350 ST. MARK’S REST

ground was got ready for them; the perfect grace of cheerful, pure, illuminating art, filling every little cornicecusp of the chapel with its jewel-picture of a saint,*-last, and chiefly, the perfect kindness to, and fondness for, all sorts of animals. Cannot you better conceive, as you gaze upon the happy scene, what manner of men they were who first secured from noise of war the sweet nooks of meadow beside your own mountain streams at Bolton, and Fountains, Furness and Tintern? But of the saint himself Carpaccio has all good to tell you. Common monks were, at least, harmless creatures; but here is a strong and beneficent one. “Calm, before the Lion!” say C. C.¹ with their usual perspicacity, as if the story were that the saint alone had courage to confront the raging beast-a Daniel in the lions’ den! They might as well say of Carpaccio’s Venetian beauty that she is “calm before the lapdog.” The saint is leading in his new pet, as he would a lamb, and vainly expostulating with his brethren for being ridiculous. The grass on which they have dropped their books is beset with flowers; there is no sign of trouble or asceticism on the old man’s face, he is evidently altogether happy, his life being complete, and the entire scene one of the ideal simplicity and security of heavenly wisdom: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”²

182. And now pass to the second picture.³ At first you will perhaps see principally its weak monks-looking more foolish in their sorrow than ever they did in their fear. Portraits these, evidently, every soul of them-chiefly the one in spectacles,⁴ reading the funeral service so perfunctorily,

* See the piece of distant monastery in the lion picture, with its fragments of fresco on wall, its ivy-covered door, and illuminated cornice.

¹ [Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy, 1871, vol. i. p. 205 n.]

² [Proverbs iii. 17; words very often quoted by Ruskin (see, for instance, Vol. XVI. p. 103).]

³ [The lower subject on Plate LXIV.]

⁴ [Pince-nez rather.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]