animated; the servitors are bustling about; a number of
spectators talk together at the back; a woman in the foreground holds
out a vessel to the men opposite to show them the remarkable change
which the water has undergone. But it is in the centre of his picture
(which is reproduced on the opposite page) that the painter has
achieved one of his pleasantest effects, for here is a row of pretty
women sitting side by side at the banquetting table, with a soft light
upon them, who make together one of the most charming of those rare
oases of pure sweetness in all Tintoretto's work. The chief light is
theirs and they shine most graciously in it.

Among other pictures are a S. Sebastian by Basaiti, with a good
landscape; a glowing altar-piece by Titian, in his Giorgionesque manner,
representing S. Mark and four saints; a "Descent of the Holy Ghost," by
the same hand but under no such influence; and a spirited if rather
theatrical "Nativity of the Virgin" by Lucia Giordano. In the outer
sacristy the kneeling figure of Doge Agostino Barbarigo should be looked
for.

The Salute in Guardi's day seems to have had the most entrancing light
blue curtains at its main entrance, if we may take the artist as our
authority. See No. 2098 in the National Gallery, and also No. 503 at the
Wallace collection. But now only a tiny side door is opened.

[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE AT CANA
FROM THE PAINTING BY TINTORETTO
_In the Church of the Salute_]

A steamboat station, used almost wholly by visitors, is here, and then a
canal, and then the fourteenth-century abbey of S. Gregorio, whose
cloisters now form an antiquity store and whose severe and simple apse
is such a rebuke to Longhena's Renaissance floridity. Next is a
delightful little house with one of the old cup-chimneys, forming one of
the most desirable residences in Venice. It has a glazed loggia looking
down to the Riva. We next come to a brand new spacious building divided
into apartments, then a tiny house, and then the rather squalid Palazzo
Martinengo. The calle and traghetto of S. Gregorio, and two or three old
palaces and the new building which now holds Salviati's glass business,
follow. After the Rio del Formase is a common little house, and then
the Palazzo Volkoff, once Eleonora Duse's Venetian home.

Next is the splendid fifteenth-century Palazzo Dario, to my eyes perhaps
the most satisfying of all, with its rich colouring, leaning walls,
ancient chimneys and porph