and the daily heroism of simply brave men consists in fronting
and accepting Death as such, trusting that what their Maker decrees for
them shall be well.

"But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know, also, are precisely the
things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too
often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and _their_ apprentices, tell
you that you can't know, because 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,'
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God has
revealed them to _us_--to Carpaccio, and Angelico, and Dante, and
Giotto, and Filippo Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, and me, and to every
child that has been taught to know its Father in heaven,--by the Spirit:
because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit in some
measure, and in such measure, have entered into our rest."

Let me only dare to add that it is quite possible to extract enormous
pleasure from the study of Carpaccio's works without agreeing with any
of the foregoing criticism.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ACCADEMIA. III: GIOVANNI BELLINI AND THE LATER PAINTERS

Pietro Longhi--Hogarth--Tiepolo--A gambling wife--Canaletto--Guardi--The
Vivarini--Boccaccini--Venetian art and its beginnings--The
three Bellinis--Giovanni Bellini--A beautiful room--Titian's
"Presentation"--The busy Evangelists--A lovely ceiling.

A number of small rooms which are mostly negligible now occur. Longhi is
here, with his little society scenes; Tiepolo, with some masterly
swaggering designs; Giambettino Cignaroli, whom I mention only because
his "Death of Rachel" is on Sundays the most popular picture in the
whole gallery; and Canaletto and Guardi, with Venetian canals and
palaces and churches. For Tiepolo at his best the Labia Palace must be
visited, and Longhi is more numerously represented at the Museo Civico
than here. Both Canaletto and Guardi can be better studied in London, at
the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. There are indeed no
works by either man to compare with the best of ours. No. 494 at
Hertford House, a glittering view of the Dogana, is perhaps Guardi's
masterpiece in England; No. 135 in the National Gallery, Canaletto's.

Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in 1702, five years after Hogarth was
born in London. He died in 1762, two years before Hogarth in Chiswick. I
mention the English painter because Longhi is often referred to as the
Venetian Hogarth. We have a picture or two by him in t