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winning for him the gold chain offered for the best painting in the library. In 1562 he painted his great picture, the " Marriage at Cana" (now in the Louvre), for the Convent of San Giorgio Maggiore, following it by several other great banqueting scenes. In the next year he was again in the church of San Sebas- tiano, painting two superb pieces of wall-decoration depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian and the execution of Saints Marcellus and Marcellinus. In this same year he decorated in masterly style the Palladian Villa Masiera, not far from Treviso. Soon after 1566. Veronese went to Rome in the suite of the ambassador of the Republic of Venice, Guniani, and carefully studied the works of Michelangelo and of Raphael; but he was speedily back in his native districts; the remainder of his life was spent in the service of the Republic of Venice, and he was buried in the church of San Sebastiano. He married the daughter of Antonio Badile and had a large family, two of his sons, Gabriele (b. 1568) and Carletto (b. 1570), adopting their father's profession.

He is declared to have been a man of sweet char- acter, amiable and generous, very affectionate tow- ards his family, and greatly esteemed by all who knew him. He was a painter of prodigious facility and of untiring energy, and his paintings are exceed- ingly decorative, glowing with gorgeous colour, and splendidly composed. His paintings are all frankly anachronistic, and he makes no pretension to depict religious scenes in the surroundings which should be- long to them. There is no trace of religious feeling about them, and no attempt to produce such an emotion. The subjects were treated by the painter purely as offering good possibilities for pictorial rep- resentation, and he introduced historical characters into his gorgeous scenes quite irrespective of historic unity, merely with a view to decorative charm. His aim was magnificence, and the church of San Sebas- tiano is a splendid monument of his masterly skill in decoration. It glows with his sumptuous colour. I lis "Vision of St. Helena", in the National Gallery, London, shows us, however, that he had deep poetic feeling, such as is not always apparent in his better- known banqueting scenes. One of the peculiarities of his great scenes is his habit of introducing irrever- ent details, such as dwarfs, Swiss guards, dogs, eats, monkeys, and other animals, into his Scriptural sub- jects, and for so doing he was twice summoned before the Inquisition and severely reprimanded. The in- quisitors were particularly scandalized at the intro- duction of the Swiss guards, as they were presumed to be Protestants, and at the figure of a disciple who is depicted in the act of picking his teeth with a fork.

The full-length family groups which this artist painted must be alluded to. In " The Family of Darius before Alexander", everynoble quality of the painter is seen to perfection. The colouring is superb, the touch sparkling and crisp, the composition unrivalled, while the stately maie figums and beautiful women are worthy of all praise. He was exceedingly fond of gigantic compositions, and Tintoretto was the only painter who surpassed him in the use of huge can- vases. Doubtless he was influenced by Carotto, -orci, and other Veronese painters, and the effect of his early training in Verona can be seen in all his works, but in splendid pomp of colour and in the presentation of a noble race of human beings ; n full enjoyment of all the delights of life he is a true follower of the school of the great republic. It has been well said that the beauty of his figures is more addressed to the senses than to the soul, but it must be borne in mind thai his pictures have a feeling for grace and a splendour of life which had entirely de- parted from the other schools of the period. Venice contains numerous works by Paolo Veronese, and there are many of his paintings in Florence, Milan,

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Dresden, Munich, Vienna, London, Paris, and Castel- franco, while more than a dozen works by him are to be seen in Madrid. His decorative fresco work can be studied only in the district round about Venice, in the Villas Fanzolo, Tiene, Masiera, and Magnadole. There is a detailed description of his decoration in the Villa Masiera by Blanc in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts. See also Siret; Kugler; Bryan, Dictionary.

George Charles Williamson.

California, the largest and most important of the Pacific Coast States, is the second State of the United States in point of area, and the t wenty-first in point of population. It. is bounded on the north by the Stateof Oregon; on the east by the State of Nevada and, for a comparatively short distance, by the Territory of Arizona; on the south by the Pen- insula of Lower California (Mex- ico); and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. It lies en- tirely between 42° and32°N.lat.,and between 125° and 113° W. long. It is 800 miles long, running in a north- westerly and south-easterly di- rection, anil has an average width of 200 miles. Ac- cording to the official returnsof the United States Cen- sus of 1900, its total area is 158,360 square miles. Of this number 2,188 square miles constitute the water area; the total land area, therefore, is 156,172 square miles. The capital of the State is Sacramento, with a population (1900) of 29,000. San Francisco, built on San Francisco Bay, is the metropolis, with a population (1900) of 342,000. The other chief cities, with popu- lation according to the United States Census of 1900, are Los Angeles, 102,000; Oakland, 66,000; San Jose, 21,000; San Diego, 17,000; Stockton, 17,000; Ala- meda, 17,000; Berkeley and Fresno, 12,000. These figures have been enormously increased since 1900. The estimated population of the three largest cities in January, 1907, was as follows: San Francisco, 400,000; Oakland, 276,000; and Los Angeles, 245,- 000.

Physical Characteristics. — The State presents two systems of mountains which converge at Mount Shasta, in the north, and Tehachapi, in the south. The outer, or western, range is called the Coast Range, and is close to the sea, in some places coming down precipitately to the water's edge; the eastern ranee is called the Sierra Nevada. The latter is considera- bly higher than the former, and in several peaks reaches a height of more than 14,000 feet. The Sien\) Nevadas extend along the eastern border of the State for about 450 miles; they are but a portion, physi- cally, of the Cascade Range, which traverses also the States of Oregon and Washington. The Sierra Neva- da Range is practically unbroken throughout the entire length of the State of California, the Coast Range is broken by the magnificent harbour of San Francisco. Both of these ranges follow the genera] contour of the coast line. Between them lies a great valley which is drained by the Sacramento River in the north and the San Joaquin River in the south. These two rivers, navigable for steamers for about 100 miles from their mouth in San Francisco Fay, constitute the great parent water-system of ( alifornia, and both empty into the harbour of San Francisco, which is situated approximately midway between the northern and southern extremities of the State. The Sierra Nevada Mountains form the great watershed