em like solid land, reflected as they
are in the transparent water.

But although Venice has no meadows decked with flowers and no wealth of
blossoming trees, everywhere on every side she shines with colour, this
wonderful sea-girt city. Her white marble palaces glow with a soft
amber light, the cool green water that reflects her beauty glitters in
rings of gold and blue, changing from colour to colour as each ripple
changes its form. At sunset, when the sun disappears over the edge of
the lagoon and leaves behind its trail of shining clouds, she is like a
dream-city rising from a sea of molten gold--a double city, for in the
pure gold is reflected each tower and spire, each palace and campanile,
in masses of pale yellow and quivering white light, with here and there
a burning touch of flame colour. She seems to have no connection with
the solid, ordinary cities of the world. There she lies in all her
beauty, silent and apart, like a white sea-bird floating upon the bosom
of the ocean.

Venice had always seemed separate and distinct from the rest of the
world. Her cathedral of San Marco was never under the rule of Rome, and
her rulers, or doges, as they were called, governed the city as kings,
and did not trouble themselves with the affairs of other towns. Her
merchant princes sailed to far countries and brought home precious
spoils to add to her beauty. Everything was as rich and rare and
splendid as it was possible to make it, and she was unlike any other
city on earth.

So the painters who lived and worked in this city of the sea had their
own special way of painting, which was different to that of the
Florentine school.

From their babyhood these men had looked upon all this beauty of
colour, and the love of it had grown with their growth. The golden
light on the water, the pearly-grey and tinted marbles, the gay sails
of the galleys which swept the lagoons like painted butterflies, the
wide stretch of water ending in the mystery of the distant skyline--it
all sank into their hearts, and it was little wonder that they should
strive to paint colour above all things, and at last reach a perfection
such as no other school of painters has equalled.

As with the Florentine artists, so with these Venetian painters, we
must leave many names unnoticed just now, and learn first to know those
which shine out clearest among the many bright stars of fame.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century, four hundred years ago