roper distance, it is in perfect harmony.

In examining the landscapes of this painter, much must, however, be
allowed for the present state of some of his works. Many are covered
with a dark-brown varnish, obscuring the silvery freshness of their
first state. This has cracked up in the darks and quite changed them.
The _Market-Cart_ and the _Watering-Place_, as well as others in the
National collection, are in a very different condition to that in which
they left the easel. The world, however, has become so conservative, and
has such belief in the picture-vamper's "golden tones," that so they
must remain. It would be most impolitic to touch them until they have
become too dark to be seen at all.

_A Century of Painters of the English School_ (London, 1866).

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

(_TINTORET_)

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

It is more difficult for me to speak to you of the Venetian painters
than of any others. Before their pictures one has no desire to analyze
or reason; if one does this, it is by compulsion. The eyes enjoy, and
that is all: they enjoy as the Venetians enjoyed in the Sixteenth
Century; for Venice was not at all a literary or critical city like
Florence; there painting was nothing more than the complement of the
environing pleasure, the decoration of a banqueting-hall or of an
architectural alcove. In order to understand this you must place
yourself at a distance, shut your eyes and wait until your sensations
are dulled; then your mind performs its work....

There are certain families of plants, the species of which are so
closely allied that they resemble more than they differ from each other:
such are the Venetian painters, not only the four celebrities,
Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, but others less illustrious,
Palma "il vecchio," Bonifazio, Paris Bordone, Pordenone, and that host
enumerated by Ridolfi in his _Lives_, contemporaries, relatives, and
successors of the great men, Andrea Vicentino, Palma "il giovine,"
Zelotti, Bazzaco, Padovinano, Bassano, Schiavone, Moretto, and many
others. What first appeals to the eye is the general and common type;
the individual and personal traits remain for a time in shadow. They
have worked together and by turns in the Ducal Palace, but by the
involuntary concord of their talents their pictures make an harmonious
whole.

At first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four
halls, the apartments are low and small. The