446 APPENDIX

of as the Devil in many persons, interfering with freedom of conscience, forsooth, and freedom of trade, forsooth (yes, and actually burning people to death, whom it thought mischievous persons, instead of, as is proper, pitching innocent ones over seventy-feet-high bridges, and burning them in a heap at the bottom to make dividends out of them)¹-this Diabolical Inquisition of State called the new Paul, the Apostle of Pantomime, into its court, and inquired of him what new gospel this might be. The examination of the painter by the Inquisition has been, by will of Fors, preserved for us.²

Harlequin-mosaic of Ravenna become a Jest. Columbine-Virgin Diana the Huntress, succinct of dress, become Diana of the Ephesians, succinct of dress, she also, for other hunting. Against the Greek Madonna, with robes, gracefully lengthened, here is another Madonna predicate by Venice to European worship, with robe gracefully shortened.

As by Correggio the worship of the Magdalen in deserts, studious of divine literature-a popular evangelical sermon, delicately painted on snuff-box lids.*

Then, and in England, Darwinian science and practice of Development-concluding in the investigation of the manners practised among apes as those of supreme Courtesy. These are the final issue of Solomon’s quest; this, the meaning of Carpaccio’s coloured symbol, and presently you shall see to what it brought Venice, and her beauty.

* The history of Venice in this direction may be closed by the reader who cares to pursue it with Casanova’s account of the love-gift sent him by the Nun of Murano.³

¹ [If this was written in 1877, Ruskin may have been thinking of the accident to the Pacific express on December 29, 1876, when a hundred passengers were killed by the fall of a bridge over a creek. The Tay Bridge disaster was later (December 28, 1879).]

² [It is printed at the end of the Guide to the Academy: see above, pp. 187-190.]

³ [“L’étui contenait une tabatière d’or, et quelques brins de tabac d’Espagne prouvaient qu’on s’en était servi. Je suivis les indices de la lettre et je vis d’abord mon amante en religieuse, debout et en demi-profil. Le second fond me la montra toute nue étendue sur un matelas de satin noir, dans la posture de la Madeleine du Correggio.”-Mémoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (the adventurer whose Memoris give so strange a picture of the morals of the time, born at Venice 1725, died at Dux in Bohemia 1803), vol. ii. p. 133 (Paris edition of 1843).]

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