nsympathetic,
in all his work: one admires and wonders, and awaits in vain the
softening moment. To me he is as much a dramatist of the Bible as a
painter of it.

One is rarely satisfied with the whole of a Tintoretto; but a part of
most of his works is superb. Of all his pictures in Venice my favourite
secular one is the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the Doges' Palace, which has
in it a loveliness not excelled in any painting that I know. Excluding
"The Crucifixion" I should name "The Marriage in Cana" at the Salute as
his most ingratiating Biblical scene. See opposite pages 48 and 96.

The official programme of the Scuola pictures, printed on screens in
various languages, badly needs an English revisor. Here are two titles:
"Moise who makes the water spring"; "The three children in the oven of
Babylony." It also states "worthy of attention are as well the
woodcarvings round the wall sides by an anonymous." To these we come
later. Let me say first that everything about the upper hall, which you
will note has no pillars, is splendid and thorough--proportions,
ceiling, walls, carvings, floor.

The carvings on each side of the high altar (not those "by an anonymous"
but others) tell very admirably the life of the patron saint of the
school whose "S.R.," nobly devised in brass, will be found so often both
here and in the church across the way. S. Rocco, or Saint Rocke, as
Caxton calls him, was born at Montpelier in France of noble parentage.
His father was lord of Montpelier. The child, who came in answer to
prayer, bore at birth on his left shoulder a cross and was even as a
babe so holy that when his mother fasted he fasted too, on two days in
the week deriving nourishment from her once only, and being all the
gladder, sweeter, and merrier for this denial. The lord of Montpelier
when dying impressed upon his exemplary son four duties: namely, to
continue to be vigilant in doing good, to be kind to the poor, to
distribute all the family wealth in alms, and to haunt and frequent the
hospitals.

Both his parents being dead, Rocco travelled to Italy. At Acquapendente
he healed many persons of the pestilence, and also at Cesena and at
Rome, including a cardinal, whom he rendered immune to plague for ever
more by drawing a cross on his forehead. The cardinal took him to see
the pope, in whose presence Rocco's own forehead shone with a
supernatural light which greatly impressed the pontiff. After much
further wandering and heal