VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 439

chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine.¹

¹ [The first thought of this passage occurs in a letter to his father:-

“March 13 [1852].-... During these cold March winds I have been looking at some of my old favourite Tintorets. Nothing in the world gives me so great an idea of human power. No writing-neither Homer’s, nor Dante’s, nor Shakespeare’s-seems to be education of so colossal an intellect. Their work is only thought; Tintoret’s is actual creation: it seems one of the Powers of the Divine Spirit granted to a creature. After being long before one of his uninjured, at least untouched, works, I come away feeling very nearly as if I had seen an actual miracle, with the same kind of awe and wonder. None of the changes or phenomena of Nature herself appear to me more marvellous than the production of one of his pictures. I should as soon think of teaching another man to do like it, as of teaching lightning to strike, or flowers to grow.”

For a Note which follows this chapter in the “Travellers’ Edition,” see Appendix 15, p. 463.]

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