X. THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES 343

window,¹ which, if you will examine with opera-glass, you will be convinced, I think, that nobody can do the like of them by rules, at Kensington; and that if you really care to have carpets as good as they can be, you must get somebody to design them who can draw saints and basilisks too.

Note, also, the group under the loggia which the staircase leads up to, high on the left. It is a picture in itself; far more lovely as a composition than the finest Titian or Veronese, simple and pleasant this as the summer air, and lucent as morning cloud.

On the other side also there are wonderful things, only there’s a black figure there that frightens me; I can’t make it out at all; and would rather go on to the next picture, please.

Stay-I forgot the arabesque on the steps, with the living plants taking part in the ornament, like voices chanting here and there a note, as some pretty tune follows its melodious way, on constant instruments. Nature and art at play with each other-graceful and gay alike, yet all the while conscious that they are at play round the steps of a throne, and under the paws of a basilisk.

172. The fifth picture is in the darkest recess of all the room; and of darkest theme,-the Agony in the garden. I have never seen it rightly, nor need you pause at it, unless to note the extreme naturalness of the action in the sleeping figures-their dresses drawn tight under them as they have turned, restlessly. But the principal figure is hopelessly invisible.

173. The sixth picture is of the calling of Matthew;² visible, this, in a bright day, and worth waiting for one, to see it in, through any stress of weather.

For, indeed, the Gospel which the publican wrote for us, with its perfect Sermon on the Mount, and mostly more

¹ [Ruskin notes elsewhere that “Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in cities to the patterns of the draperies hung out of windows (Bible of Amiens, ch. i. § 2 n.)]

² [Plate LXIII.; the picture has been published in chromo-lithography by the Arundel Society. For a reference to it, see “The Story of Edwige” in Roadside Songs of Tuscany (in a later volume).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]