leaning on the other, with their attributes strewed on the steps. On the right hand of the door is stretched a sorrowing lion, emblematical of the Venetian school. Over the door, in a medallion held by the two geniuses of Fame, in bas-relief, is seen a carved portrait of Titian." Some Venetian gentlemen, lovers of the art, had offered to bear the expense of this fine work.*

* Being seized with the plague, which in 1576 raged with so much destructive fury in Venice, Titian found himself stretched on the same bed of death with his beloved son Horatio, whom he had educated with so much care in his own profession, without a single friend or relation who with pious hands might administer the last offices of consanguinity and friendship. While he was breathing out his last sighs, a body of impious ruffians, rendered bold by impunity and the dispersion of the magistrates, entered his chamber, and carried off from before his very eyes, his money, jewels, and rich furniture, and what was much more distressing, the recent designs and studies of his best works, besides many most valuable pictures, of which he had never consented to deprive himself at any price, regarding them as the rarest productions of his pencil. The plague being over, and the passages newly opened, all that had escaped the robbers, and all that could be recovered of the stolen property by means of law, was sold at a very low price by the priest Pomponio, his second son, who came post from Milan to Venice to squander in a few months his paternal inheritance; whilst this most ungrateful son left the bones of his great father to lie unhonoured in an humble and unknown grave, without even the respect of a stone to point it out to the passing traveller. Thrice was it projected in Venice to honour his memory by the erection of a public monument, and

thrice was the execution of this prevented by the malice of an adverse fortune. The first to form such a noble project were the painters of Venice; and there is to be seen in Ridolfi a description of the magnificent obsequies which were to have been celebrated on this occasion in the church of their protector, St Luke: but not being able to perform the sacred duty on account of the Sanitary laws, then in full force, the affair cooled, nor does it appear to have been ever thought of afterwards.

CHAPTER XLII.

ACCOUNT OF FRANCESCO VECELLI, TITIAN'S BROTHER.

AMONG the principal families of the province of Cadore, which deserved well of that country, a very illustrious one was that of the Vecelli, which had produced mayors, syndics, notaries, lawyers, and signors, who by protection and advice had powerfully assisted it from about the year 1200 up to the time we are speaking of. Among others, Gregory Vecelli, son of Conte, had a very high reputation for integrity, for singular goodness and courtesy, and for great skill in the management of his country's affairs. This gentleman had, in 1475, by Lucia his wife (a woman endowed with singular virtues) a son, who was named Francesco, after his maternal grandfather. According to the state of the country and the nobility of his family, and as

Gregory possessed a respectable fortune, he found himself in every way disposed to give his first-born son a liberal education, that treading in the path of his ancestors, he might become useful and honourable to his family and country. Those who are born in large and rich cities, or in places freed by them, and who know only the customs of their own and the neighbouring generations, altogether corrupted and debased, cannot persuade themselves that men possessed of genius and sufficient fortune to live at their ease, can preserve such affection to the poor country in which they were born, as to consecrate to it their talents, their wealth, and their lives. Yet such has always been the influence of love for our native land, if it were not altogether enslaved, on men of all times, countries, and rank. The country of Cadore, though for many ages governed sometimes by the patriarchs of Grado, sometimes by the princes of Tyrol, sometimes by the lords of Cammino, and finally placed under the mild rule of the Venetian Senate, always preserved its own laws, its own customs, and magistrates; and its children thought the title of Men of Cadore equally glorious and valuable, as an Athenian or Roman the citizenship of their illustrious countries.

Gregory, animated by this virtuous ambition,

sought also to inspire his son with it; so that neither distance of time nor the allurements of the capital, nor the honours of war, nor the riches which the profession of painting held out to him, could ever cancel that fond attachment to his native place which had been infused into his youthful mind. His father's intentions were

forwarded by the ancient institutions of Cadore, appointing in the chief borough of the Pieve, where the assemblies of the province met, Greek and Latin masters with liberal salaries ; by which means, the youth who were destined for the bar, for medicine, or literature, were not obliged to go out of the country to study them until the feelings of home were so engraved and strengthened in their minds by years, that they would not be extinguished by foreign manners without much difficulty.

Nor is it likely that Francesco would have been sent, when a mere boy of twelve years old, to Venice, had it not been for the extraordinary inclination for painting manifested by his younger brother Titian. Recommended to his paternal uncle Antonio, he had the same masters as his brother; but we do not know what advance he made in the art, or to what other studies he applied himself before entering the army. The Anonymous Author