e the portrait of a caravan giant at a fair....

Turning aside from the glowing piazza and following the downward slope
of a hill to the left of the Prefettura, we come, at the distance of
only a few yards, upon another open space, grassy and solitary,
surrounded on three sides by rambling, dilapidated-looking houses, and
opening on the fourth to a vista of woods and mountains. In this little
piazza stands a massive stone fountain, time-worn and water-worn,
surmounted by a statue of Saint Tiziano in the robes and square cap of
an ecclesiastic. The water trickling through two metal pipes in the
pedestal beneath Saint Tiziano's feet, makes a pleasant murmuring in the
old stone basin; while, half hidden behind this fountain, and leaning up
as if for shelter against a larger house adjoining, stands-a small
whitewashed cottage upon the side-wall of which an incised tablet bears
the following record:

"Nel MCCCCLXXVII Fra Queste Vmili Mura Tiziano Vecellio Vene a
celebre Vita Donde vsciva gia presso a cento Anni In Venezia Addi
XXVII Agosto MDLXXVI."

A poor, mean-looking, low-roofed dwelling, disfigured by external
chimney-shafts and a built-out oven; lit with tiny, blinking, medieval
windows; altogether unlovely; altogether unnoticeable; but--the
birthplace of Titian!

It looked different, no doubt, when he was a boy and played outside here
on the grass. It had probably a high, steep roof, like the homesteads in
his own landscape drawings; but the present old brown tiles have been
over it long enough to get mottled with yellow lichens. One would like
to know if the fountain and the statue were there in his time; and if
the water trickled ever to the same low tune; and if the women came
there to wash their linen and fill their brazen water jars, as they do
now. This lovely green hill, at all events, sheltered the home from the
east winds; and Monte Duranno lifted his strange crest yonder against
the southern horizon; and the woods dipt down to the valley, then as
now, where the bridle-path slopes away to join the road to Venice.

We went up to the house, and knocked. The door was opened by a sickly,
hunchbacked lad who begged us to walk in, and who seemed to be quite
alone there. The house was very dark, and looked much older inside than
from without. A long, low, gloomy upstairs chamber with a huge penthouse
fire-place jutting into the room, was evidently as old as the days of
Titian's grandfather, to whom