n both his
general arrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth
or fifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historical accuracy
was not yet so fully understood.

It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men of science
whether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain people whether lay or
regular on the other, are trying to play a different game, and fail to
understand one another because they do not see that their objects are not
the same. The cleric and the man of science (who is only the cleric in
his latest development) are trying to develop a throat with two distinct
passages--one that shall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, and
another that shall gracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we men
of the street desire but one throat, and are content that this shall
swallow nothing bigger than a pony. Every one knows that there is no
such effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels as
incessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, and this
should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of our
clerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science, still
continue to do what I said I did in "Alps and Sanctuaries," and make it a
rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow a few of the
smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the best astringent for
the throat I know of.

The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee. This is
the best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only one which can
claim to be taken quite seriously. Not that all the figures are very
good; those to the left of the composition are commonplace enough; nor
are the Christ and the giver of the feast at all remarkable; but the ten
or dozen figures of guests and attendants at the right-hand end of the
work are as good as anything of their kind can be, and remind me so
strongly of Tabachetti that I cannot doubt they were done by some one who
was indirectly influenced by that great sculptor's work. It is not
likely that Tabachetti was alive long after 1640, by which time he would
have been about eighty years old; and the foundations of this chapel were
not laid till about 1690; the statues are probably a few years later;
they can hardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied under
Tabachetti; but until I found out the dates, and went inside the chapel
to see the way in which the figures had been const