; Tiepolo spent much of his time
in other cities and countries, and passed the last years of his life in
Spain; Pietro Rotari was attached to the Court of St. Petersburg;
Belotto, Canale's nephew, settled in Bohemia; but Canale remained at
home, and, except for two short visits paid to England, contented
himself with trips to Padua and Verona.

Early in life Canale entered into relations with Joseph Smith, the
British Consul in Venice, a connoisseur who had not only formed a fine
collection of pictures, but had a gallery from which he was very ready
to sell to travellers. He bought of the young Venetian at a very low
price, and contrived, unfairly enough, to acquire the right to all his
work for a certain period of time, with the object of sending it, at a
good profit, to London. For a time Canale's luminous views were bought
by the English under these auspices, but the artist, presently
discovering that he was making a bad bargain, came over to England,
where he met with an encouraging reception, especially at Windsor Castle
and from the Duke of Richmond. Canale spent two years in England and
painted on the Thames and at Cambridge, but he could not stand the
English climate and fled from the damp and fogs to his own lagoons.

To describe his paintings is to describe Venice at every hour of the day
and night--Venice with its long array of noble palaces, with its Grand
Canal and its narrow, picturesque waterways. He reproduces the Venice we
know, and we see how little it has changed. The gondolas cluster round
the landing-stages of the Piazzetta, the crowds hurry in and out of the
arcades of the Ducal Palace, or he paints the festivals that still
retained their splendour: the Great Bucentaur leaving the Riva dei
Schiavoni on the Feast of the Ascension, or San Geremia and the entrance
to the Cannaregio decked in flags for a feast-day. From one end to
another of the Grand Canal, that "most beautiful street in the world,"
as des Commines called it in 1495, we can trace every aspect of
Canale's time, when the city had as yet lost nothing of its splendour
or its animation. At the entrance stands S. Maria della Salute, that
sanctuary dear to Venetian hearts, built as a votive offering after the
visitation of the plague in 1631. Its flamboyant dome, with its volutes,
its population of stone saints, its green bronze door catching the
light, pleased Canale, as it pleased Sargent in our own day, and he
painted it over and over ag