by this water-path from Mestre, before the Austrians built their
causeway for the trains. Some of the rare scraps of fresco upon house
fronts, still to be seen in Venice, are left in Cannaregio. They
are chiaroscuro allegories in a bold bravura manner of the sixteenth
century. From these and from a few rosy fragments on the Fondaco
dei Tedeschi, the Fabbriche Nuove, and precious fading figures in a
certain courtyard near San Stefano, we form some notion how Venice
looked when all her palaces were painted. Pictures by Gentile Bellini,
Mansueti, and Carpaccio help the fancy in this work of restoration.
And here and there, in back canals, we come across coloured sections
of old buildings, capped by true Venetian chimneys, which for a moment
seem to realise our dream.

A morning with Tintoretto might well be followed by a morning with
Carpaccio or Bellini. But space is wanting in these pages. Nor would
it suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces
and churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow
panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the
delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white
Istrian stone. It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant
pilgrimage: warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark
chapel of the Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and
flowers in distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini
in S. Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San
Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte
di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo
Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of
tracery, some moulding full of mediaeval symbolism, some fierce
impossible Renaissance freak of fancy.

Bather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew me one
day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan Church of Venice, San
Pietro di Castello. The novella is related by Bandello. It has, as
will be noticed, points of similarity to that of 'Romeo and Juliet.'

V.--A VENETIAN NOVELLA

At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those
handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little
round caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there
lived in Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose
palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Messer Paolo was