done. Consequently, in the early Renaissance, there were no
painters in the North of Italy, and few even in Florence, who were not
touched by the influence of the Veronese. But Paolo's own immediate
predecessors were no longer able to speak the language of the whole mass
of the people. There was one class they left out entirely, the class to
whom Titian and Tintoretto appealed so strongly, the class that ruled,
and that thought in the new way. Verona, being a dependency of Venice,
did no ruling, and certainly not at all so much thinking as Venice, and
life there continued healthful, simple, unconscious, untroubled by the
approaching storm in the world's feelings. But although thought and
feeling may be slow in invading a town, fashion comes there quickly.
Spanish fashions in dress, and Spanish ceremonial in manners reached
Verona soon enough, and in Paolo Caliari we find all these fashions
reflected, but health, simplicity, and unconsciousness as well. This
combination of seemingly opposite qualities forms his great charm for
us to-day, and it must have proved as great an attraction to many of the
Venetians of his own time, for they were already far enough removed from
simplicity to appreciate to the full his singularly happy combination of
ceremony and splendour with an almost childlike naturalness of feeling.
Perhaps among his strongest admirers were the very men who most
appreciated Titian's distinction and Tintoretto's poetry. But it is
curious to note that Paolo's chief employers were the monasteries. His
cheerfulness, and his frank and joyous worldliness, the qualities, in
short, which we find in his huge pictures of feasts, seem to have been
particularly welcome to those who were expected to make their meat and
drink of the very opposite qualities. This is no small comment on the
times, and shows how thorough had been the permeation of the spirit of
the Renaissance when even the religious orders gave up their pretence to
asceticism and piety.

=XXI. Bassano, Genre, and Landscape.=--Venetian painting would not have
been the complete expression of the riper Renaissance if it had
entirely neglected the country. City people have a natural love of the
country, but when it was a matter of doubt whether a man would ever
return if he ventured out of the town-gates, as was the case in the
Middle Ages, this love had no chance of showing itself. It had to wait
until the country itself was safe for wayfarers, a state of thi