in any case
that I have examined, the objection being just as untenable as it is
ridiculous.

4. _San Rocco in the Desert._ (Above the last-named picture.) A single
recumbent figure in a not very interesting landscape, deserving less
attention than a picture of St. Martin just opposite to it,--a noble
and knightly figure on horseback by Pordenone, to which I cannot pay a
greater compliment than by saying that I was a considerable time in
doubt whether or not it was another Tintoret.

5. _San Rocco in the Hospital._ (On the right-hand side of the altar.)
There are four vast pictures by Tintoret in the dark choir of this
church, not only important by their size (each being some twenty-five
feet long by ten feet high), but also elaborate compositions; and
remarkable, one for its extraordinary landscape, and the other as the
most studied picture in which the painter has introduced horses in
violent action. In order to show what waste of human mind there is in
these dark churches of Venice, it is worth recording that, as I was
examining these pictures, there came in a party of eighteen German
tourists, not hurried, nor jesting among themselves as large parties
often do, but patiently submitting to their cicerone, and evidently
desirous of doing their duty as intelligent travellers. They sat down
for a long time on the benches of the nave, looked a little at the
"Pool of Bethesda," walked up into the choir and there heard a lecture
of considerable length from their _valet-de-place_ upon some subject
connected with the altar itself, which, being in German, I did not
understand; they then turned and went slowly out of the church, not
one of the whole eighteen ever giving a single glance to any of the
four Tintorets, and only one of them, as far as I saw, even raising
his eyes to the walls on which they hung, and immediately withdrawing
them, with a jaded and _nonchalant_ expression easily interpretable
into "Nothing but old black pictures." The two Tintorets above
noticed, at the end of the church, were passed also without a glance;
and this neglect is not because the pictures have nothing in them
capable of arresting the popular mind, but simply because they are
totally in the dark, or confused among easier and more prominent
objects of attention. This picture, which I have called "St. Rocco in
the Hospital," shows him,