all the arrows in the saint's body lie straight in the same
direction, broad-feathered and strong-shafted, and sent apparently
with the force of thunderbolts; every one of them has gone through him
like a lance, two through the limbs, one through the arm, one through
the heart, and the last has crashed through the forehead, nailing the
head to the tree behind as if it had been dashed in by a
sledge-hammer. The face, in spite of its ghastliness, is beautiful,
and has been serene; and the light which enters first and glistens on
the plumes of the arrows, dies softly away upon the curling hair, and
mixes with the glory upon the forehead. There is not a more remarkable
picture in Venice, and yet I do not suppose that one in a thousand of
the travellers who pass through the Scuola so much as perceives there
is a picture in the place which it occupies.

[Illustration: Third Group. On the roof of the upper room.

23. Moses striking the Rock. 29. Elijah.
24. Plague of Serpents. 30. Jonah.
25. Fall of Manna. 31. Joshua.
26. Jacob's Dream. 32. Sacrifice of Isaac.
27. Ezekiel's Vision. 33. Elijah at the Brook.
28. Fall of Man. 34. Paschal Feast.
35. Elisha feeding the People.]

23. _Moses striking the Rock._ We now come to the series of pictures
upon which the painter concentrated the strength he had reserved for
the upper room; and in some sort wisely, for, though it is not
pleasant to examine pictures on a ceiling, they are at least
distinctly visible without straining the eyes against the light. They
are carefully conceived and thoroughly well painted in proportion to
their distance from the eye. This carefulness of thought is apparent
at a glance: the "Moses striking the Rock" embraces the whole of the
seventeenth chapter of Exodus, and even something more, for it is not
from that chapter, but from parallel passages that we gather the facts
of the impatience of Moses and the wrath of God at the waters of
Meribah; both which facts are shown by the leaping of the stream out
of the rock half-a-dozen ways at once, forming a great arch over the
head of Moses, and by the partial veiling of the countenance of the
Supreme Being. This latter is the most painful part of the whole
picture, at least as it is seen from be