perhaps have had much trouble with--I mean bitterness and
contemptuousness. His lips are very thin; he may have sneered many a
time, when he was younger, at the follies of the world which that great,
lofty, thoughtful brain and clear eye of his told him were follies; but
he seems to have got past that too. Such is the man's character: a
noble, simple, commanding old man, who has conquered many hard things,
and, hardest of all, has conquered himself, and now is waiting calm for
his everlasting rest. God send us all the same.

"Now consider the deep insight of old John Bellini, who could see all
this, and put it down there for us with pencil and paint. No doubt there
was something in Bellini's own character which made him especially best
able to paint such a man; for we always understand those who are most
like ourselves; and therefore you may tell pretty nearly a painter's own
character by seeing what sort of subjects he paints, and what his style
of painting is. And a noble, simple, brave, godly man was old John
Bellini, who never lost his head, though princes were flattering him and
snobs following him with shouts and blessings for his noble pictures of
the Venetian victories, as if he had been a man sent from God Himself, as
indeed he was--all great painters are; for who but God makes beauty? Who
gives the loving heart, and the clear eye, and the graceful taste to see
beauty and to copy it, and to set forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble
deeds of patriots dying for their country? To paint truly patriotic
pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work--he must be a true
patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mistake not, he had fought for
his country himself in more than one shrewd fight). And what makes men
patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the
living God? Those great pictures of Bellini's are no more; they were
burnt a few years afterwards, with the magnificent national hall in which
they hung; but the spirit of them is not passed away. Even now, Venice,
Bellini's beloved mother-land, is rising, new-born, from long weary years
of Austrian slavery, and trying to be free and great once more; and young
Italian hearts are lighting up with the thoughts of her old fleets and
her old victories, her merchants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini
drew. Venice sinned, and fell; and sorely has she paid for her sins,
through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and sla