JOHN RUSKIN


In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice I had been carefully
looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a
young princess. Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far
as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little
bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It
is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted
crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear
them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of
glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice
across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two
beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark
and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any
species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath.

[Illustration: THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA.
_Carpaccio._]

These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and
beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put
things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered
with green cloth; but above are bare and white. The second window is
nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's
reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red
cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not
at all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three-legged
stool like a music stool, covered with crimson cloth. On the table are a
book, set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under