answered Bettina, slowly, enumerating some of the
signs she had observed in Mr. Sumner with respect to Barbara.

Neither of the girls stopped to think how singular it was that Bettina
should have watched Mr. Sumner closely enough to make such a positive
assertion as this, which, perhaps, is a sufficient commentary on the
state of their minds at this time.

After a delightful half hour of gliding through broad and narrow canals,
they landed in front of the Church of San Rocco, and passed into the
alleyway from which is the entrance of the famous Scuola. As they
stepped into its sumptuous hall, Miss Sherman remarked:--

"I see that Mr. Ruskin says whatever the traveller may miss in Venice,
he should give much time and thought to this building."

"Mr. Ruskin has championed Tintoretto with the same fervor that he has
expended upon Turner," replied Mr. Sumner, smiling. "I think we should
season his judgments concerning both artists with the 'grain of salt'.

"But," continued he, as he saw all were waiting for something further,
"there can be no doubt that Tintoretto was a great painter and a notable
man. To read the story of his life,--his struggles to learn the
art,--his assurance of the worth of his own work, and his colossal
ambitions, is as interesting as any romance."

"I was delighted," interpolated Malcom, "with the story of his first
painting for this building, and the audacity that gained for him the
commission to paint one picture for it every year of his remaining life.

"And here are about fifty of them," resumed Mr. Sumner, "in which we may
study both his strength and his weakness. No painter was ever more
uneven than he. No painter ever produced works that present such wide
contrasts as do his. He could use color as consummately as Titian
himself, as we see in his masterpiece, _The Miracle of St. Mark_, in the
Academy; yet many of his pictures are almost destitute of it. He could
vie with the greatest masters in composition; yet there are many
instances where he seems to have thrown the elements of his pictures
wildly together without a single thought of artistic proportions and
relations. In some works he has shown himself a thorough master of
technique; in others his rendering is so careless that we are ashamed
for him. But all this cannot alter the fact that he is surpassingly
great in originality, in nobility of conception, and in a certain poetic
feeling,--and these are qualities that set the royal