All the heroic deeds, all the purely unselfish passions of our existence, depend on our being able to live, if need be, through the Shadow of Death: and the daily heroism of simply brave men consists in fronting and accepting Death as such, trusting that what their Maker decrees for them shall be well.
"But what Carpaccio knows, and what I know, also, are precisely the things which your wiseacre apothecaries, and their apprentices, and too often your wiseacre rectors and vicars, and _their_ apprentices, tell you that you can't know, because 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard them,' the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But God has revealed them to _us_--to Carpaccio, and Angelico, and Dante, and Giotto, and Filippo Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, and me, and to every child that has been taught to know its Father in heaven,--by the Spirit: because we have minded, or do mind, the things of the Spirit in some measure, and in such measure, have entered into our rest." Let me only dare to add that it is quite possible to extract enormous pleasure from the study of Carpaccio's works without agreeing with any of the foregoing criticism..