nd softest of Stothard's conceptions,
executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other women are all made
inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of
breasts and necks along the whole line. The men are all subordinate,
though there are interesting portraits among them; perhaps the only
fault of the picture being that the faces are a little too conspicuous,
seen like balls of light among the crowd of minor figures which fill the
background of the picture. The tone of the whole is sober and majestic
in the highest degree; the dresses are all broad masses of colour, and
the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of
wealth or splendour are the head-dresses of the women. In this respect
the conception of the scene differs widely from that of Veronese, and
approaches more nearly to the probable truth. Still the marriage is not
an important one; an immense crowd, filling the background, forming
superbly rich mosaic of colour against the distant sky. Taken as a whole
the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has
produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united
with richness of local colour. In all the other works of Tintoret, and
much more of other colourists, either the light and shade or the local
colour is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to
look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly
conventional, and approaches the conditions of glass-painting. This
picture unites colour as rich as Titian's with light and shade as
forcible as Rembrandt's, and far more decisive.

There are one or two other interesting pictures of the early Venetian
school in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining
cloister; among which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from
the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention.

_Stones of Venice_ (London, 1853).

MADAME DE POMPADOUR

(_DE LA TOUR_)

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

Madame de Pompadour was not exactly a _grisette_, as her enemies
affected to say and as Voltaire has said in a malicious moment: she was
a _bourgeoise_, a blossom of finance, the most lovely woman in Paris,
witty, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents,
but with a way of feeling that did not have the grandeur and coldness of
an aristocratic ambition. She loved the King for his own sake, as the
handsomest man in his realm