more gorgeous pictures. But here and there we find a simpler
and more charming piece of his work, as when he painted the little St.
John with the skin thrown over his bare shoulder and the cross in his
hand. He is such a really childlike figure as he stands looking upward
and rests his little hand confidingly on the worn and wounded palm of
St. Francis, who stands beside him.

Although the Venetian nobles found not