One day in the gallery of the Venetian Academy a family party of the English, whom we had often seen from our balcony in their gondolas¹, were kind enough to pause before Titian’s John the Baptist. It was attention that the picture could scarcely demand in strict justice, for it hangs at the end of a suite² of smaller rooms through which visitors usually return from the great halls, spent with looking at much larger paintings. As these people stood gazing at the sublime³ figure of the Baptist,—one of the most impressive, if not the most religious, that the master has painted,—and the wild and singular beauty of the landscape made itself felt through the infinite depths of their respectability, the father of the family and the head of the group uttered approval of the painter’s conception: “Quite my idea of the party’s character,” he said; and then silently and awfully⁴ led his domestic train away.

I am so far from deriding⁷ the criticism of this honest gentleman that I would wish to have equal sincerity⁸ and boldness in saying what I thought—if I really thought any thing at all—concerning the art which I spent so great a share of my time at Venice in looking at. But I fear I should fall short of the terseness⁹ as well as the candor¹⁰ I applaud, and should presently find myself tediously rehearsing criticisms which I neither respect for their honesty, nor regard for their justice. It is the sad fortune of him who desires to arrive at full perception of the true and beautiful in art, to find that critics have no agreement except upon a few loose general principles; and that among the artists, to whom he turns in his despair, no two think alike concerning the same master, while his own little learning has made him distrust his natural likings and mislikings. Ruskin is

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