d leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

IV.--MORNING RAMBLES

A story is told of Poussin, the French painter, that when he was asked
why he would not stay in Venice, he replied, 'If I stay here, I
shall become a colourist!' A somewhat similar tale is reported of a
fashionable English decorator. While on a visit to friends in Venice,
he avoided every building which contains a Tintoretto, averring that
the sight of Tintoretto's pictures would injure his carefully trained
taste. It is probable that neither anecdote is strictly true. Yet
there is a certain epigrammatic point in both; and I have often
speculated whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of
Poussin as to shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or whether
even Tintoretto could have so sublimed the prophet of Queen Anne as to
make him add dramatic passion to a London drawing-room. Anyhow, it is
exceedingly difficult to escape from colour in the air of Venice, or
from Tintoretto in her buildings. Long, delightful mornings may be
spent in the enjoyment of the one and the pursuit of the other by folk
who have no classical or pseudo-mediaeval theories to oppress them.

Tintoretto's house, though changed, can still be visited. It formed
part of the Fondamenta dei Mori, so called from having been the
quarter assigned to Moorish traders in Venice. A spirited carving of a
turbaned Moor leading a camel charged with merchandise, remains above
the waterline of a neighbouring building; and all about the crumbling
walls sprout flowering weeds--samphire and snapdragon and the spiked
campanula, which shoots a spire of sea-blue stars from chinks of
Istrian stone.

The house stands opposite the Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, where
Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief masterpieces are
to be seen. This church, swept and garnished, is a triumph of modern
Italian restoration. They have contrived to make it as commonplace as
human ingenuity could manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can
obscure the treasures it contains--the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini,
Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning glory. Here
the master may be studied in four of his chief moods: as the painter
of tragic passion and movement, in the huge 'Last Judgment;' as the
painter of impossibilities, in the 'Vision of Moses upon Sinai;'
as the painter of purity and tranquil pathos, in the 'Miracle of S.
Agnes;' as the painter of Biblical history