I have to confess to weariness in the Ducal apartments. The rooms are
splendid, no doubt, and the pictures are monuments of energy; but it is
the windows that frame the most delectable scenes. In Venice, where the
sun usually shines, one's normal wish is to be out, except when, as in
S. Mark's there is the wonder of dimness too. For Venice is not like
other historic cities; Venice, for all her treasures of art, is first
and foremost the bride of the Adriatic, and the call of the sea is
strong. Art's opportunity is the dull days and rainy.

With the best will to do so, I cannot be much impressed by the glory and
power of the Doges. They wear a look, to me, very little removed from
Town Councillors: carried out to the highest power, no doubt, but
incorrigibly municipal none the less; and the journey through these
halls of their deliberations is tedious and unenchanting. That I am
wrong I am only too well aware. Does not Venetian history, with its
triumphs and pageantry of world-power, prove it? And would Titian and
Paul Veronese and Tintoretto have done all this for a Mayor and
Corporation? These are awkward questions. None the less, there it is,
and the Doges' Palace, within, would impart no thrill to me were it not
for Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne."

Having paid for our tickets (for only on Sundays and holidays is the
Palace free) we take the Scala d'Oro, designed by Sansovino, originally
intended only for the feet of the grandees of the Golden Book. The first
room is an ante-room where catalogues are sold; but these are not
needed, for every room, or nearly every room, has hand-charts of the
paintings, and every room has a custodian eager to impart information.
Next is the Hall of the Four Doors, with its famous and typical
Titian--Doge Grimani, fully armed and accompanied by warriors,
ecstatically acknowledging religion, as symbolized by a woman, a cross,
and countless cherubim. Behind her is S. Mark with an expression of some
sternness, and beside him his lion, roaring.

Doges, it appears,--at any rate the Doges who reigned during Titian's
long life--had no sense of humour, or they could not have permitted this
kind of self-glorification in paint. Both here and at the Accademia we
shall see picture after picture in which these purse-proud Venetian
administrators, suspecting no incongruity or absurdity, are placed, by
Titian and Tintoretto, on terms of perfect intimacy with the hierarchy
of heaven. Sometime