o is the very heart of Venice. In the double
row of plain seats running round it sat her nobles; on the raised dais
at the end, surrounded by the graver senators, sat her duke. One long
fresco occupies the whole wall above the ducal seat; in the background
the blue waters of the Lagoon with the towers and domes of Venice rising
from them; around a framework of six bending saints; in front two
kneeling Doges in full ducal robes with a black curtain of clouds
between them. The clouds roll back to reveal a mighty glory, and in the
heart of it the livid figure of a dead Christ taken from the cross. Not
one eye of all the nobles gathered in council could have lifted itself
from the figure of the Doge without falling on the figure of the dead
Christ. Strange as the conception is it is hard to believe that in a
mind so peculiarly symbolical as that of Tintoret the contrast could
have been without a definite meaning. And if this be so, it is a meaning
that one can hardly fail to read in the history of the time. The brief
interval of peace and glory had passed away ere Tintoret's brush had
ceased to toil. The victory of Lepanto had only gilded that disgraceful
submission to the Turk which preluded the disastrous struggle in which
her richest possessions were to be wrested from the Republic. The
terrible plague of 1576 had carried off Titian. Twelve years after
Titian Paul Veronese passed away. Tintoret, born almost at its opening,
lingered till the very close of the century to see Venice sinking into
powerlessness and infamy and decay. May not the figure of the dead
Christ be the old man's protest against a pride in which all true
nobleness and effort had ceased to live, and which was hurrying to so
shameful a fall?

THE DISTRICT VISITOR.

It would be hard to define exactly the office and duties of the District
Visitor. Historically she is the direct result of the Evangelical
movement which marked the beginning of this century; the descendant of
the "devout women not a few" who played, like Hannah More, the part of
mothers in Israel to the Simeons and Wilberforces of the time. But the
mere tract-distributor of fifty years ago has grown into a parochial and
ecclesiastical force of far greater magnitude. The District Visitor of
to-day is parson and almoner in one; the parochial censor of popular
morals, the parochial instructor in domestic economy. She claims the
same right as the vicar to knock at every door and obtain a