ds: "To me it appears three
thousand years that death is a-coming, so much have I already tasted
of the sweetness of Paradise."

Then the Soldan gave commandment that they should all be slain with
the sword. And so was it done.

Yet when he saw Ursula standing in the midst of all that slaughter,
like the fairest stalk of corn in harvest, and how she was exceeding
lovely, beyond the tongues of this earth to tell, he would have saved
her alive, and taken her for wife. But when she would not, and rebuked
him, he was moved with anger. Now there was a bow in his hand, and he
set an arrow on the string, and drew it with all his strength, and it
pierced the heart of the glorious maiden. So she went to God.

And one maiden only, whose name was Corbula, through fear hid herself
in the ship. But God, who had chosen all that company, gave her heart,
and with the dawn of the next day she came forth willingly, and
received the martyr's crown.

Thus all were slain, and all are gone to Paradise, and sing the glad
and sweet songs of Paradise.

* * * * *

Whosoever reads this holy history, let him not think it a great thing
to say an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the soul of him who has
written it.

II

_THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA_

(CARPACCIO)

_JOHN RUSKIN_

_THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA_

In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice, I had been carefully
looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a
young princess. Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as
far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her
little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in
it It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being
painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that
bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes
of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low
lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set
two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each, one having rich
dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of
any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of
heath.

These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room and
beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to
put things on anywhere; beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are
c