XI. THE PLACE OF DRAGONS 373

before the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres of Paris, two months before his own investigations had begun, and that all question of priority was, therefore, at an end. It remained for us only to surrender, both of us, what complacency we should have had in first announcing these facts; and to take a nobler pleasure in the confirmation afforded of their truth by the coincidence, to a degree of accuracy which neither of us had ever known take place before in the work of two entirely independent investigators, between M. Clermont-Ganneau’s conclusions and our own. I therefore desired my friend to make no alterations in his paper as it then stood, and to make no reference himself to the French author, but to complete his own course of investigation independently, as it was begun. We shall have some bits all to ourselves, before we have done; and in the meantime give reverent thanks to St. George, for his help, to France as well as to England, in enabling the two nations to read together the truth of his tradition, on the distant clouds of Heaven and time.

212. Mr. Anderson’s work remains entirely distinct, in its interpretation of Carpaccio’s picture by this tradition, and since at the mouth of two-or three, witnesses shall a word be established,¹ Carpaccio himself thus becomes the third, and the chief, witness to its truth; and to the power of it on the farthest race of the Knights of Venice.

The present essay treats only of the first picture in the chapel of St. George. I hope it may now be soon followed by its author’s consecutive studies of the other subjects,² in which he has certainly no priority of effort to recognize, and has, with the help of the good Saints, and no other persons, done all that we shall need.

J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, 26the January, 1878.

¹ [Matthew xviii. 16.]

² [These, however, were not published.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]