V. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL 255

was not confirmed till three years afterwards, we get the fortunately precise terminal date of 1301.

III. The third period is that of religious meditation, as distinct, though not withdrawn from, religious action. It is marked by the establishment of schools of kindly civil order, and by its endeavours to express, in word and picture, the thoughts which until then had wrought in silence. The entire body of her noble art-work belongs to this time. It includes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and twenty years more: from 1301* to 1520.

IV. The fourth period is that of the luxurious use, and display, of the powers attained by the labour and meditation of former times, but now applied without either labour or meditation:-religion, art, and literature, having become things of custom, and “costume.” It spends, in eighty years, the fruits of the toil of a thousand, and terminates, strictly, with the death of Tintoret, in 1594; we will say 1600.

61. From that day the remainder of the record of Venice is only the diary of expiring delirium, and, by those who love her, will be traced no farther. But while you are here within her walls I will endeavour to interpret clearly to you the legends on them, in which she has herself related the passions of her Four Ages.

And see how easily they are to be numbered and remembered. Twelve hundred years in all; divided-if, broadly, we call the third period two centuries, and the fourth, one,-in diminishing proportion, 7, 2, 2, 1: it is like the spiral of a shell, reversed.

I have in this first sketch of them distinguished these four ages by the changes in the chief element of every nation’s mind-its religion, with the consequent results upon its art. But you see I have made no mention whatever of all that common historians think it their primal business to discourse of,-policy, government, commercial prosperity!

* Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 13 [Vol. X. p. 341].

[Version 0.04: March 2008]