ke a voyage to the Levant, and back again. The figure of the Pope
is, however, extremely beautiful, and is not unworthy, in its jewelled
magnificence, here dark against the sky, of comparison with the figure
of the high priest in the "Presentation," in the Scuola di San Rocco.

2. _Annunciation._ (On the other side of the door, on entering.) A
most disagreeable and dead picture, having all the faults of the age,
and none of the merits of the painter. It must be a matter of future
investigation to me, what could cause the fall of his mind from a
conception so great and so fiery as that of the "Annunciation" in the
Scuola di San Rocco, to this miserable reprint of an idea worn out
centuries before. One of the most inconceivable things in it,
considered as the work of Tintoret, is that where the angel's robe
drifts away behind his limb, one cannot tell by the character of the
outline, or by the tones of the color, whether the cloud comes in
before the robe, or whether the robe cuts upon the cloud. The Virgin
is uglier than that of the Scuola, and not half so real; and the
draperies are crumpled in the most commonplace and ignoble folds. It
is a picture well worth study, as an example of the extent to which
the greatest mind may be betrayed by the abuse of its powers, and the
neglect of its proper food in the study of nature.

3. _Pool of Bethesda._ (On the right side of the church, in its
centre, the lowest of the two pictures which occupy the wall.) A noble
work, but eminently disagreeable, as must be all pictures of this
subject; and with the same character in it of undefinable want, which
I have noticed in the two preceding works. The main figure in it is
the cripple, who has taken up his bed; but the whole effect of this
action is lost by his not turning to Christ, but flinging it on his
shoulder like a triumphant porter with a huge load; and the corrupt
Renaissance architecture, among which the figures are crowded, is both
ugly in itself, and much too small for them. It is worth noticing, for
the benefit of persons who find fault with the perspective of the
Pre-Raphaelites, that the perspective of the brackets beneath these
pillars is utterly absurd; and that, in fine, the presence or absence
of perspective has nothing to do with the merits of a great picture:
not that the perspective of the Pre-Raphaelites _is_ false