and
bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant'Elisabetta
offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth
sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies
from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a limitless
horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant'Elisabetta. Our
boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across the island and back
again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with
them in the shade of the little _osteria's_ wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido
was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are
welcome to the artist's soul. I have always held that in our modern life
the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense--that sense
which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of
earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places,
under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at
some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our
imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at
such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this
revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously
felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone
of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly
sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and
excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain, no
longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex
conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail, judged by
this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.

I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the
lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful
risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their
shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked
myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity
of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the AEgean or
Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons
of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed
youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud
to his comrades, as he bears the