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+Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Posting Date: December 10, 2011 [EBook #9804]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 19, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STONES OF VENICE [INTRODUCTIONS] ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Keren Vergon, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+BY JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE:
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES
+(PRINTED SEPARATELY)
+FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
+
+
+BY
+JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
+purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
+those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a
+permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at
+first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the
+principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been
+modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and
+present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of
+plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of
+other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader
+shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the
+publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of
+forwardness.
+
+The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter
+out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index,
+abridged and corrected.
+
+BRANTWOOD,
+
+_3rd May_, 1879.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. The Quarry
+
+II. The Throne
+
+III. Torcello
+
+IV. St. Mark's
+
+V. The Ducal Palace
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE QUARRY.
+
+
+SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third,
+which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led
+through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
+strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
+countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred
+with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean,
+where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries
+in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
+their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as
+they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind
+than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may,
+perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to
+form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of
+Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest
+which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
+gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so
+during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including
+the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing
+severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the
+change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in
+great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was
+composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment
+when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and
+Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were
+passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially
+to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive
+appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist.
+des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each
+of the principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix
+III., "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was
+continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy,
+her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine
+hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked
+by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final
+and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo
+trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti
+buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino_,)
+Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader,
+with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
+out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing
+its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among
+the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually
+organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the _visible_
+commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the
+Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari
+followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large
+acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in
+Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the
+battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454,
+Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the
+Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State,
+[Footnote: Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the
+discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.]
+and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious
+form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish
+invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the
+league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement
+of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by
+their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509,
+and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their
+territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the
+fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the
+diminution of her internal strength.
+
+SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between
+the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at
+many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism;
+and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of
+their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]
+
+SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
+both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By
+directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru,
+liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
+
+SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall
+be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great
+Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust
+that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any
+more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
+against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of
+their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence
+of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest
+councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has
+time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are
+sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection
+of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the
+almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire
+was enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular
+circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other
+city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But
+the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of
+her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church,
+[Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size
+and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian
+group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
+greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it
+less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice,
+next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to
+national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks,
+supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the
+mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also,
+in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.] who now rests
+beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not
+satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed
+around his tomb.
+
+SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which
+we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual
+religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my
+present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of
+which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able
+to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote:
+                    "In that temple porch,
+  (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+  Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+  And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+  Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+  For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+  On his stony pillow."
+
+I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries,
+and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the
+spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all
+else that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true
+that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her
+prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus
+rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more
+than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V.,
+which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great
+tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or
+the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted
+out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
+from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her
+knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.
+[Footnote: At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The
+Papal Power in Venice."]
+
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
+it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
+contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
+restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the
+annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be
+ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of
+law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was
+subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears
+usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every
+instance in which private passion sought its gratification through
+public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
+public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence,
+that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless
+forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than
+that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only
+[Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax
+e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy
+were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked
+battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank
+under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed
+with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of
+lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are
+no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack
+of a foreign enemy.]
+
+SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
+would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which
+the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which
+the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true
+connection with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+SECTION XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were
+painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna
+or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of
+the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the
+ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there
+is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of
+one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal.
+The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of
+Venice was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
+here give a general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent à travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de
+la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais veue et qui
+plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Mémoires de Commynes, liv.
+vii. ch. xviii.]
+
+SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
+Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
+some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real
+life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
+"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
+There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
+fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
+English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
+to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of
+architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand
+this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the
+connection of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the
+East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the
+various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once
+for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all
+the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many
+beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all
+Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and
+what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic,
+Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks
+gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the
+arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture,
+are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from
+Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
+
+SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
+shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier
+derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he
+should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the
+shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if
+the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three
+families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest
+architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the
+sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
+spiritualization of both.
+
+SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are
+the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote:
+Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."]
+
+SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
+clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result,
+until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service;
+except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it,
+and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often
+very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity:
+seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it;
+invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
+over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest
+at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman
+Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of
+the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many
+respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of
+imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores
+of the Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
+gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
+Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange,
+gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so
+would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has
+been undisturbed. [Footnote: The reader will find the _weak_ points of
+Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,--
+Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained.
+
+Section XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into
+two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other
+at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque,
+properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative
+perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But
+I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art
+together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the
+same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of
+the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the
+fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be
+found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may
+be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an
+architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the
+degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to
+higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter
+forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
+branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects
+more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of
+government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of
+the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed,
+losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived
+of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change.
+
+SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While
+in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps,
+appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with
+the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with
+which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual
+character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its
+influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to
+the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the
+influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two
+nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of
+derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs
+of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and
+idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid
+asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both
+horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over
+its golden paralysis.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system
+to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the
+Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of
+worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the
+sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.
+[Footnote: Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all
+imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their
+minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and
+mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the
+North, and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they
+met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very
+centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of
+the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck,
+is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to
+mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures
+were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious
+still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
+decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of
+that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first,
+an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas.
+Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader
+will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two
+aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was
+separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above,
+large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming
+the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
+gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
+"Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily
+thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square
+pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and
+civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone;
+but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been
+made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the
+nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one
+of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great
+European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession
+of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
+first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote:
+Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether
+the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen
+being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by
+their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever
+other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such
+vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first
+division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist
+of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part
+of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
+not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for
+the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in
+art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But
+their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long
+prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people
+had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the
+practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very
+primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
+architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab
+forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would
+probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab
+school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it
+will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those
+which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The
+churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the
+Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it.
+But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans
+introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture,
+already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and
+Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited
+in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect
+the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the
+Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
+artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the
+city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an
+ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole
+peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of
+certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and
+entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence
+of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the
+engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the
+Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the
+_distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the
+churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the
+ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
+Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third
+division of the essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic)
+style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is
+transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from
+the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century;
+that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the
+central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year
+1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe
+de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St.
+Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly
+supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of
+every art she has since practised.
+
+SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality
+in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps,"
+chap. ii.)
+
+All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at
+once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a
+flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then
+perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the
+representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous
+under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs
+without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity,
+gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic
+affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and
+lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of
+landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually
+usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
+prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
+confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and
+Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of
+besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and
+ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect,
+and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the
+fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in
+England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of
+George II.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard
+it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture,
+and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does
+not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in
+buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should
+lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor
+is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to
+regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly
+the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern
+times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying
+the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools
+and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through
+them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere
+else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay.
+I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader
+with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of
+the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features
+with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and
+pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
+I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon
+two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
+attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The
+tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of
+the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the
+period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical
+element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is
+as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is
+a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a
+faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without
+painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
+bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are
+simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large,
+but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have
+looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+    "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
+    bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
+    It may be called one of the last links which connect the
+    declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
+    which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
+    defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+    which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
+    we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
+    the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
+    and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
+    reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
+    Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is
+another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478,
+after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of
+Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks,
+carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced
+by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the
+blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly
+tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of
+one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian
+superlative by translation.
+
+    "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+    proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
+    sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
+    opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
+    intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il
+    predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
+    con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
+    fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi
+    lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge;
+    capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of
+the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering
+this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested
+in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).
+
+    "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+    scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
+    arts attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the
+inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do
+not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous
+mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such
+utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of
+intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast,
+could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's
+countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the
+solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend
+of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much
+the zecchin.
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.]
+
+SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter;
+but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting
+piece of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."
+[Footnote: The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+quality.] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the
+seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series
+of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the
+others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
+reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della
+Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside
+whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning
+of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This
+is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of
+which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible:
+for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
+shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and
+lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade
+being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena
+Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is
+Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at
+the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the
+statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the
+reader.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to
+follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit
+to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied
+the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade,
+eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by
+thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right
+to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that
+next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I
+thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the
+18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace;
+and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated,
+the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire
+series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers
+above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it,
+fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have
+lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got
+Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems
+are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but
+she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone_.
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the
+Reformation on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I
+shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the
+Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself
+is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the
+Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very
+forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps,"
+in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's:
+"Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the
+Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the
+difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a
+subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume
+that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not
+understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they
+simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at
+present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with
+rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with
+obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but
+never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of
+votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear
+conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good
+architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad;
+that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly
+visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
+the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating
+about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured
+that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must
+enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble
+and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it
+must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or
+Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all
+foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and
+that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
+inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a
+law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty,
+and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad;
+and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for
+the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
+and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the
+reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
+foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
+looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture,
+the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form,
+as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask
+the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
+and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might
+together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though
+perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have
+therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which
+I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and
+simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of
+architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
+will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a
+simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From
+that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very
+singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether
+unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to
+dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done;
+for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion
+of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture,
+and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than
+dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair
+trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and
+be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I
+shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent
+reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary
+preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of
+Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble,
+poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal;
+and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of
+architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries
+been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be
+serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have
+hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the
+arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done
+meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why
+could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came
+it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose
+no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully
+conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? [Footnote:
+Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself
+capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
+vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance.
+Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist
+merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate
+itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became
+themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was
+turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of
+both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's
+people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and
+died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been
+borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of
+faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was
+borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony
+or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an
+intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further
+use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship
+the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come,
+then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us
+know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed
+to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look
+upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her
+palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the
+sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we
+shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on
+which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should
+efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+[FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE THRONE.
+
+
+SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in
+which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
+toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
+countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of
+the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had
+surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest,
+scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the
+long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for
+the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
+sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of
+the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men,
+an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to
+be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive
+halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder,
+there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly
+cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe
+in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as
+his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but
+that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some
+slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are
+far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy;
+but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than
+atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the
+midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the
+mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast
+sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the
+north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the
+east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black
+weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal,
+under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the
+ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue,
+soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps
+beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our
+own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and
+changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun
+declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly
+named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city,
+the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one
+long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and
+willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua
+rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage
+of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended
+themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the
+craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole
+horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing
+through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back
+into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away
+eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty
+fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of
+evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea,
+until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer
+burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it
+magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
+gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
+reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
+through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
+rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
+opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat
+moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet,
+upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of
+rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the
+shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
+palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so
+adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent;
+when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the
+gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's
+Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the
+mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of
+the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the
+boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of
+silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its
+sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,
+[Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that
+the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene
+so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its
+history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her
+existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the
+fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the
+mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that
+all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as
+the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to
+destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which
+seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well
+as of the sea.
+
+SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with
+change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their
+influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the
+noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only
+by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and
+though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated
+ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
+traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has
+been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin,
+and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are
+little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the
+imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
+importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and
+disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
+surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there
+must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent
+feeling of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may
+indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which
+they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from
+the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their
+own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are
+in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the
+objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern
+fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of
+decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into
+dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow
+deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the
+centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever
+saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless
+interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his
+great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty
+years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city
+have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries,
+that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their
+tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the
+Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the
+novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of
+the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot
+of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the
+great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs
+had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of
+_their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the
+delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court,
+and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have
+sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail
+over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth,
+and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous
+a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the
+day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built
+by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of
+nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped
+by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the
+true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and
+trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long
+denied her dominion.
+
+SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no
+feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange
+sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and
+enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain
+upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the
+distribution of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and
+sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the
+plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here
+and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm
+substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which
+descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern
+slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain
+bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks
+out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain
+washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of
+the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky
+barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which
+continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of
+the ruins of ages.
+
+SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by
+insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which
+appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually;
+the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the
+Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment
+to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly
+expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part
+of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of
+brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these
+same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to
+check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The
+finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the
+rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however
+pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of
+the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before
+they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown
+down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the
+eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds
+forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a
+tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid
+change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is
+built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE.
+
+SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this
+great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place
+to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the
+Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of
+from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided
+into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank
+and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and
+other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the
+neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most
+places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at
+low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding
+channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to
+the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets,
+consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to
+be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the
+contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low
+water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of
+seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance
+by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the
+openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a
+clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which
+appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different
+periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their
+size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and
+churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and
+encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the
+metropolis.
+
+SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet
+(varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides
+of Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause
+continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a
+reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land
+is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the
+form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages:
+there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the
+mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy
+breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic,
+but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's
+having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its
+true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of
+piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in
+spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the
+quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance
+before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But
+the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty
+inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and
+at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark
+plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches
+of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of
+the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the
+fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five
+feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow
+the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea
+water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes
+upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed
+that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to
+and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is
+often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher
+ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what
+it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the
+windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the
+melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of
+the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls
+and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright
+investiture and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the
+waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness
+beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor
+and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the
+tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a
+questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the
+horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for
+his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the
+sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children
+were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and
+yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let
+it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things
+which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole
+existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or
+compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the
+sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would
+again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had
+stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of
+the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and
+bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other
+parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have
+become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the
+tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
+water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible:
+even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in
+landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the
+highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance
+halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood
+and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water,
+a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
+water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
+intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
+would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
+peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
+
+SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast
+between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the
+romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he
+have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
+instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the
+wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been
+permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers
+into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of
+the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have
+understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the
+void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand!
+How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us
+most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then
+in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how
+little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy
+margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among
+their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation
+possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden
+clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white
+scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather
+and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the
+East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+[SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+TORCELLO.
+
+
+SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which
+near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a
+higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass,
+raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow
+creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for
+some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds
+whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool
+beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On
+this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic
+type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder
+us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we
+may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of
+ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
+ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
+purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
+sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
+hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
+mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
+space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
+level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north
+and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
+and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched
+with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at
+momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the
+south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and
+pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and
+almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we
+gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
+cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry),
+the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than
+the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable
+church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see
+little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the
+sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and
+gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor
+any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
+company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
+
+SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
+of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
+there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
+shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
+southern sky.
+
+Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
+and VENICE.
+
+Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this
+day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
+of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
+mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
+mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
+rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
+people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
+paths of the sea.
+
+The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
+left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
+the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
+up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
+temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
+of meadow land.
+
+SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile
+is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
+broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of
+the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the
+Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present
+some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly
+larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each
+side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow
+field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable
+footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the
+form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth
+being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and
+that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that
+they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the
+first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of
+the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is
+far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the
+pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and
+their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the
+arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a
+cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator
+receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been
+which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could
+not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished
+as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of
+building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight
+and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."]
+who sought in the hurried erection of their Island church such a shelter
+for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not
+attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the
+other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the
+churches which they had seen destroyed.
+
+There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some
+of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God
+by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation
+prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of
+luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely
+devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance
+and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and
+architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy
+stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which
+answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole
+building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the
+cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of
+the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last
+Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are
+raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space
+between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the
+semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at
+once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home
+left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted
+but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed."
+
+SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible
+that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may
+have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series
+of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not,
+however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am
+rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the
+building was originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics
+representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and
+Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the
+significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with
+imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in
+the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
+political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
+satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
+mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural
+or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one
+should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not
+appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great
+facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of
+Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That
+Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable
+through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the
+figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of
+intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder,
+but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the
+faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of
+founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but
+only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite
+mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead
+which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in
+them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the
+wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
+
+SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in
+the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of
+all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish
+and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
+actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure.
+The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the
+best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for
+their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
+exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most
+conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the
+six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose
+a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the
+singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The
+bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two
+face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description,
+though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or
+pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of
+the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this
+screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was
+constructed.
+
+SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of
+its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked
+at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of
+the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the
+staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in
+the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase
+being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich,
+but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those
+which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the
+mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the
+proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of
+the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the
+original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
+procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
+crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
+sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
+surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
+course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
+the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
+is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
+sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
+always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
+chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
+always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
+thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
+to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
+the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
+became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
+dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
+little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
+it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
+bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection,
+that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
+price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
+fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
+overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
+art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
+is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
+which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
+treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
+the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
+already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament
+is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of
+their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for
+architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract
+perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so
+easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no
+remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so
+slight an effort.
+
+SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance,
+whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect
+would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the
+rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that
+its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious
+spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the
+building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts;
+itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the
+nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of
+the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to
+the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved
+front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a
+narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern
+pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper
+surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid
+upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by
+instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in
+any way moving beneath the preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather
+almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of
+the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe
+and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so
+that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are
+firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in
+venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval
+cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches.
+It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of
+decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service,
+and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature
+of a church be the best possible. [Footnote: Appendix V., "Modern
+Pulpits."]
+
+SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves
+about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I
+believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to
+listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
+unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place
+appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the
+same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression,
+irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the
+first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the
+speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a
+very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest
+of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I
+have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are
+peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
+rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
+erection in other parts of the building:--and though this may often be
+done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
+than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
+think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
+preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
+sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
+hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
+encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the
+delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for
+when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of
+work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade
+by them.
+
+SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
+clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
+employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease
+of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as
+a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as
+the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care
+and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we
+shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
+delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
+golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
+sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
+cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly
+come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
+prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
+restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that
+duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in
+happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be
+necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his
+faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life
+or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge
+over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an
+hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor
+to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage
+on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days
+together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been
+forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and
+to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by
+this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary
+with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and
+languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts
+of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame
+them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by
+this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the
+Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the
+openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth
+her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead
+in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with
+changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from
+which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes
+upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains
+recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener
+alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear
+with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of
+oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may
+be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he
+speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have
+gathered in their thirst.
+
+SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello
+is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
+occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls
+to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which
+lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps
+or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
+intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
+the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access
+intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
+arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort
+(for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not
+for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more
+conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no
+furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well
+worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative
+of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was
+never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter
+absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
+
+SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to
+remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the
+episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the
+minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently
+symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot.
+Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of
+men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the
+midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the
+eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man
+had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who
+saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like
+an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the
+Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which
+they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as
+the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and
+have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His
+name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the
+sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the
+dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth
+conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of
+her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her
+palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend
+the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of
+Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble
+ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with
+the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the
+strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the
+pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been
+closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of
+their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls,
+amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of
+the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that
+ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
+
+  THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT,
+  AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ST. MARK'S.
+
+
+SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as
+the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
+entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
+hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
+Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
+work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he
+have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be
+represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so
+often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he
+himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye
+with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in
+repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!
+
+SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the
+ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it
+was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose
+him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that
+before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was
+thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I
+believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of
+St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader
+who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie
+Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by
+him.] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and
+embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church
+of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the
+"Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice,
+1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia
+well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before
+setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a
+small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some
+houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being
+driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark,
+snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace
+be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to
+foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta Città;" but the
+fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.
+
+SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not,
+St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be
+considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue,
+standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the
+opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said
+to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and
+the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not
+to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early
+time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St.
+Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and
+on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to
+say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the
+bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a
+small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between
+the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza,
+of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
+
+SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
+removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the
+present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My
+authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the
+Ducal Palace.] gave a very different character to the Square of St.
+Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint,
+and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed,
+occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor.
+St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed,
+to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal
+Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the
+Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."]
+
+SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the
+Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was
+partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and
+with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on
+under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building
+being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
+considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,
+[Footnote: "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the
+Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the
+reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have
+consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church
+itself:
+
+  "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
+  Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
+
+is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
+probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
+Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
+according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
+being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
+supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
+though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
+But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
+consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
+1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
+probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter
+the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of
+any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above
+the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
+Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the
+pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the
+exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and
+tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance
+school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret
+substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the
+Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed
+Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.] happily, though with no good
+will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they
+destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter;
+meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of
+periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible.
+
+SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
+stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
+fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
+difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
+Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how
+long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
+additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily
+distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely
+executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of
+evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another
+over the northern door of the façade; the first representing the
+interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church.
+
+SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
+consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
+that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what
+appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful
+impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body
+of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976;
+but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion
+excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The
+following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by
+the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.
+
+"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
+the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so
+that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
+venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
+Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
+confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
+and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now
+depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed,
+and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the
+people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers
+for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a
+slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the
+altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
+exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which
+the body of the Evangelist was laid."
+
+SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They
+were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as,
+for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark
+extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers,
+which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint
+and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall
+not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian
+Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means
+effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved
+mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after
+the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of
+the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior
+of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer,
+then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the
+Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet
+embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux"
+over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most
+other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely
+represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in
+order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of
+picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand
+things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or
+two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague
+background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might
+get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some
+useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with
+the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence
+too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day,
+and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole
+church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment
+still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the
+other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
+being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics
+had been executed at that period, and their absence in the
+representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in
+order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such
+works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St.
+Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not
+appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the
+northern door; [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right,
+however.)] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other
+piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the
+building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the
+bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And
+this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence
+respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we
+have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet
+here is one of the most important exterior decorations assuredly
+retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style
+would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric.
+However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to
+remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh,
+twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions
+to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the
+fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the
+seventeenth.
+
+SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I
+may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
+leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
+by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
+seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to
+the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
+building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary,
+direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with
+anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects
+the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
+influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
+therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested
+by the obscurities of chronology.
+
+SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St.
+Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
+cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
+us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can
+see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray
+gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the
+centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes
+in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter,
+and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails,
+before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim
+houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there,
+and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and
+small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little,
+crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side;
+and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of
+red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show
+here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister
+arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid
+out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not
+uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are
+walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the
+grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there
+stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark
+places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where
+the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which
+has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth,
+perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up
+to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades,
+shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking
+fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape,
+and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen,
+melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above
+that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though
+they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black
+points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into
+invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
+birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so
+harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast
+between the cliffs and sea.
+
+SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of
+all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
+secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense
+and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
+cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
+have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and
+on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or
+catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the
+city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the
+river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land
+at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered
+as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English
+cathedral gateway.
+
+SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide
+where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
+salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
+brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high
+houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an
+inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and
+chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows
+with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here
+and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some
+inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high
+over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be,
+occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about
+eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is
+narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable
+shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in
+those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares
+laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases
+entering at the front only,--and fading away in a few feet from the
+threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but
+which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back
+of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious
+shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a
+penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a
+little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded
+flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at
+the fruiterer's, where the dark-green watermelons are heaped upon the
+counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel
+leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is
+nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded
+patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next
+comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a
+very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over
+certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be denned or
+enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop of the
+calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the Madonna
+is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of
+three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
+Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
+gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they
+have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
+
+SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black
+Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble,
+deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of
+vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its
+side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence
+to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza,
+(mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first
+by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another
+time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near
+the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of
+lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them
+into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and
+then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great
+light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of
+St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
+chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
+themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
+that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
+into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
+broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
+sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.
+
+SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of
+ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great
+square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
+far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long
+low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold,
+and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
+vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
+alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
+and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
+and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
+together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
+of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
+leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
+the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
+interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
+branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
+round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
+stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
+flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
+sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
+it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
+as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
+interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
+acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
+Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
+language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
+men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
+another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
+with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
+of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden
+strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with
+stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break
+into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes
+and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore
+had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid
+them with coral and amethyst.
+
+Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
+is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
+restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
+upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among
+the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living
+plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely,
+that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
+
+SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath
+it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway
+of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a
+countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian,
+rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of
+the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
+the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them
+that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and
+caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
+almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the
+middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
+Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
+jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the
+sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will,
+would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of
+the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
+unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
+unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
+desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with
+cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
+clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church
+porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it
+continually.
+
+That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
+let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
+passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
+d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there.
+The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the
+turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
+
+SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
+with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
+in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
+figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
+glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
+the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that
+it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed;
+for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and
+curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the
+pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might
+be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain
+back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that
+gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon
+his breast.
+
+The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
+right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower:
+the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest
+of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp,
+perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines;
+but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
+countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
+stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is
+a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of
+flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in
+summer.
+
+It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
+Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
+died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe
+half of what we know of her former fortunes.
+
+SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it
+is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its
+walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with
+age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
+altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
+beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands
+and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its
+translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the
+color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light
+fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye
+can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of
+Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and
+there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the
+"Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has
+expressed the ancient division in the single massy line,
+
+  "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
+
+and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
+the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
+every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
+running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
+fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
+not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
+verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the
+choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the
+grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence
+of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall.
+Venice has made her choice.
+
+SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
+another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he
+and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his
+lips.
+
+Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
+rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper
+twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
+the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a
+vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy
+aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters
+only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray
+or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts
+a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall
+in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is
+from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of
+the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered
+with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
+to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints
+flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under
+foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one
+picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and
+terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of
+prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running
+fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures
+of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption;
+for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at
+last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every
+stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes
+with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its
+feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the
+church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of
+the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when
+the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
+traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes
+raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is
+not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and
+always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow
+of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised
+in power, or returning in judgment.
+
+SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
+people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
+various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
+places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and,
+for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
+number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their
+appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the
+step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of
+St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
+which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
+porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
+then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss
+and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
+lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if
+comforted.
+
+SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
+characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
+devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
+their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
+there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
+than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
+the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
+architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
+embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
+on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
+of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
+Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
+comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter,
+which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named,
+must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient
+causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether
+to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence
+which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind,
+and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in
+the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of
+building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained
+with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness;
+preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close
+air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious
+services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular
+legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition,
+which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end
+of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally
+civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the
+true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as
+far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the
+Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed
+Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be
+regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered
+ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at
+Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger
+number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that
+is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
+Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
+northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
+the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all
+the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of
+the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has
+retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole
+church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with
+silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.]
+
+SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
+were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
+employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the
+torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye
+traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole
+residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I
+never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any
+feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their
+understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the
+English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services
+for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many
+of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now
+surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no
+prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in
+vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the
+ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive
+attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries.
+The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is
+forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long
+been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those
+to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
+than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
+English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
+and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
+shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
+tombs in the desecrated cloister.
+
+SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
+present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
+meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
+be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
+abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
+present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
+Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
+relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
+influencing the feelings of a civilized community.
+
+The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
+carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
+architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
+should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
+construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
+art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
+expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
+merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
+its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
+in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
+retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
+domes appear to have lost for ever.
+
+SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
+respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
+in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
+possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
+Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
+nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
+general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
+soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
+exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
+and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
+enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
+with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
+ages.
+
+SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
+the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
+confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the
+great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
+incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
+before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
+reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
+influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
+school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
+massive materials.
+
+It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
+find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
+setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
+outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
+cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
+London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide
+"Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to
+have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different
+species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties
+which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the
+reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of
+the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are
+varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance,
+in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with
+marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of
+the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built
+of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and
+exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes
+the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in
+the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of
+buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the
+forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as
+in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman
+and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one
+internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on
+this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
+
+SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
+chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
+incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
+now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
+builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
+is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
+masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
+acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
+builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
+facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
+the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
+contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
+of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
+life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
+Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
+of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
+knight.
+
+These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
+be our business to develop.
+
+SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
+to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
+quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the
+mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely
+with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances,
+in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on
+the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as
+great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the
+natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as
+possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the
+limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by
+cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many
+marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There
+would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone
+as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if
+the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins
+of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out
+of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a
+quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and
+partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the
+island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his
+edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious
+marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the
+sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the
+observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the
+colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole
+surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular
+enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a
+view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any
+regular service in the support of the building.
+
+An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
+for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
+alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
+to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
+cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
+and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
+have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
+every relic with which he was entrusted.
+
+SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
+Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
+under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
+other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
+twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
+porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
+freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
+instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
+been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
+admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
+inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
+practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
+of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
+practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
+prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
+departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
+ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant
+vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a
+shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than
+the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
+emotion.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
+this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its
+erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method,
+considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
+
+In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
+find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood,
+that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme
+ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another,
+namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the
+Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of
+the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any
+perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift
+just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an
+ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St.
+Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever
+set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it
+is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that
+the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf
+man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
+orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
+discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
+common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
+manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
+the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
+the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
+bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
+St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
+took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
+which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
+barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
+of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
+palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
+had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
+this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
+foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
+beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
+frescoes of Giorgione.
+
+SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
+protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
+church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
+remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
+which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and
+let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the
+architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to
+be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
+thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
+of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of
+brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
+marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
+or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
+will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.
+
+SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding
+the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at
+least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even
+when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed
+parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the
+wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to
+cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface,
+but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
+string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
+aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
+the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary
+that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
+proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
+work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
+the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
+the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
+incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.
+
+SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As
+the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
+incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
+of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
+mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
+less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
+delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
+depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
+source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
+therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
+whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
+thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
+the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
+otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.
+
+SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
+smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
+structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
+left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
+appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
+becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only
+does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
+labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
+than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
+size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
+rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
+themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
+any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
+the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
+and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
+to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
+support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
+tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
+allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
+direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the
+structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his
+pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial
+in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may
+be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
+lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
+quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
+said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with
+color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there
+is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the
+procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from
+this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but
+in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his
+walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the
+portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in
+this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the
+walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of
+the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his
+eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the
+mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to
+bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of
+all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
+wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
+the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,
+[Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza
+che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the
+verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of
+natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will
+be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work
+of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of
+precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and
+brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk
+required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons,
+and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be,
+without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the
+attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like
+that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of
+joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a
+single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the
+spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the
+structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
+construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the
+shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
+sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
+bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
+of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
+in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to
+its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not
+blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of
+hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being
+dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief
+part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and
+tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard
+work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we
+perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be
+crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in
+the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the
+best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or
+crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real
+size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either
+inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value;
+that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore
+ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are
+even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of
+materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to
+see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set
+in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and
+where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon
+their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among
+the mazes of their azure veins.
+
+SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since
+the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
+diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
+diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
+must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the
+series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that,
+on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind
+of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been
+sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the
+rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of
+smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained
+under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing
+of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The
+stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do
+so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily
+measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between
+them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same
+proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the
+quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the
+facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to
+select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however,
+often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very
+fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has
+neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one
+column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he
+obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts
+fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he
+cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for
+available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his
+ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from
+immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does
+not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
+obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
+to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
+often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
+important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
+admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
+must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
+varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
+altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
+complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
+its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
+and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
+Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
+smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
+for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens
+that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so
+great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone,
+not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the
+disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates
+successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges
+in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will
+enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins.
+And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the
+alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double
+good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation
+of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a
+farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever
+similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that
+they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to
+disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the
+building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the
+whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any
+one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is
+perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of
+the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical
+patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly
+deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in
+reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that
+in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to
+accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and
+the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
+subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
+inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those
+of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
+ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
+themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort,
+as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
+lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
+knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it
+is discovered, into deeper truths.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in
+cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is
+evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based
+on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there
+can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not
+admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever
+ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch
+deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences
+which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of
+the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which
+may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black
+recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque
+projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any
+form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with
+robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous
+goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable
+shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the
+sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as
+he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the
+design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble,
+where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender
+pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must
+not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind
+be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine
+discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is
+to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the
+features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions
+of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes
+rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out,
+until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences
+of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental
+designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the
+Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
+builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
+exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss
+which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear
+bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such
+conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of
+the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation,
+rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced
+to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more
+intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory
+rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body.
+This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of
+creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations,
+Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so
+concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the
+rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism;
+secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often
+colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the
+treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase,
+or shallow hieroglyphic.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
+animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
+iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds
+to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
+practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find
+artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their
+elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would
+be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human
+and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general
+importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we
+constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges
+of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent
+of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must
+expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and
+diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the
+manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic
+ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been
+directly derived.
+
+SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
+must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
+to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
+architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
+relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation
+of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
+intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
+worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
+to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is
+sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted,
+and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may
+anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and
+that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the
+feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern
+cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the
+neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that
+fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care
+little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to
+contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the
+incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or
+thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
+involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
+originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace
+of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a
+line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting
+which could be added with advantage.
+
+SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
+thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force,
+and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow,
+there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and
+obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without
+danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like
+glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with
+holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the
+light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this
+artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an
+effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it
+will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still
+totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that
+the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden
+points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other
+portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps
+inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be
+wearied by the lightness of the general handling.
+
+SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
+force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color
+as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that
+the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
+decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
+system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
+understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
+nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
+Southern nations.
+
+SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
+never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
+has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
+believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
+that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
+in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.
+
+Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
+better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
+and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
+that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
+builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
+could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
+any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
+all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
+prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
+Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
+think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
+Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
+Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
+color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
+ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
+color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
+in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
+is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
+builders, which we have finally to examine.
+
+SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
+that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the
+porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it;
+but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
+namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred
+it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could.
+The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He
+had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded
+the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be
+painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and
+green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of
+abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his
+hawthorn blue.
+
+SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
+definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
+the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
+of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a
+matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees
+green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far
+more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
+mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
+abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development
+of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous
+depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
+compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to
+be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more
+delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes
+very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved
+by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the
+flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they
+appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented
+exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage;
+breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the
+lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and
+pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in
+nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be
+colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality.
+Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect
+bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in
+portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be
+definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere
+labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and
+there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might
+be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other
+manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the
+necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready
+to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in
+the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best
+means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones
+are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means,
+for they are all permanent.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
+chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit
+of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the
+_naïveté_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed
+to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and
+internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in
+pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a
+temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast
+illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded
+with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without
+in letters of enamel and gold.
+
+SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is
+not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final
+consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this
+time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his
+attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of
+color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All
+these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent
+with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of
+color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have
+seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth,
+and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft
+tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none
+of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and
+therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even
+desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind
+addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is
+altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague
+impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be
+disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the
+building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for
+the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting
+up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us
+like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with
+our hand.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
+will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
+architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
+him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
+familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
+were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
+exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
+developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
+nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression
+of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
+exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning,
+except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal
+reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all
+other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture
+faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible
+to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient
+for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or
+the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no
+faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume
+as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so
+rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of
+architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all
+good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the
+effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar
+confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of
+decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the
+result of distance, together with perfect expression of the
+peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable
+artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness,
+neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the
+subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any
+pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates,
+and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two
+buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St.
+Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them
+the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the
+endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new
+Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it
+is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a
+noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was
+hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
+most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
+eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
+inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent
+alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
+illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and
+pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest,
+with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's.
+The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the
+opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate
+the impossibility of illustration.
+
+SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger
+scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp
+folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness.
+The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more
+than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more
+than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same
+depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with
+close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially
+necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow
+sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds
+is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces,
+like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the
+Plate.
+
+The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
+between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
+illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
+alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
+pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale
+green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch
+square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be
+satisfied. [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are
+exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the
+blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the
+effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color
+of a fruit piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an
+azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in
+the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small
+circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each
+only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the
+outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue
+crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled
+hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate
+conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the
+engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers,
+the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine
+architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's
+alone.
+
+From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
+imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection
+to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we
+may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
+vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars
+upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder
+remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky:
+and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are
+everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that
+church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler
+things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who
+delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the
+reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the
+streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what
+there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the
+men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity,
+and let him judge between us.
+
+SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
+especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
+ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following
+chapter. [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION
+XXXIII above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large
+jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I
+must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the
+inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it,
+as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the
+churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the
+first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of
+ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament
+of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character.
+
+SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
+endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to
+be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of
+offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately
+expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church,
+as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its
+purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to
+deal with briefly and candidly.
+
+The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
+presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
+ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our
+own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a
+cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a
+preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation
+was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral.
+
+SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
+modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier
+architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous.
+But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely
+uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work
+beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate
+ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget
+that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and
+beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was
+rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which
+fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that
+what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was
+then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city,
+of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and
+streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a
+peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most
+elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meetinghouse has by his
+white-washed walls and square-cut casements. [Footnote: See the farther
+notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV. Stones of Venice.]
+
+SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and
+then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a
+kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because,
+while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat
+ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our
+abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for
+every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal
+baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not
+because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the
+revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof
+was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our
+cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and
+then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the
+fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those
+churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all
+the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what
+it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know,
+if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they
+take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily
+to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and
+sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or
+furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in
+modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and
+much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost
+exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have
+not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were
+deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly
+promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is
+now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good
+architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from
+which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe
+it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit
+itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to
+ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly
+to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and
+lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
+dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle
+was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when
+the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave.
+There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in
+pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches
+were larger than in most other buildings, because they had to hold more
+people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they
+were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional
+offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and
+religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and
+familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn
+the façade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of
+every house in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches
+of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the
+Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the
+dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the
+distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that
+the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of
+profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be
+drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church
+architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least
+one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house.
+
+SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I
+must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately
+marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that
+every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as
+exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that
+they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as
+beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of
+style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely
+more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the
+confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse,
+not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the
+quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic
+service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the
+fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced
+oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which
+were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks
+and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting,
+buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere
+size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples
+elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the
+adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing
+intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the
+forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when
+they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely
+to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more
+richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the
+carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible:
+all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical
+buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were
+built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna,
+or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door,
+and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the
+grotesques of the brackets and the gables.
+
+SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question
+respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally
+different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So
+long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest
+continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of
+inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question
+whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving
+beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active
+life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and
+color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the
+curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they
+are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say,
+may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if
+once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see
+in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest
+services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire
+to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house
+of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb
+instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask
+whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should
+worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim
+whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters,
+must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray.
+
+SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the
+ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is
+evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the
+permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be
+dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow
+that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical.
+It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the
+church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable
+to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the
+dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as
+there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's
+opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles
+which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice,
+so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience
+may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use,
+which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church
+service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear
+daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style
+for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes
+them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and
+this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for
+houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is
+essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us
+convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of
+convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style it
+tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the
+Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore
+less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for
+both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were
+used for both.
+
+SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which,
+according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as
+either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I
+mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have
+already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural
+features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or
+sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure
+Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by
+features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please,
+altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered
+impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and
+entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and
+interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which
+becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by
+representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore,
+the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in
+modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion
+has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the
+art of the mosaicist?
+
+SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I
+have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is
+likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion.
+One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of
+others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly
+set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could
+pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I
+have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but
+in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts
+with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange
+distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves
+would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I
+do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler
+than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in
+the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for
+that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose
+hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort
+to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general
+fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether
+right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when
+casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what
+class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is
+by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I
+believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most
+influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are
+Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as
+he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by
+religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great
+religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear
+on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture
+illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it
+of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the
+time.
+
+SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the
+chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been
+hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in
+some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind
+is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable
+of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the
+heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it,
+which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power
+of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a
+Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the
+first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and
+would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving
+themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or
+gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the
+figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and
+pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand
+ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly
+sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the
+men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it
+from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who
+read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the
+painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be
+taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more
+popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the
+subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul
+and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan
+hag.
+
+SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
+capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
+suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
+coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
+impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
+the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
+association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
+it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
+conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity,
+and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration
+for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would
+otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of
+emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed
+represent a fact! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill
+told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little
+of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the
+child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is
+Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a
+strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests
+with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the
+grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and
+whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not
+always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one,
+and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but
+always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into
+sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of
+accredited truth.
+
+SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the
+truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no
+longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an
+idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in
+the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the
+representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or
+that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this
+or that, painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in
+the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of
+tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his
+Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'étonnait de re
+trouver à la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait
+dessiné dans le baptistère de St. Marc, à Venise. Le costume des
+personnages est partout et en tout temps le même, non-seulement pour la
+forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le
+nombre et l'épaisseur des plis."] We do not severely criticise the
+manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh
+investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern
+religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment
+uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and
+this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the
+worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more
+especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so
+also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly
+religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more
+faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it
+was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of
+both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have
+been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end
+of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in
+modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be
+methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world
+remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be
+education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid
+invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural
+powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society
+lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts
+especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for
+the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy
+studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and
+knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do
+not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt
+to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy,
+and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is
+utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are
+many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who
+have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be
+used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what
+is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a
+village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other
+histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and
+set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having.
+But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work
+when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing
+stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth
+square stones, and consider ourselves wise.
+
+SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but
+I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who
+suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be
+utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be
+granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they
+were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole
+church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its
+illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their
+Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though
+far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no
+other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_
+have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with
+printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they
+could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily
+became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the
+walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the
+Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the
+reader to examine the connection and subjects of these mosaics; but in
+the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any
+sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in
+permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored
+portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are
+they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman
+empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the
+expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies
+always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which
+are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to
+represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so,
+even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early
+Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement,
+but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course
+one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects
+between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind,
+which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the
+nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro
+cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by
+which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance
+and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them
+barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever,
+these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand
+exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images
+which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the
+great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art
+itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor
+can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however
+influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of
+consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a
+Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is
+screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large
+family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is
+reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare
+it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all
+Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the
+word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the
+fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts
+are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of
+Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been
+worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant
+persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works.
+Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the
+mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place
+of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del
+Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious
+influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of
+Europe they have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of
+the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any
+other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for
+human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I
+believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous
+idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other.
+It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as,
+since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in
+glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings;
+partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which,
+in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because
+imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it.
+
+SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the
+inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented
+in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting
+could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions,
+and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern
+book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth
+naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great
+importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural
+effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the
+common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning
+of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often
+of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth
+and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches
+with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their
+size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color
+attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations;
+neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such
+as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before
+the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast
+shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of
+spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of
+receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not
+acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances
+and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of
+Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of
+the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look
+down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa.
+
+SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to
+discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind
+of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow
+out the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to
+fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the
+feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was
+built.
+
+Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct
+the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between
+ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with
+writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be
+large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to
+decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that
+every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would
+rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and
+that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We
+must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all
+that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of
+the builder or of his times.
+
+SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the
+church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and
+new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these
+persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old
+Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of
+Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the
+subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern
+churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order
+to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for
+salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are
+dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna
+was the type.
+
+SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the
+church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of
+Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other,
+in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open
+upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN
+ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds
+the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE,
+ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of
+the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of
+Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE
+REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU
+CONSIDER."
+
+Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen
+when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was
+supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance
+into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance
+into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book
+which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the
+same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the
+invisible Church of God.
+
+SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the
+head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that
+door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy
+Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the
+Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the
+Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second
+and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar
+offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of
+fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented
+standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are
+pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each
+separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at
+Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the
+four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each
+bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the
+tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that
+of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being
+thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are
+continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the
+gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His
+Church:
+
+    "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH:
+       HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY.
+         HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST:
+  BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD."
+
+And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the
+outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_.
+It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to
+sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels
+celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this
+holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels
+for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that
+the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive
+forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity,
+as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is
+vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended
+into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault
+between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and
+resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate
+scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with
+thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre,
+and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is
+the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the
+subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is
+represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and
+throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the
+twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna,
+and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at
+the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are
+inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
+heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so
+come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice."
+
+SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of
+the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the
+crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with
+Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the
+cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our
+assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath
+their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which
+they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison,
+Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.
+
+SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the
+witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its
+centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
+little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship,
+and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124,
+note.] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of
+the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once
+fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor
+lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of
+New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the
+Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of
+Revelation; [Footnote: The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished,
+and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but
+if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching
+a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an
+ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the
+altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated
+dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange
+contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon
+it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like
+wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning
+palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter
+Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon
+the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that
+opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence
+of warning,--"Christ shall come."
+
+SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look
+with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry
+of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts
+of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at
+once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written
+word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all
+glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of
+the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether
+honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither
+the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that,
+as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be
+of jasper, [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished
+with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the
+World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of
+it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all
+riches"? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long
+perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing
+domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of
+it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there
+from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above
+the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or
+thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple,
+attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would
+forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy
+without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and
+the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain
+ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those
+marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the
+colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that
+once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults,
+that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do
+judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as
+she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten
+this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without
+excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the
+North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused
+and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of
+the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the
+Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other
+cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from
+religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the
+grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street,
+there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify,
+we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace
+or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls
+on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of
+marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined
+the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all
+shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled
+with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin
+was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God,
+burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their
+laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not
+unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of
+gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had
+uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things
+God will bring thee into judgment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DUCAL PALACE.
+
+
+SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter
+that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal
+Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices
+which were raised for half a century after its completion, their
+characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly
+copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of
+Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination,
+employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in
+its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a
+remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds
+of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of
+Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more
+daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause
+to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of
+innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it
+thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon
+an image more attractive.
+
+SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural
+invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in
+self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building
+thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it
+doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is
+actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian
+antiquaries, whether the main façade of the palace be of the fourteenth
+or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course
+necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of
+the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the
+entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I
+trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not
+be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of
+the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into
+the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be
+thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal
+parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much
+as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do
+what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him
+the necessary topographical knowledge:
+
+Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place;
+and the following references will clearly explain their relative
+positions:
+
+A. St. Mark's Place.
+B. Piazzetta.
+P. V. Procuratie Vecchie.
+P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove.
+P. L. Libreria Vecchia.
+I. Piazzetta de' Leoni.
+T. Tower of St. Mark.
+F F. Great Façade of St. Mark's Church.
+M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the
+    separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had
+    been marked, which would have confused the whole.)
+D D D. Ducal Palace.         g s. Giant's stair.
+C. Court of Ducal Palace.    J. Judgement angle.
+c. Porta della Carta.        a. Fig-tree angle.
+p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw).
+S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs).
+R R. Riva de' Schiavoni.
+
+
+[Illustration: FIG. I. The Ducal Palace--Ground Plan.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. II. The Ducal Palace--Bird's eye View.]
+
+
+The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in
+the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B,
+and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on
+the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the
+Church of St. Mark.
+
+Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three
+sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively
+called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Façade;" that towards
+the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Façade;" and that towards the Rio del
+Palazzo, the "Rio Façade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by
+the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes
+under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal
+thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy,
+in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and
+Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar
+was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely
+resemble each other in form.
+
+SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the
+appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement
+will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and
+fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a
+general view of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade (the latter in very steep
+perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly
+represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to
+avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the
+two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is
+the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the
+regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the
+Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland
+used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above
+this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade,
+will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a
+sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called
+the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall
+of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen
+in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the
+Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two
+which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated,
+the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its
+interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and
+fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's
+Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left.
+
+SECTION V. The great façade which fronts the spectator looks southward.
+Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of
+the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern
+Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at
+the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della
+Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the
+"Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark
+side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long
+four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is
+entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no
+accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we
+shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our
+present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older
+palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows,
+refittings of the brickwork, etc.
+
+SECTION VI. It will be observed that the façade is composed of a smooth
+mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other.
+The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at
+once by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken
+right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of
+the Sea Façade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both
+in the inner court and on the Façade, which carry the main walls;
+_b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C
+are the three stories of the interior of the palace.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. III.]
+
+The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple,
+and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed,
+there would be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls,
+carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable.
+
+The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused
+ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient
+masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I
+have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the
+removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the
+subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader;
+but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important.
+
+SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed
+that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the
+façade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable
+instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience,
+which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the
+Gothic schools.
+
+The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall
+find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain
+the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we
+shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning
+of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent
+chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the
+side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was
+no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height
+was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just
+harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question
+how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or
+above them.
+
+The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the
+best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the
+light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of
+illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce
+light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern
+architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would
+have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would
+have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and
+have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper
+story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued
+along the façade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the
+paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He
+unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with
+reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external
+appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather
+gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces
+of wall above and below the windows.
+
+SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows,
+which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is
+painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be
+hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise."
+
+In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second
+windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace,
+and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony."
+
+The façade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the
+Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when
+people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all
+on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber,
+one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the
+other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea,
+light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of
+Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta
+della Carta.
+
+SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography
+of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its
+history.
+
+We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian
+architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.
+
+The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
+successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
+Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
+superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are
+all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and
+the existing building is formed by the union of the two.
+
+We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader
+will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed
+books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The
+numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given
+with the quotations.
+  Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663.
+  Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829.
+  Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780.
+  Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838.
+  Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811.
+  Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837.
+  Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.]
+
+1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
+
+In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined
+to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of
+their state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina
+Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo
+Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar
+la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi,
+vol. vi. chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or
+Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement
+of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the
+future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the
+banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build
+wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built
+the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace
+now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.
+[Footnote: "Ampliò la città, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d'
+Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la capella di S.
+Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that
+piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the
+nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare
+also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si è che il suddetto
+Agnello lo incomminciò da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di
+S. Marco."]
+
+The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of
+Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
+representation of her power.
+
+SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio
+little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte
+della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio;
+that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Façade; but this
+was merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the
+Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great
+water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to
+distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the
+Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio,
+stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the
+boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the
+Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which
+the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are:
+"Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et
+rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was
+built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure
+esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted,
+says: "in the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say on
+the Piazzetta."]
+
+We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the
+existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the
+Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at
+one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some
+magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by
+the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The
+chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the
+palace;" [Footnote: "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino,
+quoted by Cadorin and Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express
+pride in the buildings being worthy of an emperor's examination. This
+was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against
+Candiano IV., [Footnote: There is an interesting account of this revolt
+in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been
+destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important
+restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and
+Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii
+hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are
+usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but
+the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber,
+speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many
+miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with
+ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way
+somewhat startling to the state, by absconding with a French priest to
+St. Michael's in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs,
+therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be
+undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named.] and just repaired, and
+richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as
+having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with
+ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum
+aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_] There can be no doubt
+whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the
+other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi,
+&c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it
+was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color.
+
+SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by
+fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse
+parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these
+fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another
+emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial
+praise. [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis
+sequitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted
+by Cadorin.]
+
+Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again
+repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says
+that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every
+direction;" [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi
+per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle
+for account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace
+seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the
+commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace
+were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time
+when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by
+Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and
+this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly
+clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year
+1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half
+remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani."
+[Footnote: "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M.
+Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro
+Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as
+"molto particolare, e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p.
+593.--It terminates in the year 1422.]
+
+So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.
+
+SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects
+that the important change in the Venetian government which gave
+stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,
+[Footnote: See Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge
+Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and
+prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who
+laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by
+the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government."
+
+We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their
+importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to
+be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism
+of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world.
+[Footnote: Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the
+reign of Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure
+establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the
+people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental
+in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity.
+
+The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain
+limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever
+before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of
+the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement,
+or decoration of the chamber in which they sat.
+
+We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another
+saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge
+Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council
+first sat in it_." [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year,
+therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice
+was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval
+with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation,
+coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal
+representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace
+is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles.
+
+SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian
+historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del
+Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of
+the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in
+expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for
+the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is
+_now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa
+parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu
+fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_,
+quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the
+Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill
+written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del
+1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se
+adoperava a far e pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin
+1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great
+importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the
+meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122
+years."--_Cod. Ven._ tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from
+1253 to 1454.
+
+Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New
+proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the
+Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and
+its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace:
+but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the
+commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the
+first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the
+Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then
+begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole
+period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings
+consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and
+when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being
+continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they
+reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and
+pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the
+junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent,
+which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws.
+
+SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay
+the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built
+by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and
+the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent
+will soon become visible to us.
+
+The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Façade, behind the
+present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on
+the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low
+or high, but probably on a first story. The great façade of the Ziani
+Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as
+far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being
+obviously the points first considered.
+
+SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions
+to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most
+significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction
+of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the
+_Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi
+era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi
+Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle
+in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It
+appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in
+question.]
+
+Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain
+apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the
+Rio Façade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the
+old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments
+at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for
+prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote:
+Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice
+that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose,
+in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made
+against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to
+prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the
+Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported,
+small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable
+rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated.
+[Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen
+them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them
+know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof
+of the palace the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine
+where it is greatest."] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being
+built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio
+in the year 1309.
+
+SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had
+no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed
+by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of
+that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge
+Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of
+Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say
+by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only
+one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo.
+There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his
+reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on
+whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be
+compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is
+recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate
+built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue
+kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St.
+Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se
+al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in
+zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S.
+Marco."--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120.]
+
+SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed
+their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than
+that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This
+door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which
+are fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not
+examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I
+take the passages quoted.] in the following terms:--
+
+"1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St.
+Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates....
+[Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."--Cadorin, 189, I.]
+for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the
+palace."
+
+"1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making
+gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace
+stairs."
+
+The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the
+reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced
+by the Porta della Carta.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered
+for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber
+inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion,
+began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be
+built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was
+probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as
+well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio.
+The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under
+these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven.,
+No. CXLI. p. 365.]
+
+"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
+Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine
+where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the
+Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected
+two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty
+ducats a year."
+
+It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
+Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the
+commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their
+report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the
+commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote:
+Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree:
+"For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not
+capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio
+parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal
+Grande."--P. 324.]
+
+_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building
+involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
+present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
+prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not
+mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it
+has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls
+rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still
+stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as
+shown in Figure II. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can
+be known respecting the design of the Sea Façade, must be gleaned out of
+the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.
+
+Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
+time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
+1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
+discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
+1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
+and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
+be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342
+is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while
+Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the
+Council Chamber as only begun in 1345.]
+
+The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
+conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.
+[Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed
+in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as
+that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls;
+[Footnote: "II primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365
+vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino_.] so that
+the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its
+decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the
+paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi
+1400 vi fece il ciclo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle,
+ch'era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. viii.] They
+represented the heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi
+si messe in oro il ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il
+pergole del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e
+l'altro di stelle, eh' erano la insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_,
+lib. xiii. Compare also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the
+bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this
+time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial
+bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an
+important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two
+square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window
+towards the sea:
+
+  "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI
+  HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT."
+
+And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that
+window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I
+think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out
+and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final
+decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council
+sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the
+Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it,
+the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the
+central one of her life.
+
+SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two,
+in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of
+the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been
+proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three
+years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the
+gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately
+symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which
+it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the
+fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of
+the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new
+Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as
+the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and
+more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the
+building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the
+"Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the
+Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix I.,
+Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in
+Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
+towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva
+dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to
+the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the
+water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and
+interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the
+nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered
+the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and
+then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity
+of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta
+with the same splendor as the Sea Façade. But no such sweeping measure of
+renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the
+plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a
+gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary
+additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of
+the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon
+the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast
+additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful
+of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own
+enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some
+strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger.
+It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt,
+but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the
+desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and
+the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it.
+
+SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own
+weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under
+the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own
+enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a
+thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be
+for the good of the state.
+
+Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire
+which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's,
+and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I
+shall relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No.
+cxxv. in the Marcian Library, p. 568.]
+
+SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care
+to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's
+house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge_
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] _to restore it in the form in which it
+was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better
+manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was
+forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any
+one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to
+rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was
+magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the
+city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then
+proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the
+late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his
+own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this
+occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they
+ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the
+greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and
+that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish
+interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole
+course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done
+anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but
+in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the
+advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as
+far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this
+accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything
+in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and
+that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never
+endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as
+his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took
+in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very
+old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life
+before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore
+they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building
+for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its
+Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his
+successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to
+observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which
+had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that
+he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that
+he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes
+on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the
+Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses
+of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work;
+and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at
+present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended
+his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but
+hardly even begun."
+
+SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts
+which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the
+whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember,
+that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred
+years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat
+in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to
+destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should
+propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of
+Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once
+be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we
+now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in
+the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were
+in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices
+of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower
+of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one;
+and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
+allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
+most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and
+rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
+Council Chamber, of which the whole façade to the Sea consisted, never
+entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
+connected with the Ducal residence.
+
+I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
+forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422
+[Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild
+the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari
+was elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according
+to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but
+previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari
+enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber
+was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate
+as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle;
+[Footnote: "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran
+Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno
+che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua
+creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is
+probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum;
+[Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto
+Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran
+Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation fo
+fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c.,
+p. 426.]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first
+hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare
+Appendix I. Vol. III.]
+
+SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly
+called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of
+Venice,--and of Venice herself.
+
+The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I
+dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of
+Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been
+called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this
+instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had
+forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces
+might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take
+the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her
+unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her
+fortunes, the city never flourished again.
+
+SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate
+details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued
+under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I
+am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the
+architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the
+following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the
+Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most
+particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back
+from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta
+della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge
+Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogade
+del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131.] the interior buildings
+connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro, (the Othello
+of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This identification has been accomplished, and
+I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all
+the leisure which, during the last twenty years his manifold office of
+kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in
+discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which
+bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take
+advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will
+shortly be made public.] in 1462.
+
+SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we
+have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was
+close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council
+Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still
+left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more
+probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire
+of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever
+buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion
+of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479,
+together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon
+of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it
+became necessary to reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the
+palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal.
+This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close
+of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci
+executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum
+of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work
+must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century.
+The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by
+fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and
+the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point
+marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure II on the Rio Façade.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this
+finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire,
+burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious
+pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the
+Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a
+mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the
+Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an
+entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading
+architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or
+the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given
+in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbé Cadorin, in
+the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most
+important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace.
+
+I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental
+resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was
+first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others,
+especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute
+designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his
+immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for
+the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and
+Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise
+of Guariento had withered before the flames.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were
+however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier
+work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was
+the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to
+the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of
+Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The
+completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form;
+with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases
+among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and
+defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I
+suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy.
+
+SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the
+details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I
+shall not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here,
+because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this
+volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to
+us in the art of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the
+third volume, Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large
+figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable
+every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that
+the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether
+wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to such
+points of interest as can be explained in the text.
+
+SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning
+of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very
+nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance
+were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should
+be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness
+of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the
+pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other
+four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been
+attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some
+modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of
+buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be
+noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly
+Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks
+of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by
+buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare,
+which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural
+dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large
+surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal
+Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite
+concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of
+Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise
+decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the
+sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane
+surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions
+only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its
+north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner
+angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly
+made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which
+I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence
+will always be distinctly traceable in them.
+
+SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its
+completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The
+central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was
+entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the
+Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the
+principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle
+sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the
+two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and
+their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject;
+above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is
+introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more
+figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel
+holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their
+crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the
+seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the
+ground to the top of the angle.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the
+palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's,
+and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated,
+only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the
+Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according
+to the arrangement just explained,--
+
+First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade).
+
+Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade).
+
+Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade).
+
+Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade).
+
+Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their
+order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the
+reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the
+great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner
+stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most
+important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the
+builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he
+built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson
+which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it
+is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they
+themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their
+city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly
+inscribed.
+
+SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong
+to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the
+Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is
+the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the
+Renaissance spirit.
+
+The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of
+all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank
+confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the
+results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that
+the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence
+in its own wisdom.
+
+Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves.
+
+The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called
+the angle of the Fig-tree:
+
+Its subject is the FALL OF MAN.
+
+The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine:
+
+Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH.
+
+The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle:
+
+Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
+
+It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration,
+the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been
+built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the
+sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two
+schools.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
+principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
+turns to the Piazetta (the façade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw
+above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital,
+which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than
+the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preëminence
+of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was
+first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in
+execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather
+suppose it to have been the earliest completed.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness,
+the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the
+sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary
+adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of
+the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching
+out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for
+several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or
+superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad
+leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight,
+beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate
+plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone
+hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the
+undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine
+angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having
+tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits
+of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have
+been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the
+sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so
+interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the
+subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of this
+chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to
+be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the
+composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses,
+there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending
+leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to
+prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this
+Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it
+is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther
+than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of
+the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty
+joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only
+half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several
+cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned
+boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon
+them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of
+the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous
+veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the
+sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in
+order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the
+eye.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the
+figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many
+respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that
+they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth
+century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the
+Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of
+far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal
+Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the
+head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of
+that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is
+represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp,
+the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and
+majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant
+wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of
+design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body,
+carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily
+expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of
+technical skill. This monument bears date 1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI--NOIE
+AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen,
+in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c.]
+and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name:
+
+  "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS,
+      LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS."
+
+SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently
+worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing
+hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins
+on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being
+evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in
+those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of
+this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret
+and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three
+brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of
+the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not
+with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet,
+on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital.
+
+SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the
+group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are
+protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle
+and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in
+nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to
+1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred
+yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge
+Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354.
+
+SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the
+Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are
+better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the
+tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more
+nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.
+
+The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has
+very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk
+between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his
+hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those
+of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it
+always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it
+is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the
+tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the
+fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to
+nature; they are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges,
+and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled
+drapery.
+
+SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade,
+the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their
+positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate
+XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right.
+A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his
+hand a scroll with this inscription:
+
+  EFICE Q
+  SOFRE
+  TUR AFA
+  EL REVE
+  RENDE
+  QUIETU
+
+i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote:
+"Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The
+peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to
+tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir
+Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is
+represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded
+me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising
+of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well known tale of the Fisherman
+and St. Mark's ring.] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll
+borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much
+the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has
+only in its hand the Annunciation lily.
+
+SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating
+the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression
+of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence
+upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general
+purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I
+imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in
+which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just
+touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of
+divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the
+great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace;
+and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the
+eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men
+in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade
+at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse.
+
+SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their
+order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.)
+that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower
+story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then
+the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first,
+which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine
+angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and
+the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle.
+
+SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are
+octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in
+every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the
+angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on
+the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding
+forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the
+groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have
+given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope
+to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them
+here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the
+expression of the figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower
+leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left
+dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In
+referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the
+outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side;
+and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of
+course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up
+after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left
+visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western
+sides of each.
+
+SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle.
+
+In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its
+wings expanded, covering his breast.
+
+On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves.
+
+On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other,
+a pair of scissors.
+
+It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the façade,
+should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can
+hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I
+will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical
+meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it
+would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb
+introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but
+generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the
+hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are
+very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small.
+
+SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are
+left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one
+web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its
+jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming
+itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far
+the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds.
+
+THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads,
+large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned.
+
+FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one
+in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in
+its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the
+nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds.
+
+The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has
+luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing
+hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling
+hair, deep cut with drill holes.
+
+This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only
+with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought
+expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of
+the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads
+are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with
+sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not
+a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features
+small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and
+great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull
+smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of
+their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as
+the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed
+coxcombs.
+
+FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length
+statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription.
+In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief
+embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the
+abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR"
+(contracted IPAT.).
+
+On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand,
+and sceptre in left.
+
+On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away.
+He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a
+sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He
+has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much
+injured, but has once been very noble in expression.
+
+SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard,
+and bad.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which
+is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it
+and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues.
+
+_First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from
+the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he
+pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there
+is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is,
+"LARGITAS ME ONORAT."
+
+In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of
+showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a
+plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct
+imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always
+injuries.
+
+This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur
+in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a
+leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients.
+
+SECTION XLIX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An
+armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL
+TIMENS."
+
+This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets
+as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a
+woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in
+the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a
+very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by
+his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the
+Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be
+well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the
+man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name."
+
+SECTION L. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but
+needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA
+SUM, DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like
+person with a veil.
+
+She is the Atë of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the
+fourth book:
+
+  "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,
+   With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;
+   And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,
+   That nought but gall and venim comprehended,
+   And wicked wordes that God and man offended:
+   Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,
+   And both the parts did speake, and both contended;
+   And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,
+   That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided."
+
+Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity
+we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for
+the other sense of the word.
+
+SECTION LI. _Fourth side_. Patience. A female figure, very
+expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
+left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
+
+She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
+masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in
+the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags
+who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
+Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
+Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
+hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
+Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
+smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."
+
+SECTION LII. _Fifth side_. Despair. A female figure thrusting a
+dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down
+among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest
+figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In
+the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears,
+instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each
+side.
+
+This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented
+as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's
+vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that
+this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the
+attention of Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+SECTION LIII. _Sixth side_. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek,
+but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind
+legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI *
+*;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like
+"A'ONOEXIBEO."
+
+I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and
+that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo."
+
+This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems;
+represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the
+finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head
+of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay,
+vol. ii. p. 226.]
+
+Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her
+above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood.
+
+SECTION LIV. _Seventh side_. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a
+small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription
+nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI,
+CERO," remain.
+
+By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the
+helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is
+covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, _is
+bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her
+hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet.
+
+In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,--
+
+      "Full large of limbe and every joint
+  He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
+
+For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the
+Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III.
+
+SECTION LV. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the
+Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA
+ROBUOBTINEO."
+
+I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of
+Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood,
+but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in
+the second book:
+
+  "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew,
+   Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight:
+   Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+   And ever and anone with rosy red
+   The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye,
+   That her became, as polisht yvory
+   Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd
+   With fayre vermilion or pure castory."
+
+SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects
+are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of
+the degradation of human instincts.
+
+_First side_. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap
+ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious
+twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but
+still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque.
+His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back.
+
+_Second side_. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a
+bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It
+plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow.
+
+_Third side_. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head,
+founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap
+made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand.
+
+_Fourth side_. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise.
+It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it
+wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg.
+
+_Fifth side_. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a
+curved sword.
+
+_Sixth side_. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a
+chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a
+two-edged sword.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round
+helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with
+a top like a fir-cone.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand,
+ending below in a fish.
+
+SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Faith. She has her left
+hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA
+IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her
+left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic
+books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia)
+is still more spiritual and noble:
+
+  "She was araied all in lilly white,
+  And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
+  With wine and water fild up to the hight,
+  In which a serpent did himselfe enfold,
+  That horrour made to all that did behold;
+  But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood:
+  And in her other hand she fast did hold
+  A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood;
+  Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood."
+
+SECTION LVIII. _Second side_. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?]
+tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat
+vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than
+Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM
+VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as
+merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue
+having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian
+symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given
+generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin,
+knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing
+back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and
+slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is
+square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above
+her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins
+deeply infixed.
+
+Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt,
+however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere
+manliness or courage.
+
+SECTION LIX. _Third side_. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water
+and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy
+nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat
+vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards
+continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College)
+temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or
+gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the
+moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who
+has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of
+which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed
+among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the
+Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much
+sternness:
+
+  "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
+   That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
+   His carriage was full comely and upright;
+   His countenance demure and temperate;
+   But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
+   That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
+
+The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
+of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
+inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
+opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
+is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
+most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
+[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
+intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
+image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
+of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
+crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
+to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
+throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
+laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
+virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
+opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
+Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
+find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
+a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
+forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
+first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
+Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
+
+  "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
+   Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
+   That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
+
+The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser,
+for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
+philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.
+
+SECTION LX. _Fourth side_. Humility; with a veil upon her head,
+carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN
+ME."
+
+This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized
+in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in
+early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to
+imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an
+exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek
+youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish
+systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation.
+
+SECTION LXI. _Fifth side_. Charity. A woman with her lap full of
+loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it
+across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital.
+
+Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In
+the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by
+having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is
+crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and
+fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears
+above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of
+beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth.
+
+The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in
+the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always
+represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in
+Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and,
+with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear
+fire, she could not have been discerned.
+
+Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea
+afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and
+sculptors.
+
+SECTION LXII. _Sixth side_. Justice. Crowned, and with sword.
+Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE."
+
+This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good
+capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has
+also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue,
+representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding
+scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing
+that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws,
+but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands.
+In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an
+angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been
+working at a desk or table.
+
+Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons
+riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music.
+
+Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the
+betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity.
+
+SECTION LXIII. _Seventh side_. Prudence. A man with a book and a
+pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the
+shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so
+frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of
+men occupied in any civil capacity.
+
+This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees
+of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being
+opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find,
+in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive
+character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto
+expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things
+by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with
+compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of
+looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or
+anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural
+capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never
+enough considered or symbolized.
+
+The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
+Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.
+
+SECTION LXIV. _Eighth side_. Hope. A figure full of devotional
+expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand
+which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy
+this hand does not appear.
+
+Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
+not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
+others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
+which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
+for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
+even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
+for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
+air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
+was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
+symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
+are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
+characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is
+aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the
+Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
+beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
+
+  "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
+   An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."
+
+SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Luxury (the opposite of
+chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
+forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
+drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."
+
+These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
+those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His
+Luxury rides upon a goat:
+
+  "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
+   Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
+   And in his hand a burning heart he bare."
+
+But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is
+the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more
+indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediaeval and
+the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented.
+
+I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the
+thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central
+year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be
+gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most
+touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by
+the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters;
+namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now,
+therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's
+still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for
+the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents
+Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan
+and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and
+fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii.
+letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of
+Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as
+furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the
+mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of
+a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of
+the Graces, but full of terror:
+
+  "With that the darts which his right hand did straine
+   Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,
+   And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine,
+   That all his many it afraide did make."
+
+His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is.
+Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope,
+Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty.
+After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame,
+
+  "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,
+   Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
+   Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,
+   Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread
+   Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity,
+   Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy."
+
+Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the
+Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in
+every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our
+literature, and our minds.
+
+SECTION LXVI. _Second side_. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a
+jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird,
+which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM."
+
+Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine:
+
+  "His belly was upblownt with luxury,
+   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
+   And like a crane his necke was long and fyne,
+   Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast,
+   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne."
+
+He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of
+ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance.
+
+SECTION LXVII. _Third side_. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and
+stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with
+ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his
+helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA."
+
+Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it
+as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep
+under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a
+feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle
+called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a
+team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her
+palace she is thus described:
+
+  "So proud she shyned in her princely state,
+   Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne;
+   And sitting high, for lowly she did hate:
+   Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne
+   A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne;
+   And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,
+   Wherein her face she often vewed fayne."
+
+The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and
+Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father
+and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.)
+
+Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride
+which vents itself in insult to others.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. _Fourth side_. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at
+her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance Copy
+it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME."
+
+Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest
+of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides
+upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood.
+Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me
+very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any
+representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the
+most terrible; both of them make him violent.
+
+SECTION LXIX. _Fifth side_. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over
+her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous
+for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny
+channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by
+famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring
+and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the
+Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR."
+
+Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god
+Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power.
+Note the position of the house of Richesse:
+
+  "Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
+  That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide."
+
+It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness,
+although they are vices totally different in their operation on the
+human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of
+Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of
+the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that
+is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus
+destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in
+heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is
+not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly
+proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be
+consistent with much charity; not so avarice.
+
+SECTION LXX. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken
+away, having had its arms round two branches of trees.
+
+I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless,
+in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as
+desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice
+especially upon the clergy,--
+
+  "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde,
+  Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin,
+  Like to an holy monck, the service to begin.
+  And in his hand his portesse still he bare,
+  That much was worne, but therein little redd."
+
+And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices:
+
+  "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd,
+  When such an one had guiding of the way."
+
+Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse,
+indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly
+characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
+
+SECTION LXXI. _Seventh side_. Vanity. She is smiling complacently
+as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with
+roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
+
+There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in
+the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas
+generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it
+in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity
+shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the
+thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this
+sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal,
+of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a
+feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser,
+I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria,
+more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however,
+entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+
+SECTION LXXII. _Eighth side_. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of
+expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a
+serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle
+of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.
+
+Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as
+having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with
+an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping;
+a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the
+eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames
+consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of
+Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not
+suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer,
+joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of
+corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole
+mind:
+
+                      "Malicious Envy rode
+  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
+  Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
+  That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+  _And in a kirtle of discolourd say
+  He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_,
+  And in his bosome secretly there lay
+  An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
+  In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
+
+He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in
+the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
+
+SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight
+birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which,
+however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all
+varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description.
+
+SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is
+grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and
+the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that
+it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance
+series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
+
+_First side_. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a
+child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his
+own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."
+
+The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no
+means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a
+parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as
+in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next
+in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating
+human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante
+placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have
+been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser--
+
+         "All in sable sorrowfully clad,
+  Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A pair of pincers in his hand he had,
+  With which he pinched people to the heart."
+
+He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth
+canto of the fourth book:
+
+  "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade,
+   That neither day nor night from working spared;
+   But to small purpose yron wedges made:
+   Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade.
+
+   Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent,
+   Ne better had he, ne for better cared;
+   With blistered hands among the cinders brent."
+
+It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure
+is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a
+very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as
+"Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the
+companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is
+intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred
+Sorrow.
+
+SECTION LXXV. _Second side_. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing
+hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as
+singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS."
+
+We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by
+Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy,
+"ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully
+developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from
+them in the earlier capitals.
+
+SECTION LXXVI. _Third side_. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find
+it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a
+man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English
+residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a
+feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with
+one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and
+bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb."
+
+SECTION LXXVII. _Fourth side_. Destroyed, all but a book, which
+identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy;
+there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent
+life with the pursuit of literature?).
+
+Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all
+his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the
+convent, but of wedded life.
+
+SECTION LXXVIII. _Fifth side_. Only a scroll is left; but, from the
+copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM
+DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the
+virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only.
+
+The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite
+character in the "Faerie Queen."
+
+SECTION LXXIX. _Sixth side_. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a
+crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The
+Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly
+conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits.
+In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect,
+
+  "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red,
+   Purfled with gold and pearle;...
+   Her wanton palfrey all was overspred.
+   With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
+   Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave."
+
+Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the
+description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted.
+
+SECTION LXXX. _Seventh side_. Injustice. An armed figure holding a
+halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the
+particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented
+at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while
+various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia"
+is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger.
+
+_Eighth side_. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child,
+who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is
+inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?"
+
+SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round,
+coarsely cut.
+
+FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its
+haunches. Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired
+with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair
+projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks,
+hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness.
+
+SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is
+thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade.
+
+The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me
+later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is
+embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe
+Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general
+illustration of Idleness.
+
+_First side_. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated,
+and fastened by a buckle.
+
+_Second side_. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand.
+
+_Third side_. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds
+by the haunches.
+
+_Fourth side_. A man with a parrot.
+
+_Fifth side_. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and
+dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand,
+her right on her breast.
+
+_Sixth side_. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand
+upon the leaves of the capital.
+
+_Seventh side_. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand.
+
+_Eighth side_. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right
+laid on his breast.
+
+SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large
+heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that
+these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins,
+Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians.
+Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to
+note them.] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth
+side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a
+portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in
+every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and,
+therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list
+given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the
+superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations.
+Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation
+of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in
+which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches.
+
+SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the
+sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of
+the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part
+of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the
+wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the
+orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus,
+the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining
+are the following:
+
+_First side_. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated
+with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS."
+
+_Second side_. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a
+long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters
+"GRAMMATIC" remain.
+
+_Third side_. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double
+beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his
+back.
+
+_Fourth side_. Destroyed.
+
+_Fifth side_. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on
+it.
+
+_Sixth side_. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *"
+
+_Seventh side_. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle
+wrought into a lion's head.
+
+_Eighth side_. Destroyed.
+
+SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most
+interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and
+the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers
+as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they
+are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was
+laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are
+now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty
+because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its
+expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the
+signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the
+fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually
+stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of
+interrogation), and then as I would read them.
+
+SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the
+houses of the planets are thus arranged:
+
+The house of the Sun,      is Leo.
+      "          Moon,     "  Cancer.
+      "          Mars,     "  Aries and Scorpio.
+      "          Venus,    "  Taurus and Libra.
+      "          Mercury,  "  Gemini and Virgo.
+      "          Jupiter,  "  Sagittarius and Pisces.
+      "          Saturn,   "  Capricorn.
+      "          Herschel, "  Aquarius.
+
+The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we
+have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and
+Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn
+at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is
+grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel
+planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of
+Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the
+angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from
+which I shall not depart.
+
+SECTION LXXXVII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea,
+has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure
+beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the
+leaves of the capital. His inscription is:
+
+"ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE."
+
+SECTION LXXXVIII. _Second side_. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius
+and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in
+radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast,
+ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the
+drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot
+forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable
+characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand
+over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two
+thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been
+broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group
+is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on
+the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is:
+
+"INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA."
+[Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform
+mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the
+same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked on the stone.]
+
+Or,
+  "Inde Jovis dona
+   Pisces simul atque Chirona."
+
+Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of
+Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron."
+
+SECTION LXXXIX. _Third side_. Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio.
+Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the
+ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left
+hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for
+it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright
+line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a
+shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon
+his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It
+should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_
+Latin for "I am of iron."
+
+SECTION XC. _Fourth side_. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented
+under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from
+his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription:
+
+"TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI."
+
+I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a
+letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum
+"signe" stands for.
+
+SECTION XCI. _Fifth side_. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra.
+The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is
+deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a
+mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very
+nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is
+exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs:
+
+"LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*."
+
+SECTION XCII. _Sixth side_. Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent
+cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining
+attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot
+understand the inscription, though more than usually legible.
+
+"OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE."
+
+SECTION XCIII. _Seventh side_. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This
+sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most
+picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat,
+upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her
+left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I
+believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather
+think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express
+the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the
+lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat,
+may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by
+the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on
+this capital, as well as on the rest of the façade, are disposed in
+severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the
+moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest
+the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is
+highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five
+hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such,
+far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this
+intention. The inscription is:
+
+"LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
+
+SECTION XCIV. _Eighth side_. God creating Man. Represented as a
+throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the
+head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The
+inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of
+"formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble,
+before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely
+ascertained the rest.
+
+"DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
+
+Or
+
+   "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
+  From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
+
+I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the
+old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of
+the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire
+subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as
+determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in
+fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
+
+Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only
+consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble
+Christianity.
+
+In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the
+whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole
+strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian
+casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself
+cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give
+drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work.
+
+SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting
+from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the
+Fig-tree angle the first.
+
+It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of
+dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in
+some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its
+figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar
+significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and
+architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far
+too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one
+capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the
+architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying,
+and of the value of color generally in his own art.
+
+SECTION XCVI. _First side_. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A
+figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green
+serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital.
+The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up
+open, with the palm outwards.
+
+_Second side_. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a
+small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is
+highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at
+the Vine angle. Inscription effaced.
+
+_Third side_. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work
+on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark
+red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form
+of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth
+century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without
+any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the
+Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the
+fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO."
+
+_Fourth side_. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has
+been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST.
+E(N?)AS."
+
+_Fifth side_. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a
+kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble.
+
+_Sixth side_. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed
+_on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses
+set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich
+cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us
+of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been
+universal in the early fourteenth century.
+
+There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is
+working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups
+of the time.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth
+century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals,
+see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted
+marble.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a
+delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered
+with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red
+marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * *
+ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two
+of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front,
+two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned
+workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult
+our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the
+mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more
+interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work
+was undertaken at this time.
+
+SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals,
+and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its
+effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in
+the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio
+work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with
+great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute
+chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered
+bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong
+simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are
+also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side
+of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series,
+though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable
+hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman,
+better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become
+in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but
+he could not have composed them more skilfully.
+
+SECTION XCVIII. _First side_. A lion with a stag's haunch in his
+mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the
+peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or
+furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the
+Ducal Palace, to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment
+we reach the Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed
+simply, "LEO."
+
+_Second side_. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body
+wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers
+are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed
+"LUPUS."
+
+_Third side_. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth,
+its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across
+the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other
+side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS."
+
+_Fourth side_. Entirely broken away.
+
+_Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at
+least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone.
+
+_Sixth side_. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed
+species of dog, with ugly flap ears.
+
+_Seventh side_. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth.
+
+_Eighth side_. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees.
+
+SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior
+professions.
+
+_First side_. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very
+expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer.
+Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM."
+
+_Second side_. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl
+or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is
+gone.
+
+_Third side_. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for
+cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable.
+
+_Fourth side_. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on
+two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Fifth side_. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very
+carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of
+cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The
+inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"?
+
+_Sixth side_. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which
+lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but
+according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA."
+
+_Seventh side_. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll
+which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Eighth side_. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a
+large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is
+inscribed "FABER SUM."
+
+SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of
+the planets on human life.
+
+_First side_. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according
+to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been
+prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or
+other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then
+forgotten to return to it.
+
+_Second side_. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on
+it. The legend above is
+
+"MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X."
+
+Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.)
+"Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years."
+
+_Third side_. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken.
+Inscribed
+
+"ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII."
+
+Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the
+lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note
+the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o;
+showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same
+kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained,
+and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded
+to a Roman ear.
+
+_Fourth side_. A youth with a hawk on his fist.
+
+"IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX."
+The sue governs youth for nineteen years.
+
+_Fifth side_. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder.
+Inscribed
+
+"SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV."
+Mars governs manhood for fifteen years.
+
+_Sixth side_. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap,
+reading.
+
+"SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII."
+Jupiter governs age for twelve years.
+
+_Seventh side_. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.
+
+"DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.)
+Saturn governs decrepitude until death.
+
+_Eighth side_. The dead body lying on a mattress.
+
+"ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI."
+Last comes death, the penalty of sin.
+
+SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression
+of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its
+devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that
+devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been
+restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.
+
+SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft
+which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The
+shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is
+coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It
+represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress
+at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the
+bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to
+examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by
+the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian
+guard-house.
+
+SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the
+months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are,
+however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series.
+
+_First side_. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the
+beginning of the year.
+
+_Second side_. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather
+fan in her hand.
+
+_Third side_. June. Carrying cherries in a basket.
+
+I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter,
+because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called
+"the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the
+conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I.
+
+The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and
+large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon
+the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut.
+
+_Fourth side_. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the
+straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite,
+beats (the grain?) in a basket.
+
+_Fifth side_. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a
+branch of vine. Very beautiful.
+
+_Sixth side_. October and November. I could not make out their
+occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire.
+
+_Seventh side_. December. Killing pigs, as usual.
+
+_Eighth side_. January warming his feet, and February frying fish.
+This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter
+as the cherries are of the Venetian summer.
+
+The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and
+there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS.
+
+This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or
+twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth
+century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has
+nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with
+their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the
+Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources.
+This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of
+the last capital, which are both fine.
+
+I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of
+these capitals, as they are not worth description.
+
+SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely
+changing the succession of the figures.
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the
+old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all
+events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight
+different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given,
+and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are
+inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as
+much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art,
+namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA.
+Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter,
+whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common
+gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like
+a bottle compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long
+water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to
+this day.
+
+SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh.
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth.
+
+THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as
+having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the
+"Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm
+face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The
+inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?).
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth.
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures
+laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads,
+or chins, or on the leaves around them.
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth.
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh.
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in
+features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta
+façade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is
+copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the
+part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has
+merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be
+always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and
+indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied,
+very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work,
+though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to
+that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or
+first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven
+other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures
+of lawgivers, in the following order:
+
+_Second side_. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed:
+
+"ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE."
+Aristotle who declares laws.
+
+_Third side_. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari
+call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of
+the fifth side for the word Isidore?]
+
+_Fourth side_. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed:
+
+"SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE."
+Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares
+laws.
+
+Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead
+of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this
+sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery.
+
+_Fifth side_. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed:
+
+"ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE."
+
+A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated
+Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away.
+
+_Sixth side_. Numa Pompilius building churches.
+
+"NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE."
+
+Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in
+Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier
+capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery.
+
+_Seventh side_. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed:
+
+"QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE."
+
+Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with
+clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and
+quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes
+out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch,
+with the stone tablets between.
+
+_Eighth side_. Trajan doing justice to the Widow.
+
+"TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA."
+
+He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling
+before his horse.
+
+SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar
+interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character
+of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that
+government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of
+its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the
+foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith
+may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in
+common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the
+political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the
+speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the
+interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.]
+nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may
+easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the
+main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not
+believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose
+portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and
+everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much
+capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no
+meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the
+peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or
+_wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to
+make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of
+an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the
+fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to
+all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time
+undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had
+become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the
+interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps,
+better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own
+government is carried on, and the occasional difference between
+parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the
+Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and
+criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession
+of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more
+probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of
+violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in
+the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably
+desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to
+the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine,
+with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of
+Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place,
+that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables:
+in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been
+guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in
+being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their
+political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
+Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
+government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
+
+SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which
+contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The
+capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their
+character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight
+leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the
+flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not
+without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I
+possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear
+to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones;
+others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly
+wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully
+treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth,
+in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the
+corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which
+extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster
+which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples
+of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and
+distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art;
+and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculpture of the four
+winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante,
+the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is
+always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the
+sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand:
+Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana,
+the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be
+carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater
+distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:
+
+            "Thwart of these, as fierce,
+  Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
+  Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
+  Sirocco and Libecchio."
+
+I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on
+the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the
+fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all
+carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier
+which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say,
+the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the
+pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower
+arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but
+they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the
+upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the
+time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with
+its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the
+Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and
+the other of the fifteenth century.
+
+SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the
+spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of
+junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in
+the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on
+which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from
+the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is
+a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked
+in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the
+Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the
+natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great
+ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that
+of fig. 14.
+
+SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig.
+14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should
+not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14
+gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness
+and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared
+on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses
+of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line
+engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore,
+abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important
+mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a
+few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the
+inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for
+themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness,
+elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble
+symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or
+experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is
+always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or
+redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength,
+freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the
+undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer
+winds, as the sands are by the sea.
+
+SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents
+the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period,
+i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and
+by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this
+investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces
+us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered
+it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject.
+
+SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid
+farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our
+examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper
+arcade there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the
+third order on the Rio Façade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting
+the original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further
+details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary
+confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix
+I., Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them
+into the text.] I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the
+façade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and
+I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain
+their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must
+have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to
+render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present
+mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The
+traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as
+the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are
+still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner
+mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the façade, the
+parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their
+original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is
+nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice;
+still less in the large central windows on each façade which are
+entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these
+portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and
+masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and
+calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression.
+
+SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes
+of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the
+severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by
+the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case,
+though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least
+intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls
+of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the
+men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of
+priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its
+being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by
+piece being destroyed for ever.
+
+SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate
+subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
+destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
+be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art
+in Europe.
+
+The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
+Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
+valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have
+no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
+persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
+pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
+they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
+judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
+filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
+garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
+partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
+generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
+in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
+without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good
+ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it
+little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are
+so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with
+the beauties which they have heard attributed to it.
+
+SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for
+the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly
+or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being
+placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of
+ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the
+fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they
+should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient
+destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting
+over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery
+pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or
+other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the
+estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and
+more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst,
+the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time,
+in reality, of very small value indeed.
+
+SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble
+painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat
+of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was
+little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom
+there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best
+things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of
+accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a
+camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been
+short, and circumstances disadvantageous.
+
+SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of
+their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places
+where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast
+and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the
+present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected,
+whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the
+walls, piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is
+an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not
+often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however
+ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real
+thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest
+treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old
+plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and
+which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim
+canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape
+of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an
+exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode,
+looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his
+accomplished duty.
+
+SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the
+Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
+reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
+altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention
+of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens,
+that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture,
+will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There
+are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
+conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
+and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
+over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
+and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the
+roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
+recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
+there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same
+time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value
+in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world),
+curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were
+set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch
+the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling;
+while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid
+on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the
+re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end
+of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common
+house-painter's vessel of paint.
+
+This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
+continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
+manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
+Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in
+Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in
+tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most
+wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world.
+
+SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
+patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
+regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to
+bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of
+stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior
+of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the
+"Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the
+Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were
+full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as
+precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of
+majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the
+great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen
+rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe
+in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God
+had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the
+mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its
+burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher
+than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of
+purple flower and shadowy pine.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
+important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
+references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
+republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
+photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my
+own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of
+this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
+separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
+cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
+old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures
+in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace façade
+was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it
+is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater
+part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry,"
+will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its
+original wood-blocks.
+
+But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
+St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for
+ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in
+sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I
+have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of
+these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in
+the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St.
+Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for
+their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me,
+in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what
+pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen,
+Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
+
+Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
+Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
+giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
+already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue
+work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
+entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
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+    <title>
+      Stones of Venice, by John Ruskin
+    </title>
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+Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9804]
+First Posted: October 19, 2003
+Last Updated: February 12, 2019
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STONES OF VENICE [INTRODUCTIONS] ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Anne Soulard, Keren Vergon, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      STONES OF VENICE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By John Ruskin
+    </h2>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE STONES OF VENICE: </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE STONES OF VENICE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; THE QUARRY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE THRONE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; TORCELLO. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; ST. MARK'S. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE DUCAL PALACE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> NOTE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STONES OF VENICE:
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      (PRINTED SEPARATELY)
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
+      purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
+      those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a
+      permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at first
+      intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the principal
+      plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been modified by the
+      Author's increasing desire to gather his past and present writings into a
+      consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in
+      separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter,
+      once intended,&mdash;apologetic mostly,&mdash;the reader shall be spared
+      the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new
+      series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of forwardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter out
+      of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index, abridged
+      and corrected.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      BRANTWOOD,
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>3rd May</i>, 1879.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STONES OF VENICE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; THE QUARRY.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      [FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+      three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+      the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+      powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which
+      inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through
+      prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded for
+      us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets of
+      Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a lovely
+      song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very
+      depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as
+      we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and the sea, that
+      they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in endurance
+      of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her
+      decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak&mdash;so quiet,&mdash;so
+      bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched
+      her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and
+      which the Shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+      lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be
+      uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing
+      bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+      which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
+      strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
+      countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,&mdash;barred
+      with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where
+      the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in
+      which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their
+      results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear
+      upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that
+      usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in the
+      outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a clearer idea
+      of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian character
+      through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the true
+      history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from the
+      current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so
+      during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including
+      the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing
+      severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the
+      change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in great
+      part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+      the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+      Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment
+      when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+      Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and
+      Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were
+      passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to
+      Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive
+      appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist. des
+      Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
+      principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix III.,
+      "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was continually
+      on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy, her King or doge
+      possessing, in early times at least, as much independent authority as any
+      other European sovereign, but an authority gradually subjected to
+      limitation, and shortened almost daily of its prerogatives, while it
+      increased in a spectral and incapable magnificence. The final government
+      of the nobles, under the image of a king, lasted for five hundred years,
+      during which Venice reaped the fruits of her former energies, consumed
+      them,&mdash;and expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+      Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine
+      hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by
+      what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and
+      absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+      establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+      the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the doge
+      on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+      interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order and
+      power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and noblest
+      man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo trovar modo che
+      non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi
+      migliori, e insiememente, <i>un ottimo solo</i>." (<i>Sansovino</i>,) Ah,
+      well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader, with
+      an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him, out of
+      which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing its
+      origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among the
+      families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually organizing
+      itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+      and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+      European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated, we
+      find the names of all her hero princes,&mdash;of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+      Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+      most eventful in the career of Venice&mdash;the central struggle of her
+      life&mdash;stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara&mdash;disturbed
+      by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of Falier&mdash;oppressed
+      by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza&mdash;and distinguished by the
+      glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her
+      citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+      Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the <i>visible</i>
+      commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the
+      Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari
+      followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large
+      acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in
+      Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the
+      battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454,
+      Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the
+      Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State, [Footnote:
+      Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the
+      statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.] and from this
+      period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which
+      it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror
+      to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks the
+      period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian
+      power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal
+      power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their
+      right of appointing the clergy of their territories.] the commercial
+      prosperity of Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her
+      historians to the previous evidence of the diminution of her internal
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between
+      the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+      diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+      at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+      determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+      question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+      individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+      Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+      itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+      enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of Venice
+      might not be written almost without reference to the construction of her
+      senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a people
+      eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long disciplined
+      by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live nobly or to
+      perish:&mdash;for a thousand years they fought for life; for three hundred
+      they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their call was heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at
+      many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and
+      the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+      sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her: the
+      real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what powers
+      they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made masters
+      of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress, impatient
+      of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from the time when
+      she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into prison, to that
+      when the voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant with
+      Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a
+      majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+      fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+      interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+      evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
+      both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+      prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+      religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I say domestic and individual; for&mdash;and this is the second point
+      which I wish the reader to keep in mind&mdash;the most curious phenomenon
+      in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and
+      its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+      fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+      last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+      aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+      interest,&mdash;this the one motive of all her important political acts,
+      or enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+      but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+      conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+      The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+      and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+      reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+      princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+      which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its devotion,
+      she first calculated the highest price she could exact from its piety for
+      the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement of her own
+      private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By directing the
+      arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv.
+      viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall
+      be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+      feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+      could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+      of assigning to religion a direct influence over all <i>his own</i>
+      actions, and all the affairs of <i>his own</i> daily life, is remarkable
+      in every great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state;
+      nor are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens
+      reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its
+      course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely
+      trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace
+      any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander
+      III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character
+      of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the
+      insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her
+      hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she
+      has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are
+      sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection of
+      private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the
+      almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire was
+      enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular circumstance in
+      the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in
+      which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the principal
+      church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and
+      called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church, [Footnote: Appendix 4,
+      "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration,
+      stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its name, as well
+      as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of travellers
+      passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of remark, that
+      the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe
+      their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of
+      the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast organization of
+      those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the
+      most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the most wise, of all the
+      princes of Venice, [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.]
+      who now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose
+      life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor
+      has placed around his tomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which
+      we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+      Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual
+      religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+      greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+      immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct even
+      of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a simplicity
+      of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which a man of the
+      world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that religious
+      feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his conduct. And we
+      find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy serenity of mind
+      and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a habit of heroism
+      which never fails them, even when the immediate motive of action ceases to
+      be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this spirit the prosperity of the
+      state is exactly correspondent, and with its failure her decline, and that
+      with a closeness and precision which it will be one of the collateral
+      objects of the following essay to demonstrate from such accidental
+      evidence as the field of its inquiry presents. And, thus far, all is
+      natural and simple. But the stopping short of this religious faith when it
+      appears likely to influence national action, correspondent as it is, and
+      that most strikingly, with several characteristics of the temper of our
+      present English legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the
+      most curious interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the
+      range of my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the
+      treatment of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I
+      may be able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian
+      character.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote:
+                    "In that temple porch,
+  (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+  Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+  And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+  Of the proud Pontiff&mdash;thus at last consoled
+  For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+  On his stony pillow."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+      believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and
+      will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit
+      of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else
+      that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's
+      thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true
+      that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her
+      prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus
+      rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more
+      than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V.,
+      which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+      Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great
+      tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or the
+      ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out the
+      shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics from all
+      share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her knowledge
+      of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist will
+      attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success. [Footnote:
+      At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal Power in
+      Venice."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy of
+      the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects that
+      the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose themselves
+      to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed theirs to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+      Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing it,&mdash;unity
+      far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when contrasted with the
+      fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of
+      families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states
+      of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or
+      enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be
+      anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a
+      restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with
+      illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private
+      passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a
+      thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may
+      well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are
+      still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but
+      one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one
+      was a watch-tower only [Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise
+      to St. Mark,&mdash;Pax e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the
+      other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and
+      fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of
+      Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces
+      were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the
+      leaves of lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the
+      arsenal are no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city
+      itself. They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the
+      attack of a foreign enemy.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+      general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would
+      next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the
+      testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the
+      arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connection
+      with the history of the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice as
+      far back as 1418.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini, and
+      his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the sacred
+      painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith animates
+      their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of Titian's:
+      there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies
+      either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred
+      subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,&mdash;composition
+      and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of
+      portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure,
+      introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various
+      members of the Pesaro family who surround her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and Titian
+      was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the school of
+      painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their artistic
+      feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own natural
+      characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up in faith;
+      Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion
+      of Venice had expired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIV. The <i>vital</i> religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+      observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted,
+      in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St.
+      Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the
+      Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal
+      palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a
+      curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of
+      Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye is
+      first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice was in
+      her wars, not in her worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+      Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects which
+      it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+      principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+      subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+      portraiture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+      Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,&mdash;that the fifteenth
+      century had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+      Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must here
+      give a general idea of its heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+      l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+      grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees
+      y passent à travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus
+      pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le
+      monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons sont
+      fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes toutes
+      painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes ont le devant de
+      marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de la, et encores
+      maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le devant.... C'est
+      la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais veue et qui plus faict d'honneur
+      à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et où le
+      service de Dieu est le plus sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y
+      peust bien avoir d'aultres faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour
+      la reverence qu'ilz portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Mémoires
+      de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+      Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
+      Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some
+      glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life
+      had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression instantly
+      made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder palaces and
+      those built "within this last hundred years; which all have their fronts
+      of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away, and besides,
+      many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their fronts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+      which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6, "Renaissance
+      Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction. There had
+      indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the fifteenth century;
+      and a change of some importance to us moderns: we English owe to it our
+      St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes to it the utter
+      degradation or destruction of her schools of architecture, never since
+      revived. But that the reader may understand this, it is necessary that he
+      should have some general idea of the connection of the architecture of
+      Venice with that of the rest of Europe, from its origin forwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+      derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East.
+      The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various
+      modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if
+      you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of
+      successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric
+      and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque,
+      massy-capitaled buildings&mdash;Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else
+      you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English,
+      French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the shaft;
+      Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and
+      arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from the race of
+      Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and
+      Shem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
+      shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation
+      in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to
+      refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first
+      perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if the Greeks did
+      indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the
+      earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and
+      Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing
+      member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualization of both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are
+      the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+      orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+      more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex: those
+      are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the other
+      the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English, Decorated,
+      and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which
+      the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of both. All other
+      orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and grotesques altogether
+      indefinite in number and species. [Footnote: Appendix 7, "Varieties of the
+      Orders."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
+      clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until
+      they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only
+      that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the
+      Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very
+      beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized
+      upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a
+      new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman
+      empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to
+      express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian
+      architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very
+      fervid and beautiful&mdash;but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant,
+      and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which
+      flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and
+      the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people give
+      themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The architecture sinks
+      into a settled form&mdash;a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with
+      the religion it expressed; and so would have remained for ever,&mdash;so
+      <i>does</i> remain, where its languor has been undisturbed. [Footnote: The
+      reader will find the <i>weak</i> points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly
+      seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most
+      delightful book of travels I ever opened,&mdash; Curzon's "Monasteries of
+      the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into
+      two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at
+      Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so
+      called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek
+      workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for
+      the present, to class these two branches of art together in his mind, they
+      being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to say, both of
+      them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome itself,
+      flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always
+      to the best workmen who could be found&mdash;Latins in Italy and Greeks in
+      Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of
+      Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of
+      Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by
+      Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed
+      with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in
+      its various branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking
+      aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of
+      government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the
+      religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing
+      its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its
+      beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While
+      in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+      influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+      refinement, an impure form of it&mdash;a patois of Romanesque&mdash;was
+      carried by inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder
+      imitations of this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the
+      skirts of the empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of
+      their youth; and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely
+      descended art was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a
+      barbarous and borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and
+      consistency. The reader must therefore consider the history of the work of
+      the period as broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the
+      elaborately languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the
+      other, the imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase
+      of early organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now
+      merely nominal extent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+      susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear,
+      like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the
+      enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they
+      mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual character. But
+      others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back
+      to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of
+      the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the
+      Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent
+      above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either
+      side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather
+      into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their work,
+      and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glittering sepulchre,
+      the living light rose upon both horizons, and the fierce swords of the
+      Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden paralysis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system
+      to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab
+      was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The
+      Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured
+      representations of bodily exercises&mdash;hunting and war. [Footnote:
+      Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all imagination of
+      creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, "There
+      is no god but God." Opposite in their character and mission, alike in
+      their magnificence of energy, they came from the North, and from the
+      South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended
+      over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very centre of the struggle,
+      the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged
+      with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is VENICE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+      proportions&mdash;the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building
+      of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+      importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+      the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between the
+      three pre-eminent architectures of the world:&mdash;each architecture
+      expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+      necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to
+      mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures
+      were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+      distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian Roman
+      and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and well-proportioned
+      shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman; mouldings more or less so;
+      and large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic, and
+      paintings, whether of scripture history or of sacred symbols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+      Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+      introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+      and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+      writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+      and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it:
+      this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on
+      features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines of
+      color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the dome, and
+      adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious
+      still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
+      decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of
+      that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first,
+      an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without
+      staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will
+      easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles, the
+      nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from the
+      aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of flat or
+      dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part of the
+      nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+      wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+      horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+      pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
+      "Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily
+      thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square pilasters
+      above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and civilization increased,
+      these wooden structures were changed into stone; but they were literally
+      petrified, retaining the form which had been made necessary by their being
+      of wood. The upright pilaster above the nave pier remains in the stone
+      edifice, and is the first form of the great distinctive feature of
+      Northern architecture&mdash;the vaulting shaft. In that form the Lombards
+      brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it remains to this day
+      in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+      walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+      Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the first
+      idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of the nave
+      pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of the
+      vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts in
+      doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the Northern
+      architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be described as
+      rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts, added vaulting
+      shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic superstitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one
+      of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+      without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+      their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased
+      to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of Gothic
+      architecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualization of
+      Northern work under its influence. The noblest buildings of the world, the
+      Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque) Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are
+      those of the Lombard schools themselves, under its close and direct
+      influence; the various Gothics of the North are the original forms of the
+      architecture which the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the
+      less direct influence of the Arab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great
+      European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of
+      architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central character
+      of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude that the Roman,
+      Northern, and Arabian elements met together and contended for the mastery
+      at the same period. The earliest element was the pure Christian Roman; but
+      few, if any, remains of this art exist at Venice; for the present city was
+      in the earliest times only one of many settlements formed on the chain of
+      marshy islands which extend from the mouths of the Isonzo to those of the
+      Adige, and it was not until the beginning of the ninth century that it
+      became the seat of government; while the cathedral of Torcello, though
+      Christian Roman in general form, was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and
+      shows evidence of Byzantine workmanship in many of its details. This
+      cathedral, however, with the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San
+      Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct
+      group of buildings, in which the Byzantine influence is exceedingly
+      slight; and which is probably very sufficiently representative of the
+      earliest architecture on the islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+      body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The first
+      church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that destroyed
+      at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been obtained.
+      During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the architecture of
+      Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and is almost
+      identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote: Appendix 10,
+      "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether the reader
+      chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen being certainly
+      Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by their Arabian
+      masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever other parts of the
+      world they were employed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such vestiges
+      as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the
+      following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble
+      churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St. Mark's),
+      and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+      much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+      arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes, not
+      to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+      mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for
+      the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+      dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the mosque
+      for Christian churches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+      in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+      position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+      elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+      two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in Venice.
+      Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in almost every
+      street of the city, and will form the subject of the second division of
+      the following essay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in
+      art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But
+      their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long
+      prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people
+      had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice
+      of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive
+      condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture. It
+      appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which were
+      attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if left to
+      itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with which it
+      had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found difficult
+      to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to have been built
+      under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio,
+      San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the
+      only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth century, the
+      Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent their morality
+      and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed
+      from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the
+      principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began
+      rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never
+      became united; the Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and
+      the Venetian artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the
+      architecture of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil:
+      the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to
+      the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption
+      of certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and
+      entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence
+      of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the
+      engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan
+      work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the <i>distinctive</i>
+      architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the churches of St. John
+      and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by
+      the Ducal palace, and the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular
+      side, will be the subject of the third division of the essay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic)
+      style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is
+      transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from
+      the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century;
+      that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the
+      central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year
+      1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+      marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe
+      de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's,
+      Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be
+      their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
+      since practised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality
+      in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap.
+      ii.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at
+      once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+      extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+      strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+      main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+      the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+      Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della Carta
+      and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all architecture,
+      especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked the state of
+      religion over all Europe,&mdash;the peculiar degradation of the Romanist
+      superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which brought about
+      the Reformation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+      adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+      and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+      destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the heresies
+      of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he injured his
+      own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one of its noblest
+      exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It may be a serious
+      question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has been a consequence of
+      this error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+      rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+      return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+      Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+      Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in Architecture
+      by Sansovino and Palladio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,&mdash;a
+      flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then
+      perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations
+      of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of
+      men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs
+      without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the
+      polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with
+      preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused
+      intellect; the base school of landscape [Footnote: Appendix II,
+      "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually usurps the place of the historical
+      painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,&mdash;the Alsatian
+      sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull
+      manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north
+      the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs,
+      fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage,
+      and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are
+      hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the
+      condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism from severer
+      penalty) in the time of George II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+      anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+      painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+      as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+      and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+      serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their works
+      being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very slight, and
+      they may be left without grave indignation to their poor mission of
+      furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation. Not so the
+      Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the magnificence of
+      which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real
+      intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and
+      Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on the
+      European mind; and that the more, because few persons are concerned with
+      painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard it with slight
+      attention; but all men are concerned with architecture, and have at some
+      time of their lives serious business with it. It does not much matter that
+      an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture,
+      but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred
+      thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth
+      or distempered conception which we have to regret in this Renaissance
+      architecture: but we shall find in it partly the root, partly the
+      expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times&mdash;over-sophistication
+      and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying the healthfulness of general
+      society, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to a
+      large number of the men who pass through them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+      corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre of
+      the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the
+      source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the
+      palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the
+      eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and
+      graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude than in
+      her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+      effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+      Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere
+      else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I
+      shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with
+      successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the
+      earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with
+      those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in
+      the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have made
+      its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two distinct
+      kinds of evidence:&mdash;the first, the testimony borne by particular
+      incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the builders;
+      from which we may conclude that their architecture must be bad:&mdash;the
+      second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite in the
+      reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of the first
+      kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may be
+      immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above
+      indicated for the commencement of decline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
+      attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb
+      of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same
+      general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it
+      is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters largely
+      into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet unaffected. Like
+      all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus with a
+      recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but tender portrait,
+      wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of the doge as he lay in
+      death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet&mdash;his head is laid slightly
+      aside upon his pillow&mdash;his hands are simply crossed as they fall. The
+      face is emaciated, the features large, but so pure and lordly in their
+      natural chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their
+      animation. They are deeply worn away by thought and death; the veins on
+      the temples branched and starting; the skin gathered in sharp folds; the
+      brow high-arched and shaggy; the eye-ball magnificently large; the curve
+      of the lips just veiled by the light mustache at the side; the beard
+      short, double, and sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white
+      sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the most
+      intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+      respecting Venetian art.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
+    bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
+    It may be called one of the last links which connect the
+    declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
+    which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
+    defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+    which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
+    we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
+    the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
+    and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
+    reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
+    Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+      been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+      mortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is
+      another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478,
+      after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of
+      Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks,
+      carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by
+      sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue
+      distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb ever
+      bestowed on her monarchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of
+      one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+      beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian
+      superlative by translation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+    proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
+    sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
+    opera"&mdash;&amp;c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
+    intagli s' alza uno stylobate"&mdash;&amp;c. "Sotto le colonne, il
+    predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
+    con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
+    fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"&mdash;&amp;c. "Non puossi
+    lasciar senza un cenno l' <i>arca dove</i> sta chiuso il doge;
+    capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+      above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the
+      dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this
+      rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it
+      here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+      unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work, and
+      pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+    scalpello,"&mdash;"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
+    arts attained by ministry of the chisel."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+      attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry
+      of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I
+      was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in
+      the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the
+      middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo
+      hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely
+      drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining
+      expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more
+      laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel
+      that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has
+      been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as
+      the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been
+      broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had
+      only <i>one</i> hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face,
+      heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made monstrous by its
+      semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the
+      other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek
+      only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides;
+      finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock
+      of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the
+      other: it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was
+      only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do
+      not blame&mdash;I should, on the contrary, have praised&mdash;the sculptor
+      for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+      not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous
+      mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such
+      utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of
+      intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast, could
+      have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's countenance&mdash;unmajestic
+      once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the solemnities of death&mdash;could
+      have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend of the grey forehead, and
+      measured out the last veins of it at so much the zecchin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much talent
+      should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this base and
+      senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation of that
+      species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is
+      called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+      chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+      on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea by
+      expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+      lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+      Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+      its testimony to the character of its sculptor. <i>He was banished from
+      Venice for forgery</i> in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter;
+      but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting
+      piece of evidence, which I promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the other
+      towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the seventh main
+      arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early part of the
+      fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while the rest of the
+      Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in age has been gravely
+      disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have examined many documents on
+      the subject, and quoted some which they never examined. I have myself
+      collated most of the written documents, and one document more, to which
+      the Venetian antiquaries never thought of referring,&mdash;the masonry of
+      the palace itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+      the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+      stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins with
+      larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away." [Footnote: The
+      older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different quality.] The ninth
+      shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which is
+      above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth century
+      shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and carry the
+      party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The face of the
+      palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built at the
+      instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have been
+      standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his
+      successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it
+      is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however, the
+      proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the
+      masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that in
+      the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the
+      costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade being purely
+      Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at Padua,
+      while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic: and the
+      lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And there are a
+      multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels, with which I
+      shall not at present trouble the reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+      (remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow
+      the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent
+      new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old ones.
+      The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade, eighteen on the
+      Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars;
+      and these pillars I shall always number from right to left, from the angle
+      of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the Porta della
+      Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have the earliest
+      shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and the 36th, are
+      the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the first of the
+      fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th from the sea on
+      the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series, and will always in
+      future be so numbered, so that all numbers above twenty-six indicate
+      fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth century, with some
+      exceptional cases of restoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+      from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d,
+      from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+      inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly
+      designed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+      the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+      described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of the
+      ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal) with
+      figures of the eight Virtues:&mdash;Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+      Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+      Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+      somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+      every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples (perhaps
+      loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his arm for it
+      across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears open a lion's
+      jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds the Cross; and
+      Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging from sunbeams&mdash;the
+      hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The Lord God giveth them
+      light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima in Deo."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+      chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have
+      lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got
+      Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems
+      are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but
+      she is praying to the sun only: <i>The hand of God is gone</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+      become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light He
+      gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the Reformation on
+      the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient literature on the other,
+      the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I
+      shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the
+      Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself
+      is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the
+      Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very
+      forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps,"
+      in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's:
+      "Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect,
+      "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference of
+      opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of
+      opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there <i>is</i>
+      such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it: but my
+      architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their opinion
+      against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which either they
+      or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of the merits or
+      demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved
+      adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be
+      otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of
+      partisanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there <i>was</i>
+      a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably
+      discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very
+      nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just as
+      unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle, as we
+      should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing
+      it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it were
+      conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base work,
+      and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style or
+      national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great
+      nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and
+      reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican,
+      or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to all possible
+      architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to
+      establish such a law, in full belief that men are intended, without
+      excessive difficulty, and by use of their general common sense, to know
+      good things from bad; and that it is only because they will not be at the
+      pains required for the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered
+      with forgeries and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped;
+      the reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
+      foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
+      looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture, the
+      choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form, as I
+      came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask the
+      reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first, and
+      determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might together
+      make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the
+      dullest way; and in these first following pages I have therefore
+      endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which I shall
+      rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple
+      enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture
+      before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well
+      known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on
+      which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which
+      appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular
+      consequences sometimes following,&mdash;consequences altogether
+      unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell
+      on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I
+      believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right
+      and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be
+      apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its
+      usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being
+      certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to
+      induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least
+      receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which may
+      determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And if I
+      should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice touchstones, and
+      detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more subtle than ever
+      was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus I am enabled to
+      show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly every other
+      art, which have for three centuries been predominant in Europe, I believe
+      the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for proof of a more vital
+      truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the
+      Protestant had despised the arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But
+      what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy
+      which raised the arts; why could it not support them when it was left to
+      its own strength? How came it to yield to Classicalism which was based on
+      infidelity, and to oppose no barrier to innovations, which have reduced
+      the once faithfully conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration?
+      [Footnote: Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find
+      that Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown
+      itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+      Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
+      vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance. Protestantism
+      (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist merely in
+      maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate itself from
+      the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became themselves sectarians
+      and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was turned into a mere
+      cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of both parties; while
+      innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's people in neglected
+      peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and died.] So long as,
+      corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been borne against it, so
+      that it still included in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians,
+      so long its arts were noble. But the witness was borne&mdash;the error
+      made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the
+      falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intellectual palsy,
+      which has not only incapacitated her from any further use of the arts
+      which once were her ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its
+      own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths
+      such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we
+      enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit
+      ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last
+      changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we
+      should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they
+      sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we shall not behold in
+      the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of
+      her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they
+      fulfilled&mdash;"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE THRONE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      [FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in
+      which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
+      toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
+      countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of
+      the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted,
+      the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered
+      among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for
+      turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time,
+      the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset&mdash;hours of
+      peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the
+      railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,&mdash;in
+      those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and
+      remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a
+      new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments
+      of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than
+      that which, as I endeavored to describe in the close of the last chapter,
+      brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open
+      lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city
+      itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen
+      in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of
+      the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised
+      by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls
+      and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was
+      impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the
+      shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of
+      rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets
+      bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the
+      masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of
+      heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to
+      be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not
+      such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or
+      sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power
+      of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and
+      changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun
+      declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named
+      "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the
+      coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long,
+      low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but,
+      at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark
+      cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon;
+      two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about
+      their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above
+      Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north&mdash;a
+      wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a
+      wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of
+      Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck
+      opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up
+      behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the
+      crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to
+      rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great
+      city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent
+      pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls
+      were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
+      through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
+      rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
+      opened the long ranges of columned palaces,&mdash;each with its black boat
+      moored at the portal,&mdash;each with its image cast down, beneath its
+      feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies
+      of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista,
+      the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
+      palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine,
+      strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first,
+      before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah!
+      Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon
+      the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met
+      over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and
+      loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side, and when at last that
+      boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front
+      of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy
+      dome of Our Lady of Salvation, [Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of
+      Salvation."] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced
+      by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to
+      forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem
+      that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the
+      enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled
+      her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter
+      of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,&mdash;Time
+      and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,&mdash;had been won to adorn
+      her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that
+      beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the
+      hour-glass as well as of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with
+      change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their
+      influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the
+      noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only
+      by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and
+      though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated
+      ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
+      traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has
+      been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin, and
+      to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are
+      little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the
+      imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
+      importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and
+      disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
+      surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must
+      be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feeling
+      of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild,
+      but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are
+      attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the
+      magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own
+      strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in
+      Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the
+      objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern
+      fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay,
+      a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No
+      prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved
+      sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the
+      Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto
+      under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue
+      which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was
+      erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's
+      death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely
+      altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo
+      or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on
+      the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned
+      entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's favorite scene,
+      where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute,&mdash;the
+      mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would
+      literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and
+      by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs had been brought down with
+      bitterness to the grave. The remains of <i>their</i> Venice lie hidden
+      behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its
+      dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and
+      lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for
+      five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be
+      our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some
+      faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous a thousand-fold than that
+      which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by
+      the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts,
+      contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that
+      its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but
+      only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary
+      scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the
+      birth of the city, but long denied her dominion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no
+      feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange
+      sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and
+      enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain
+      upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution
+      of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which
+      the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are
+      distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there
+      lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to
+      appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from the
+      southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the
+      Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the two
+      ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their
+      battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from
+      their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the Lombardic
+      plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup
+      fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which continually
+      depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of the ruins of
+      ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by
+      insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which
+      appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually;
+      the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po
+      and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to
+      the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly
+      expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part
+      of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick;
+      and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same
+      pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the
+      Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The finer dust
+      among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the rivers, fed
+      into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their
+      waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great
+      chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before they reach the
+      Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown down as they
+      enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of
+      Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds forward the fastest;
+      on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by
+      more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the
+      central river. In one of these tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other
+      VENICE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this
+      great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to
+      inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to
+      those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three
+      to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long
+      islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the
+      true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other
+      rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighborhood of
+      Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or
+      a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided
+      by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea
+      never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the
+      land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by
+      time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough to be
+      cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level;
+      so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its
+      irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of
+      these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river
+      channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice
+      itself is built, on a clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of
+      higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster,
+      have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear,
+      according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated
+      convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste
+      and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the
+      metropolis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet
+      (varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides of
+      Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual
+      movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which
+      frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land is visible for
+      many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small
+      islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel,
+      some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile
+      and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which
+      divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to
+      disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the
+      ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not
+      painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water
+      channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs
+      of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded
+      waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted
+      level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A
+      fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the
+      greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen
+      standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except
+      only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams
+      converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain
+      the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more
+      than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the
+      heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen
+      through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar
+      leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among
+      the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves,
+      leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The
+      scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of
+      higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know
+      what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the
+      windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy
+      plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great
+      city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers
+      from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture
+      and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the
+      black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night,
+      pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence,
+      except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the
+      seabirds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be
+      enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this
+      solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little
+      thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean
+      reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that
+      ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws
+      that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange
+      preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could
+      have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian
+      nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and
+      doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their
+      islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city
+      into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness
+      and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for
+      the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as
+      in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would
+      have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had
+      the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
+      water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even
+      as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing
+      without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest
+      tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls.
+      Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb
+      would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a
+      treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
+      water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
+      intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would
+      have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar
+      character of the place and the people destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast
+      between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the
+      romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he
+      have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
+      instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom
+      of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to
+      watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the
+      polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the
+      lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have
+      understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the
+      void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand!
+      How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most
+      distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the
+      mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little
+      imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins
+      of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their
+      shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and <i>the only preparation
+      possible</i>, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden
+      clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white
+      scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather
+      and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the
+      East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; TORCELLO.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      [SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which
+      near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher
+      level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here
+      and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.
+      One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among
+      buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with
+      webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of
+      greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built
+      a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we
+      ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its
+      ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one
+      of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can
+      reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our
+      northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless,
+      the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the
+      roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its
+      snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds
+      across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset,
+      oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very
+      horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue
+      line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but farther
+      back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the
+      paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the
+      surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of
+      the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the
+      evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same
+      field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings,
+      two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one
+      adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we
+      can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the
+      fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like
+      manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of
+      roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green
+      field beneath and gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the
+      buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie
+      like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
+      of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
+      there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
+      shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
+      southern sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,&mdash;TORCELLO
+      and VENICE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this day,
+      and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of
+      evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed
+      with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with
+      the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from
+      the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its people,
+      seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the
+      sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
+      left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
+      the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up
+      their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of
+      their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow
+      land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile
+      is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
+      broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the
+      lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the Piazza
+      of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some
+      semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger
+      than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by
+      broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field
+      retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath,
+      for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small
+      square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which
+      opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us
+      as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken
+      for the out-houses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building,
+      and the other aspires to the title of the "Palazzo publico," both dating
+      as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the
+      octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet
+      hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which
+      surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched
+      with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only
+      raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong
+      impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that
+      whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so
+      utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will
+      this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church
+      to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been
+      built by men in flight and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the
+      Duomo of Torcello."] who sought in the hurried erection of their Island
+      church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the
+      one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and
+      yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast
+      with the churches which they had seen destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of
+      the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God by
+      that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented
+      the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of
+      ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of
+      decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the
+      lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and
+      the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of
+      the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double
+      purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to
+      resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city;
+      and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western
+      extremities,&mdash;one representing the Last Judgment, the other the
+      Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,&mdash;and the
+      noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the
+      high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the
+      superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred
+      courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for
+      one to come, of men "persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not
+      destroyed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible
+      that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have
+      been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of
+      subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however,
+      find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather inclined
+      to believe that at any rate the central division of the building was
+      originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics representing
+      Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and Christ coming
+      to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the significance of
+      this choice. Most other early churches are covered with imagery
+      sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the
+      history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
+      political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
+      satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
+      mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or
+      ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should
+      have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear.
+      The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great facts, to him
+      the most precious of all facts,&mdash;the present mercy of Christ to His
+      Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That Christ's mercy was,
+      at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable through the pleading of
+      the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the figure of the Redeemer is seen
+      that of the weeping Madonna in the act of intercession, may indeed be
+      matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder, but ought not to blind him to
+      the earnestness and singleness of the faith with which these men sought
+      their sea-solitudes; not in hope of founding new dynasties, or entering
+      upon new epochs of prosperity, but only to humble themselves before God,
+      and to pray that in His infinite mercy He would hasten the time when the
+      sea should give up the dead which were in it, and Death and Hell give up
+      the dead which were in them, and when they might enter into the better
+      kingdom, "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at
+      rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in
+      the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of all
+      things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish and
+      beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
+      actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure. The
+      rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the best
+      and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for their
+      island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
+      exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most conspicuous;
+      the latter form a low wall across the church between the six small shafts
+      whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose a space raised two
+      steps above the level of the nave, destined for the singers, and indicated
+      also in the plan by an open line <i>a b c d</i>. The bas-reliefs on this
+      low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two face to face on each
+      panel, rich and fantastic beyond description, though not expressive of
+      very accurate knowledge either of leonine or pavonine forms. And it is not
+      until we pass to the back of the stair of the pulpit, which is connected
+      with the northern extremity of this screen, that we find evidence of the
+      haste with which the church was constructed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of
+      its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked at
+      <i>p</i> in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of the
+      screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the staircase
+      which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in the plan),
+      faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase being also
+      formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich, but not
+      deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those which adorn
+      the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the mainland; and,
+      being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the proportions of
+      the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of the size he needed,
+      utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the original design. The
+      pulpit is not the only place where this rough procedure has been
+      permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two crosses, cut out of
+      slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich sculpture over their whole
+      surfaces, of which portions are left on the surface of the crosses; the
+      lines of the original design being, of course, just as arbitrarily cut by
+      the incisions between the arms, as the patterns upon a piece of silk which
+      has been shaped anew. The fact is, that in all early Romanesque work,
+      large surfaces are covered with sculpture for the sake of enrichment only;
+      sculpture which indeed had always meaning, because it was easier for the
+      sculptor to work with some chain of thought to guide his chisel, than
+      without any; but it was not always intended, or at least not always hoped,
+      that this chain of thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was
+      proposed appears to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it
+      delightful to the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece
+      of marble became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery
+      is to a dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
+      little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though it
+      may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of bluntness
+      and rudeness of feeling,&mdash;we may perceive, upon reflection, that it
+      may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little price upon its
+      own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its fortress-walls out of
+      fragments of the refined architecture it has overthrown, we can read
+      nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of art which may thus chance to
+      have been preserved; but when the new work is equal, if not superior, in
+      execution, to the pieces of the older art which are associated with it, we
+      may justly conclude that the rough treatment to which the latter have been
+      subjected is rather a sign of the hope of doing better things, than of
+      want of feeling for those already accomplished. And, in general, this
+      careless fitting of ornament is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the
+      school of builders, and of their making a due distinction between work
+      which is to be used for architectural effect, and work which is to possess
+      an abstract perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of
+      design is so easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they
+      feel no remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with
+      so slight an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance,
+      whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect
+      would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest
+      of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its
+      design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious spectator
+      greater than he will take in any other portion of the building. It is
+      supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts; itself of a
+      slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the nave to the
+      next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of the entire
+      person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to the eloquence
+      of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved front, a small
+      bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a narrow marble desk
+      (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern pulpit), which is hollowed
+      out into a shallow curve on the upper surface, leaving a ledge at the
+      bottom of the slab, so that a book laid upon it, or rather into it,
+      settles itself there, opening as if by instinct, but without the least
+      chance of slipping to the side, or in any way moving beneath the
+      preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather almonds, of purple marble veined
+      with white are set round the edge of the pulpit, and form its only
+      decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe and almost cold in its
+      simplicity, built for permanence and service, so that no single member, no
+      stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are firm and uninjured as when
+      they were first set together, it stands in venerable contrast both with
+      the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval cathedrals and with the rich furniture
+      of those of our modern churches. It is worth while pausing for a moment to
+      consider how far the manner of decorating a pulpit may have influence on
+      the efficiency of its service, and whether our modern treatment of this,
+      to us all-important, feature of a church be the best possible. [Footnote:
+      Appendix V., "Modern Pulpits."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves
+      about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I
+      believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to listen
+      may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
+      unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place
+      appointed for the speaker,&mdash;not to the same degree, but somewhat in
+      the same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or
+      expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe,
+      therefore, in the first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly
+      decorated; the speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is
+      either on a very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the
+      interest of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to
+      wander. I have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits
+      are peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
+      rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
+      erection in other parts of the building:&mdash;and though this may often
+      be done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
+      than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
+      think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
+      preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
+      sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
+      hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
+      encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the delicate
+      mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for when the
+      form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of work may
+      be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
+      clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
+      employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease of
+      the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a
+      human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as the
+      first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care and
+      learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we shall
+      necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
+      delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
+      golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
+      sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
+      cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly come
+      to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
+      prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
+      restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty
+      has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy
+      confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be necessary.
+      But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man
+      sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether
+      we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits
+      in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the
+      seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how
+      precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of
+      God after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full
+      weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced to watch the
+      thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat had
+      been scattered there snatched from the wayside by this wild bird and the
+      other, and at last, when breathless and weary with the week's labor they
+      give him this interval of imperfect and languid hearing, he has but thirty
+      minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them
+      of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of
+      all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings
+      of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked yet none
+      opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom
+      herself hath stretched forth her hands and no man regarded,&mdash;thirty
+      minutes to raise the dead in,&mdash;let us but once understand and feel
+      this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay
+      furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be
+      delivered, which either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live,
+      or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the
+      utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall
+      not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor
+      with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that
+      his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from
+      which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people
+      have gathered in their thirst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello
+      is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
+      occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls to
+      the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which lead
+      up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps or
+      seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
+      intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
+      the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access intersect
+      the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
+      arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort (for
+      the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not for
+      convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more conspicuously
+      from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no furniture of stalls
+      nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well worth the
+      contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative of an
+      episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was never
+      disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter absence
+      of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to
+      remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the
+      episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the minds
+      of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently symbolized
+      under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot. Consider the
+      force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of men to whom
+      the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a
+      destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were
+      saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad
+      as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual and
+      literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like an ark in the midst of
+      the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling between
+      them and the shores of their birth, from which they were separated for
+      ever, they should have looked upon each other as the disciples did when
+      the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and have yielded ready and
+      loving obedience to those who ruled them in His name, who had there
+      rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the sea. And if the stranger
+      would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was
+      begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let
+      him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her
+      armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the
+      secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern
+      ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the
+      pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him
+      repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive
+      to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them,
+      when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof
+      of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the
+      fires of their homesteads,&mdash;first, within the shelter of its knitted
+      walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the
+      wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,&mdash;rose
+      that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT,
+  AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; ST. MARK'S.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as
+      the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
+      entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
+      hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
+      Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
+      work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he have
+      thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be
+      represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so
+      often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he
+      himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye with
+      fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and
+      shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the
+      ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it
+      was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose
+      him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before
+      he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was thus, in
+      some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I believe
+      that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of St. Peter
+      having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader who desires to
+      investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie Venete" (Venice,
+      1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by him.] but, as usual,
+      it is enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much
+      resembling the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find
+      it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the "Vite de' Santi spettanti
+      alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice, 1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that
+      "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia well grounded in religion,
+      and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off took with him
+      the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a small boat to the marshes of
+      Venice. There were at that period some houses built upon a certain high
+      bank called Rialto, and the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in
+      a marshy place, when St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of
+      an angel saying to him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body
+      rest.'" The angel goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne
+      più veduta Città;" but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve
+      farther relation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not,
+      St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be
+      considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue,
+      standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing
+      pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have
+      occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the
+      traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to
+      leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early time,
+      when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St. Mark's
+      Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and on
+      account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to say,
+      Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the bridge of
+      the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a small canal,
+      with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two churches
+      of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza, of Torcello lies
+      between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
+      removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present
+      one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My authorities for
+      this statement are given below, in the chapter on the Ducal Palace.] gave
+      a very different character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years
+      later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the
+      Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of
+      that chapel with all possible splendor. St. Theodore was deposed from his
+      patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the aggrandizement
+      of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and thenceforward known as "St.
+      Mark's." [Footnote: In the Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the
+      Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was
+      partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and
+      with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on
+      under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being
+      completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till considerably
+      later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085, [Footnote: "To God
+      the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the Protector St. Mark."&mdash;<i>Corner</i>,
+      p. 14. It is needless to trouble the reader with the various authorities
+      for the above statements: I have consulted the best. The previous
+      inscription once existing on the church itself:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
+  Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
+      probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
+      Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
+      according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
+      being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
+      supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
+      though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
+      But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
+      consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
+      1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
+      probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter the
+      fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of any
+      given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above the
+      rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
+      Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the pinnacles,
+      upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the exterior, and the
+      great screen, with various chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior;
+      the second, when the Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the
+      pupils of Titian and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church,
+      their own compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally
+      decorated; [Footnote: Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.]
+      happily, though with no good will, having left enough to enable us to
+      imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall
+      have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's
+      mind the succession of periods of alteration as firmly and simply as
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
+      stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
+      fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
+      difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
+      Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long,
+      during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were
+      made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from
+      the work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same
+      manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, a
+      mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of the
+      façade; the first representing the interior, the second the exterior, of
+      the ancient church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
+      consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
+      that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears
+      to have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever
+      attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had,
+      without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues of
+      the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these relics to
+      permit the confession of their loss. The following is the account given by
+      Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of the pretended
+      miracle by which it was concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which the
+      body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so that
+      the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the venerable
+      deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious Doge, but to
+      all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by confidence in the
+      Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer and fasting, the
+      manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now depend upon any
+      human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed, and a solemn
+      procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the people assembled
+      in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers for the desired boon,
+      they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a slight shaking in the
+      marbles of a pillar (near the place where the altar of the Cross is now),
+      which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to the view of the
+      rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which the body of the Evangelist
+      was laid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They
+      were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as,
+      for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended
+      his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he
+      permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and
+      delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall not
+      repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights.
+      But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected,
+      are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of
+      the north transept, executed very certainly not long after the event had
+      taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux
+      tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the
+      church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in
+      thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in the
+      midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with gold,
+      but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as uniformly
+      is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial works of the
+      period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and the two upper
+      stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a background to
+      the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history which we in our
+      pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, never dare attempt.
+      We should have put in a column or two of the real or perspective size, and
+      subdued it into a vague background: the old workman crushed the church
+      together that he might get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has,
+      therefore, left us some useful notes of its ancient form, though any one
+      who is familiar with the method of drawing employed at the period will not
+      push the evidence too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are
+      at this day, and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed
+      the whole church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one
+      fragment still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent
+      the other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
+      being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had
+      been executed at that period, and their absence in the representation of
+      the entire church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we
+      must not trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has
+      rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's <i>must</i> be
+      posterior to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the
+      representation of the exterior of the church over the northern door;
+      [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right, however.)] but he justly
+      observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we possess
+      respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be earlier than
+      1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were brought from
+      Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it very difficult
+      to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part of the exterior
+      of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was consecrated in the
+      eleventh century, and yet here is one of the most important exterior
+      decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth,
+      although its style would have led us to suppose it had been an original
+      part of the fabric. However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for
+      the reader to remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to
+      the eleventh, twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the
+      Gothic portions to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments
+      to the fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to
+      the seventeenth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I
+      may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
+      leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
+      by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
+      seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to the
+      original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
+      building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary, direct
+      attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with anatomical
+      criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects the
+      feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
+      influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
+      therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested by
+      the obscurities of chronology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St.
+      Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
+      cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
+      us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see
+      the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray gateway,
+      with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into
+      the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the
+      carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where
+      there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails, before
+      old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses,
+      with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep
+      wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and small porches
+      to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick,
+      indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side; and so forward
+      till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and
+      with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there,
+      among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and
+      looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid
+      divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially
+      on the sunny side where the canons' children are walking with their
+      nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go
+      along the straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time,
+      looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their
+      pillars where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and
+      there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of
+      a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in
+      heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged
+      sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads
+      of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into
+      yet unseemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by the deep
+      russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak
+      towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their
+      traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of
+      eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling
+      suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of
+      restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of
+      theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a
+      solitary coast between the cliffs and sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of
+      all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
+      secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense and
+      steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
+      cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
+      have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and on
+      all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or catching
+      on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the city at their
+      feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the river. And then let
+      us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land at the extremity of
+      the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered as there answering to
+      the secluded street that led us to our English cathedral gateway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide
+      where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
+      salesmen,&mdash;a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
+      brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high houses
+      of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an
+      inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney
+      flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with
+      projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and
+      there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner
+      cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over
+      all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, in
+      fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about eight feet high,
+      which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is narrow and serves
+      as a door; the other is, in the more respectable shops, wainscoted to the
+      height of the counter and glazed above, but in those of the poorer
+      tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares laid on benches and
+      tables in the open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only,&mdash;and
+      fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a gloom which the eye
+      from without cannot penetrate, but which is generally broken by a ray or
+      two from a feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a print
+      of the Virgin. The less pious shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp
+      unlighted, and is contented with a penny print; the more religious one has
+      his print colored and set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured
+      fringe, with perhaps a faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp
+      burning brilliantly. Here at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green
+      watermelons are heaped upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has
+      a tabernacle of fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let
+      his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull
+      gleam of the studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in
+      the darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin,
+      enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf,
+      presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be
+      denned or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop
+      of the calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the
+      Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks
+      of three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
+      Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
+      gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they have
+      gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black
+      Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply
+      moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines
+      resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and
+      so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the
+      entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza, (mouth of the
+      square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the
+      frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to
+      examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the piazza,
+      and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of
+      English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the shadow of
+      the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then we forget them
+      all; for between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the
+      midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to
+      lift itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones; and,
+      on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged
+      symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together
+      above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and
+      lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been
+      transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture, and fluted shafts
+      of delicate stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of
+      ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great
+      square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
+      far away;&mdash;a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a
+      long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of
+      gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five
+      great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture
+      of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,&mdash;sculpture
+      fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and
+      pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all
+      twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the
+      midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet,
+      and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
+      the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
+      interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
+      branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
+      round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones,
+      jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of
+      snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine,
+      Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"&mdash;the shadow, as it
+      steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a
+      receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven
+      tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and
+      vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above
+      them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life&mdash;angels,
+      and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed
+      season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering
+      pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,&mdash;a
+      confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are
+      seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion,
+      lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in
+      ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss
+      themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured
+      spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before
+      they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
+      is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
+      restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
+      upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the
+      marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes,
+      changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have
+      stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath
+      it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of
+      St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance
+      brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor,
+      pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the
+      meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of
+      its pillars are themselves the seats&mdash;not "of them that sell doves"
+      for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole
+      square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafes,
+      where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty
+      journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of
+      vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,&mdash;the march
+      drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,&mdash;a
+      crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes
+      to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of
+      the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like
+      lizards; and unregarded children,&mdash;every heavy glance of their young
+      eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse
+      with cursing,&mdash;gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after
+      hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the
+      church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it
+      continually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
+      let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
+      passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre,
+      we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there. The heavy
+      door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the turbulence of the
+      Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
+      with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
+      in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
+      figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
+      glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
+      the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that it
+      strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed; for it
+      is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and curtained, so
+      that it might seem, but that it has some height above the pavement, to
+      have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might be wakened
+      early;&mdash;only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain back,
+      and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that gentle
+      light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon his
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows right
+      across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower: the
+      height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest of
+      the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp, perhaps
+      the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines; but there
+      is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
+      countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
+      stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is a
+      seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of flowers
+      and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
+      Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
+      died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe half
+      of what we know of her former fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it
+      is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its walls
+      are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with age,
+      almost a ruin,&mdash;in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
+      altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
+      beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and
+      channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its translucent
+      masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of
+      seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light fades away
+      into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye can hardly
+      trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of Christ: but
+      on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and there are seen
+      upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the "Principalities and
+      powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has expressed the ancient
+      division in the single massy line,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
+      the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
+      every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
+      running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
+      fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
+      not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
+      verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the choice
+      set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the grated
+      window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence of
+      judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall. Venice
+      has made her choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
+      another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he and
+      his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his rest,
+      let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to
+      which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the
+      building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn
+      out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many
+      pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow
+      apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far
+      away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric
+      stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors
+      along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver
+      lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof
+      sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give
+      back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the
+      glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we
+      pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a
+      continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another,
+      as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and
+      serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the
+      midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal;
+      the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the
+      mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful
+      pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every
+      place and upon every stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt
+      round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing
+      forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that
+      crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the
+      shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and
+      chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see
+      continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman
+      standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her,
+      "Mother of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that
+      is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every
+      dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height
+      of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
+      people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
+      various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
+      places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for
+      the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of
+      the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed
+      prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the
+      stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's;
+      and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may
+      not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast
+      itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising
+      slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of
+      the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always
+      in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
+      characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
+      devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
+      their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever there
+      may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more than can be
+      accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of the city, is
+      assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its architecture or to the
+      impressiveness of the Scripture histories embodied in its mosaics. That it
+      has a peculiar effect, however slight, on the popular mind, may perhaps be
+      safely conjectured from the number of worshippers which it attracts, while
+      the churches of St. Paul and the Frari, larger in size and more central in
+      position, are left comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St.
+      Mark's in winter, which is much greater than that of the other two
+      churches above named, must, however, be taken into consideration, as one
+      of the most efficient causes of its being then more frequented.] But this
+      effect is altogether to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those
+      sources of influence which address themselves to the commonest instincts
+      of the human mind, and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or
+      less employed in the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery;
+      confused recesses of building; artificial light employed in small
+      quantity, but maintained with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of
+      sacredness; preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar
+      eye; close air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with
+      religious services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having
+      popular legends attached to them,&mdash;these, the stage properties of
+      superstition, which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be
+      to the end of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or
+      nominally civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of
+      apprehending the true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to
+      a degree, as far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The
+      arts of the Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a
+      paralyzed Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite
+      is to be regarded by us with no more respect than we should have
+      considered ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the
+      worshippers at Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the
+      larger number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch,
+      that is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
+      Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
+      northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
+      the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all the
+      rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of the
+      Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has retrograded
+      from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole church are the
+      two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with silver hearts
+      dedicated to the Virgin.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
+      were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
+      employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight
+      illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and
+      every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in Venice,
+      I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard from any one
+      the most languid expression of interest in any feature of the church, or
+      perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding the meaning of its
+      architecture; and while, therefore, the English cathedral, though no
+      longer dedicated to the kind of services for which it was intended by its
+      builders, and much at variance in many of its characters with the temper
+      of the people by whom it is now surrounded, retains yet so much of its
+      religious influence that no prominent feature of its architecture can be
+      said to exist altogether in vain, we have in St. Mark's a building
+      apparently still employed in the ceremonies for which it was designed, and
+      yet of which the impressive attributes have altogether ceased to be
+      comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the
+      language it uses is forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose
+      service it has so long been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the
+      descendants of those to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in
+      reality, more desolate than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes
+      unbroken in our English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is
+      less regarded and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters
+      which the shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on
+      the tombs in the desecrated cloister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
+      present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning
+      of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after
+      we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract
+      grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present
+      neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian
+      character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a
+      barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or influencing the
+      feelings of a civilized community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I carefully
+      kept the study of <i>expression</i> distinct from that of abstract
+      architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
+      should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
+      construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of art;
+      and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its expressional
+      purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's merely as a
+      piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate its fitness
+      for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation in which it
+      stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still retain so much of
+      the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine domes appear to have
+      lost for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
+      respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings in
+      Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as possible,
+      the true nature of each school,&mdash;first in Spirit, then in Form. I
+      wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the nature of
+      Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements general, because
+      I have never seen this kind of building on its native soil. Nevertheless,
+      in the following sketch of the principles exemplified in St. Mark's, I
+      believe that most of the leading features and motives of the style will be
+      found clearly enough distinguished to enable the reader to judge of it
+      with tolerable fairness, as compared with the better known systems of
+      European architecture in the middle ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
+      the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
+      confessed <i>incrustation</i>. It is the purest example in Italy of the
+      great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
+      incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
+      before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
+      reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
+      influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
+      school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
+      massive materials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
+      find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
+      setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the outside
+      of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick cornice,
+      with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in London, killed
+      its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide "Builder," for October,
+      1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to have a clear idea of the
+      opposing characteristics of two different species of plants or animals,
+      though between the two there are varieties which it is difficult to assign
+      either to the one or the other, so the reader may fix decisively in his
+      mind the legitimate characteristics of the incrusted and the massive
+      styles, though between the two there are varieties which confessedly unite
+      the attributes of both. For instance, in many Roman remains, built of
+      blocks of tufa and incrusted with marble, we have a style, which, though
+      truly solid, possesses some of the attributes of incrustation; and in the
+      Cathedral of Florence, built of brick and coated with marble, the marble
+      facing is so firmly and exquisitely set, that the building, though in
+      reality incrusted, assumes the attributes of solidity. But these
+      intermediate examples need not in the least confuse our generally distinct
+      ideas of the two families of buildings: the one in which the substance is
+      alike throughout, and the forms and conditions of the ornament assume or
+      prove that it is so, as in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part
+      in our early Norman and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is
+      of two kinds, one internal, the other external, and the system of
+      decoration is founded on this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
+      chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
+      incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so now
+      at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern builder,
+      because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he is in the
+      habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of masonry to be
+      some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets acquainted with
+      the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern builders had no
+      intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of facial marble is
+      fastened to the next by a confessed <i>rivet</i>, and that the joints of
+      the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the contours of the
+      substance within, that he has no more right to complain of treachery than
+      a savage would have, who, for the first time in his life seeing a man in
+      armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel. Acquaint him with the
+      customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat of mail, and he ceases
+      to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must be
+      our business to develop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
+      to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
+      quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland
+      where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick,
+      or to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of
+      small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar rather
+      than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as great, whether
+      they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural tendency
+      would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible. But in
+      proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of its
+      possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by the
+      physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles, pieces above a
+      certain size are not to be had for money. There would also be a tendency
+      in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready
+      sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of
+      their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient
+      edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out of this supply
+      of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality that only a
+      few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly of shafts,
+      capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island architect
+      has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. It is at his
+      choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious marble here and there
+      among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the sculptured fragments such
+      new forms as may be necessary for the observance of fixed proportions in
+      the new building; or else to cut the colored stones into thin pieces, of
+      extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the walls, and to adopt a
+      method of construction irregular enough to admit the insertion of
+      fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of displaying their intrinsic
+      beauty, than of setting them to any regular service in the support of the
+      building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
+      for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
+      alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
+      to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
+      cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others', and
+      more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would have
+      done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved every
+      relic with which he was entrusted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
+      Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might, under
+      all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with other
+      builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or twenty of
+      chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with porphyry and
+      paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in freestone. But with the
+      Venetians it could not be a question for an instant; they were exiles from
+      ancient and beautiful cities, and had been accustomed to build with their
+      ruins, not less in affection than in admiration: they had thus not only
+      grown familiar with the practice of inserting older fragments in modern
+      buildings, but they owed to that practice a great part of the splendor of
+      their city, and whatever charm of association might aid its change from a
+      Refuge into a Home. The practice which began in the affections of a
+      fugitive nation, was prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and
+      beside the memorials of departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of
+      returning victory. The ship of war brought home more marble in triumph
+      than 'the merchant vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's
+      became rather a shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous
+      spoil, than the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or
+      religious emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
+      this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its erection,
+      and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method, considered in the
+      abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
+      find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood, that
+      the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme ugliness;" and
+      he will find this opinion associated with another, namely, that the works
+      of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the Venetian painters. This
+      second statement of feeling reveals to us one of the principal causes of
+      the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any perception of color, or
+      delight in it. The perception of color is a gift just as definitely
+      granted to one person, and denied to another, as an ear for music; and the
+      very first requisite for true judgment of St. Mark's, is the perfection of
+      that color-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find
+      out whether they possess or not. For it is on its value as a piece of
+      perfect and unchangeable coloring, that the claims of this edifice to our
+      respect are finally rested; and a deaf man might as well pretend to
+      pronounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as an architect
+      trained in the composition of form only, to discern the beauty of St.
+      Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in common with the greater part of
+      the architecture, as well as of the manufactures, of the East; but the
+      Venetians deserve especial note as the only European people who appear to
+      have sympathized to the full with the great instinct of the Eastern races.
+      They indeed were compelled to bring artists from Constantinople to design
+      the mosaics of the vaults of St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its
+      porches; but they rapidly took up and developed, under more masculine
+      conditions, the system of which the Greeks had shown them the example:
+      while the burghers and barons of the North were building their dark
+      streets and grisly castles of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice
+      were covering their palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her
+      mighty painters had created for her a color more priceless than gold or
+      porphyry, even this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls
+      whose foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
+      beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
+      frescoes of Giorgione.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
+      protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this church
+      of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him remember
+      that the school of incrusted architecture is <i>the only one in which
+      perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible</i>; and let him
+      look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the architect as a
+      cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to be ground down
+      or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this thoroughly, and
+      accept the condition that the body and availing strength of the edifice
+      are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of brickwork is to
+      be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the marble, as the body
+      of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales or its skin, and all
+      the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure will be easily
+      discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXX. LAW I. <i>That the plinths and cornices used for binding
+      the armor are to be light and delicate.</i> A certain thickness, at least
+      two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even when
+      composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed parts), in
+      order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the wear of
+      time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to cement; the
+      pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface, but connected
+      with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and string courses;
+      and with each other, so as to secure mutual support, aided by the
+      rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for the full honesty
+      and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary that these string
+      courses and binding plinths should not be of such proportions as would fit
+      them for taking any important part in the hard work of the inner
+      structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for the great cornices and
+      plinths already explained as essential parts of the best solid building.
+      They must be delicate, slight, and visibly incapable of severer work than
+      that assigned to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXI. LAW II. <i>Science of inner structure is to be abandoned.</i>
+      As the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
+      incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
+      of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
+      mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the less
+      reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by delicacy
+      of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to depend for
+      the better display of the color, which is to be the chief source of our
+      pleasure in the building. The main body of the work, therefore, will be
+      composed of solid walls and massive piers; and whatever expression of
+      finer structural science we may require, will be thrown either into
+      subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to the support of the
+      external mail, where in arches or vaults it might otherwise appear
+      dangerously independent of the material within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXII. LAW III. <i>All shafts are to be solid.</i> Wherever, by
+      the smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
+      structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
+      left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
+      appears <i>probably</i> solid, must be <i>assuredly</i> so, and therefore
+      it becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not
+      only does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
+      labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
+      than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
+      size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
+      rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
+      themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
+      any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
+      the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
+      and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
+      to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
+      support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
+      tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
+      allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
+      direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the structure
+      of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his pillars,
+      repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial in his
+      walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may be
+      blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
+      lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
+      quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
+      said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color,
+      except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always
+      a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is
+      necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and
+      prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real
+      impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly
+      with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of the
+      edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect. For
+      if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the walls, the spectator
+      cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of the costliness of the
+      sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his eye in an instant, and
+      estimate the quantity of treasure both in the mass of its existing
+      substance, and in that which has been hewn away to bring it into its
+      perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of all buildings of this
+      kind are justly regarded as an expression of their wealth, and a form of
+      treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in the sacred vessels; they
+      are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels, [Footnote: "Quivi presso si
+      vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza che e riputato <i>piutosto
+      gioia che pietra</i>,"&mdash;Sansovino, of the verd-antique pillar in San
+      Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of natural history and moral
+      philosophy, connected with this subject, will be found in the second
+      chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work of a Florentine
+      architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of precious serpentine or
+      jasper being valued according to its size and brilliancy of color, like a
+      large emerald or ruby; only the bulk required to bestow value on the one
+      is to be measured in feet and tons, and on the other in lines and carats.
+      The shafts must therefore be, without exception, of one block in all
+      buildings of this kind; for the attempt in any place to incrust or joint
+      them would be a deception like that of introducing a false stone among
+      jewellery (for a number of joints of any precious stone are of course not
+      equal in value to a single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at
+      once to the spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any
+      portion of the structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who
+      raised it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. <i>The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
+      construction.</i> Exactly in proportion to the importance which the shaft
+      assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
+      sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract bulk,
+      and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception of its
+      adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things in this
+      world, its end is to <i>be</i> beautiful; and, in proportion to its
+      beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame
+      emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.
+      Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being dependent on its
+      doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief part of its
+      preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and tenderness of
+      material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard work; and therefore
+      that we shall admire it the more, because we perceive that if we were to
+      put much weight upon it, it would be crushed. But, at all events, it is
+      very clear that the primal object in the placing of such shafts must be
+      the display of their beauty to the best advantage, and that therefore all
+      imbedding of them in walls, or crowding of them into groups, in any
+      position in which either their real size or any portion of their surface
+      would be concealed, is either inadmissible together, or objectionable in
+      proportion to their value; that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements
+      of pillars are therefore ever to be expected in buildings of this kind,
+      and that all such are even to be looked upon as positive errors and
+      misapplications of materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be
+      constantly prepared to see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great
+      size and importance set in places where their real service is little more
+      than nominal, and where the chief end of their existence is to catch the
+      sunshine upon their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted
+      wandering among the mazes of their azure veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXV. LAW V. <i>The shafts may be of variable size.</i> Since
+      the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
+      diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
+      diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
+      must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the series
+      of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that, on the
+      contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind of pain,
+      as proving that considerable and useless loss has been sustained by some
+      of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the rest. It is true that
+      symmetry is generally sought for in works of smaller jewellery; but, even
+      there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained under circumstances quite
+      different from those which affect the placing of shafts in architecture.
+      First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The stones that seem to match
+      each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do so only because they are so
+      small that their differences are not easily measured by the eye; but there
+      is almost always such difference between them as would be strikingly
+      apparent if it existed in the same proportion between two shafts nine or
+      ten feet in height. Secondly: the quantity of stones which pass through a
+      jeweller's hands, and the facility of exchange of such small objects,
+      enable the tradesman to select any number of stones of approximate size; a
+      selection, however, often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in
+      a group of very fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the
+      architect has neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot
+      lay aside one column in a corner of his church till, in the course of
+      traffic, he obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of
+      shafts fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his
+      ease; he cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless
+      stones for available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of
+      stone, or his ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited
+      number, from immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those
+      which he does not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only
+      means of obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer
+      masses to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire
+      him often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
+      important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
+      admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
+      must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
+      varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never altogether
+      perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange complexities
+      and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in its marble
+      syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled and
+      proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
+      Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
+      smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
+      for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens that
+      the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so great, that
+      it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone, not merely to
+      economize its substance, but to display the changes in the disposition of
+      its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates successively
+      taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges in contact, a
+      perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will enable the eye to
+      comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins. And this is actually
+      the method in which, for the most part, the alabasters of St. Mark are
+      employed; thus accomplishing a double good,&mdash;directing the spectator,
+      in the first place, to close observation of the nature of the stone
+      employed, and in the second, giving him a farther proof of the honesty of
+      intention in the builder: for wherever similar veining is discovered in
+      two pieces, the fact is declared that they have been cut from the same
+      stone. It would have been easy to disguise the similarity by using them in
+      different parts of the building; but on the contrary they are set edge to
+      edge, so that the whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a
+      glance by any one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay,
+      but, it is perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person
+      ignorant of the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these
+      symmetrical patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be
+      doubly deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were
+      in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered,
+      that in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right
+      to accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style
+      and the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
+      subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
+      inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those of
+      religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
+      ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
+      themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort, as
+      we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
+      lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
+      knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it is
+      discovered, into deeper truths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. <i>The decoration must be shallow in cutting.</i>
+      The method of construction being thus systematized, it is evident that a
+      certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based on the primal
+      condition that over the greater part of the edifice there can be <i>no
+      deep cutting</i>. The thin sheets of covering stones do not admit of it;
+      we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever ornaments we
+      engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch deep at the
+      utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences which this single
+      condition compels between the sculptural decoration of the incrusted
+      style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which may be hacked and
+      hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black recesses we choose; struck
+      into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and rugged ploughings up
+      of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought may be wrought out on any
+      scale,&mdash;mighty statues with robes of rock and crowned foreheads
+      burning in the sun, or venomous goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into
+      lurking-places of untraceable shade: think of this, and of the play and
+      freedom given to the sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in,
+      hither and thither, as he will; and then consider what must be the
+      different spirit of the design which is to be wrought on the smooth
+      surface of a film of marble, where every line and shadow must be drawn
+      with the most tender pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,&mdash;where
+      even the chisel must not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate
+      stone, nor the mind be permitted in any impetuosity of conception
+      inconsistent with the fine discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever
+      animal or human form is to be suggested, must be projected on a flat
+      surface; that all the features of the countenance, the folds of the
+      drapery, the involutions of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that
+      the whole work becomes rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture;
+      and then follow out, until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the
+      resulting differences of character which will be necessitated in every
+      part of the ornamental designs of these incrusted churches, as compared
+      with that of the Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them
+      only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
+      builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
+      exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss which
+      it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear bas-relief, as
+      well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such conditions.
+      Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of the human form
+      at once lead the artist to aim at its representation, rather than at that
+      of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced to outline, the forms
+      of flowers and lower animals are always more intelligible, and are felt to
+      approach much more to a satisfactory rendering of the objects intended,
+      than the outlines of the human body. This inducement to seek for resources
+      of ornament in the lower fields of creation was powerless in the minds of
+      the great Pagan nations, Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because
+      their thoughts were so concentrated on their own capacities and fates,
+      that they preferred the rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an
+      inferior organism; secondly, because their constant practice in solid
+      sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science
+      into the treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome
+      vase, or shallow hieroglyphic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
+      animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
+      iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds to
+      seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
+      practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find artists
+      capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their elementary
+      outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would be more and
+      more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human and animal
+      form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general importance.
+      So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we constantly find the
+      effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges of statues, often
+      colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent of their
+      architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must expect to
+      find the human form for the most part subordinate and diminutive, and
+      involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the manner of which
+      endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic ornamentation of the
+      Romans, from which the incrusted style had been directly derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
+      must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
+      to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
+      architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
+      relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation of
+      it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
+      intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
+      worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
+      to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is sacrificed
+      or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted, and a slight
+      outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may anticipate that this
+      outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and that the richness of
+      its ornamental arrangement will atone for the feebleness of its power of
+      portraiture. On the porch of a Northern cathedral we may seek for the
+      images of the flowers that grow in the neighboring fields, and as we watch
+      with wonder the gray stones that fret themselves into thorns, and soften
+      into blossoms, we may care little that these knots of ornament, as we
+      retire from them to contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or
+      confused. On the incrusted building we must expect no such deception of
+      the eye or thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
+      involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
+      originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace of
+      their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a line
+      in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting which
+      could be added with advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
+      thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force, and
+      will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow, there will
+      be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and obvious, and
+      often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without danger, leave a
+      hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like glass, to fill an
+      aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with holes, obtain points
+      or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the light tracing of the
+      rest of his design. And we may expect to find this artifice used the more
+      extensively, because, while it will be an effective means of ornamentation
+      on the exterior of the building, it will be also the safest way of
+      admitting light to the interior, still totally excluding both rain and
+      wind. And it will naturally follow that the architect, thus familiarized
+      with the effect of black and sudden points of shadow, will often seek to
+      carry the same principle into other portions of his ornamentation, and by
+      deep drill-holes, or perhaps inlaid portions of black color, to refresh
+      the eye where it may be wearied by the lightness of the general handling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
+      force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color as
+      a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that the
+      incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
+      decoration was <i>possible</i>. It is also the only one in which a true
+      system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
+      understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
+      nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and Southern
+      nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
+      never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
+      has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
+      believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
+      that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
+      in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
+      better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
+      and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
+      that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
+      builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
+      could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe, any
+      monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted all
+      over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
+      prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
+      Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever think
+      of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
+      Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
+      Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of color,
+      which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on ordinary
+      dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the color-instinct
+      in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did, in this kind, as
+      just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It is this principle of
+      theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern builders, which we have
+      finally to examine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
+      that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the porch
+      of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it; but
+      another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
+      namely, that he did not at all like <i>gray</i> hawthorn, but preferred it
+      green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could. The
+      color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He had,
+      in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded the
+      thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be painted
+      at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and green all
+      over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of abstract
+      harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his hawthorn
+      blue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
+      definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
+      the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
+      of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a matter
+      of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees green, and
+      faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far more
+      entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
+      mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
+      abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development of
+      the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous depths
+      of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
+      compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to be
+      seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more delicate
+      color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes very
+      disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved by the
+      color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the flatness
+      and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they appeared to
+      call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented exactly the
+      conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage; breadth or
+      surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the lights, and
+      faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and pearly grays of
+      color harmony; while the subject of the design being in nearly all cases
+      reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be colored in any way
+      the architect chose without any loss of rationality. Where oak-leaves and
+      roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect bloom, it was necessary to
+      paint the one green and the other red; but in portions of ornamentation
+      where there was nothing which could be definitely construed into either an
+      oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here
+      something like a leaf, and there something like a flower, the whole
+      tracery of the sculpture might be left white, and grounded with gold or
+      blue, or treated in any other manner best harmonizing with the colors
+      around it. And as the necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called
+      for and was ready to display the best arrangements of color, so the
+      precious marbles in the architect's hands give him at once the best
+      examples and the best means of color. The best examples, for the tints of
+      all natural stones are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and
+      the best means, for they are all permanent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
+      chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit of
+      it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the <i>naïveté</i>
+      of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed to by the help of
+      colored pictures: so that, both externally and internally, the
+      architectural construction became partly merged in pictorial effect; and
+      the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple wherein to pray, than
+      as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound with
+      alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars instead of
+      jewels, and written within and without in letters of enamel and gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. <i>That the impression of the architecture is
+      not to be dependent on size.</i> And now there is but one final
+      consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this time,
+      that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his attention
+      will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of color,
+      their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All these
+      qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent with it.
+      Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of color, can
+      be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have seen that our
+      sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth, and that our
+      coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft tints and veins of
+      natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none of the parts of the
+      building can be removed far from the eye, and therefore that the whole
+      mass of it cannot be large. It is not even desirable that it should be so;
+      for the temper in which the mind addresses itself to contemplate minute
+      and beautiful details is altogether different from that in which it
+      submits itself to vague impressions of space and size. And therefore we
+      must not be disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of
+      the building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that,
+      for the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North,
+      shooting up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread
+      before us like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch
+      with our hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
+      will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
+      architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
+      him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
+      familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
+      were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
+      exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
+      developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
+      nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression of
+      it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
+      exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning, except
+      by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal reason why
+      architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all other, is the
+      impossibility of illustrating the best architecture faithfully. Of the
+      various schools of painting, examples are accessible to every one, and
+      reference to the works themselves is found sufficient for all purposes of
+      criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or the Ducal Palace to be
+      referred to in the National Gallery, and no faithful illustration of them
+      is possible on the scale of such a volume as this. And it is exceedingly
+      difficult on any scale. Nothing is so rare in art, as far as my own
+      experience goes, as a fair illustration of architecture; <i>perfect</i>
+      illustration of it does not exist. For all good architecture depends upon
+      the adaptation of its chiselling to the effect at a certain distance from
+      the eye; and to render the peculiar confusion in the midst of order, and
+      uncertainty in the midst of decision, and mystery in the midst of
+      trenchant lines, which are the result of distance, together with perfect
+      expression of the peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the
+      most admirable artist, devoted to the work with the most severe
+      conscientiousness, neither the skill nor the determination having as yet
+      been given to the subject. And in the illustration of details, every
+      building of any pretensions to high architectural rank would require a
+      volume of plates, and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect
+      to the two buildings which are the principal subjects of the present
+      volume, St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible
+      to do them the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I
+      abandoned the endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because
+      in the new Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it,
+      though it is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I
+      believe, a noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort
+      was hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
+      most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
+      eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
+      inexpressible color in the world,&mdash;the color of glass, of transparent
+      alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
+      illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and pale
+      harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with
+      its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's. The
+      fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the opposite
+      Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate the
+      impossibility of illustration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger
+      scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp folds
+      and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness. The ground
+      of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more than an inch and
+      a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more than an exquisite
+      sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same depth as in the Elgin
+      frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with close folds, in the
+      manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially necessary here, as
+      large masses could not be expressed in the shallow sculpture without
+      becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds is always most
+      beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces, like that
+      obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the Plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
+      between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
+      illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
+      alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
+      pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale green;
+      sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch square, so
+      subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be satisfied.
+      [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are exactly of
+      the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the blues of
+      different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the effect of
+      each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color of a fruit
+      piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an azure ground,
+      varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are
+      alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles of white set
+      in the golden ground above and beneath them, each only about half an inch
+      across (this work, remember, being on the outside of the building, and
+      twenty feet above the eye), while the blue crosses have each a pale green
+      centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled hue, no plate, however large or
+      expensive, could give any adequate conception; but, if the reader will
+      supply in imagination to the engraving what he supplies to a common
+      woodcut of a group of flowers, the decision of the respective merits of
+      modern and of Byzantine architecture may be allowed to rest on this
+      fragment of St. Mark's alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
+      imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection to
+      architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we may
+      yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
+      vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars upon
+      their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder remembered,
+      the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky: and I believe
+      that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are everlastingly
+      lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that church walls
+      grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler things than
+      these. I believe the man who designed and the men who delighted in that
+      archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the reader look back to
+      the archivolt I have already given out of the streets of London (Plate
+      XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what there is in it to make us
+      any of the three. Let him remember that the men who design such work as
+      that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity, and let him judge between us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
+      especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
+      ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following chapter.
+      [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION XXXIII
+      above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large jewels,
+      will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I must pass on
+      to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the inquiry how far
+      the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it, as a Temple, for
+      its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the churches of modern
+      times. We have here evidently two questions: the first, that wide and
+      continually agitated one, whether richness of ornament be right in
+      churches at all; the second, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be of a
+      truly ecclesiastical and Christian character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
+      endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to be
+      richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of offering a
+      portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately expressed. But
+      I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church, as such, stood
+      in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by
+      possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to deal with
+      briefly and candidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
+      presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
+      ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our own
+      modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a cathedral of
+      the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a preparation for public
+      worship. But we never ask whether that sensation was at all calculated
+      upon by the builders of the cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
+      modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier architectural
+      forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous. But I do say,
+      that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely uncalculated upon by
+      the old builder. He endeavored to make his work beautiful, but never
+      expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate ourselves altogether from
+      fair judgment of its intention, if we forget that, when it was built, it
+      rose in the midst of other work fanciful and beautiful as itself; that
+      every dwelling-house in the middle ages was rich with the same ornaments
+      and quaint with the same grotesques which fretted the porches or animated
+      the gargoyles of the cathedral; that what we now regard with doubt and
+      wonder, as well as with delight, was then the natural continuation, into
+      the principal edifice of the city, of a style which was familiar to every
+      eye throughout all its lanes and streets; and that the architect had often
+      no more idea of producing a peculiarly devotional impression by the
+      richest color and the most elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern
+      meetinghouse has by his white-washed walls and square-cut casements.
+      [Footnote: See the farther notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV.
+      Stones of Venice.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and
+      then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a
+      kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because,
+      while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat
+      ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our
+      abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for
+      every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal baron
+      and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not because
+      the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the revel or
+      psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof was easiest
+      built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our cities; we have
+      substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and then we reason
+      respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the fragments which,
+      fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those churches had always
+      been designed to stand out in strong relief from all the buildings around
+      them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what it is now, a religious
+      language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know, if they would arouse
+      their knowledge, that this was not so; but they take no pains to reason
+      the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily to the impression that
+      Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and sometimes, even, that
+      richness in church ornament is a condition or furtherance of the Romish
+      religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in modern times: for there being no
+      beauty in our recent architecture, and much in the remains of the past,
+      and these remains being almost exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church
+      and Romanist parties have not been slow in availing themselves of the
+      natural instincts which were deprived of all food except from this source;
+      and have willingly promulgated the theory, that because all the good
+      architecture that is now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist
+      doctrines, all good architecture ever has been and must be so,&mdash;a
+      piece of absurdity from which, though here and there a country clergyman
+      may innocently believe it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon
+      manfully quit itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the
+      past, to ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and
+      forcibly to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been
+      good and lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
+      dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch was
+      used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch was
+      used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle was set
+      over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when the flat
+      roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave. There is no
+      sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in pinnacles, nor in
+      buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches were larger than in
+      most other buildings, because they had to hold more people; they were more
+      adorned than most other buildings, because they were safer from violence,
+      and were the fitting subjects of devotional offering: but they were never
+      built in any separate, mystical, and religious style; they were built in
+      the manner that was common and familiar to everybody at the time. The
+      flamboyant traceries that adorn the façade of Rouen Cathedral had once
+      their fellows in every window of every house in the market place; the
+      sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match on
+      the walls, of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference
+      between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a
+      symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant
+      for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less
+      frequently of profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction
+      cannot be drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church
+      architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least one
+      half of the ornament of the dwelling-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I
+      must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately
+      marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that every
+      dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as exquisite
+      in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that they presented
+      features of the same kind, often in parts quite as beautiful; and that the
+      churches were not separated by any change of style from the buildings
+      round them, as they are now, but were merely more finished and full
+      examples of a universal style, rising out of the confused streets of the
+      city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse, not differing in leafage,
+      but in size and symmetry. Of course the quainter and smaller forms of
+      turret and window necessary for domestic service, the inferior materials,
+      often wood instead of stone, and the fancy of the inhabitants, which had
+      free play in the design, introduced oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations
+      into house architecture, which were prevented by the traditions, the
+      wealth, and the skill of the monks and freemasons; while, on the other
+      hand, conditions of vaulting, buttressing, and arch and tower building,
+      were necessitated by the mere size of the cathedral, of which it would be
+      difficult to find examples elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these
+      features than the adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements;
+      there was nothing intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical
+      in any of the forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and
+      city, when they furnished funds for the decoration of their church,
+      desired merely to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a
+      little more richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of
+      the carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible:
+      all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical
+      buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were built,
+      every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna, or of
+      Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door, and the
+      Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the grotesques
+      of the brackets and the gables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question
+      respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally
+      different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So
+      long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest
+      continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of
+      inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question whether
+      the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving beauty,
+      having been left without food during the whole of our active life, should
+      be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and color, and
+      music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the curiosity of
+      men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they are required to
+      compose themselves for acts of devotion;&mdash;this, I say, may be a
+      doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if once
+      familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see in
+      whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest services,
+      evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire to see this
+      evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house of prayer;
+      that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb instead of
+      assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask whether,
+      with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should worship God in
+      a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim whose day's journey
+      had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters, must at evening turn
+      aside into some barren place to pray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the
+      ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is evidently
+      determined together with the first; for, if not only the permission of
+      ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be dependent on our
+      being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow that no style of
+      noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical. It must be practised
+      in the dwelling before it be perfected in the church, and it is the test
+      of a noble style that it shall be applicable to both; for if essentially
+      false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the dwelling-house, but never can
+      be made to fit the church: and just as there are many principles which
+      will bear the light of the world's opinion, yet will not bear the light of
+      God's word, while all principles which will bear the test of Scripture
+      will also bear that of practice, so in architecture there are many forms
+      which expediency and convenience may apparently justify, or at least
+      render endurable, in daily use, which will yet be found offensive the
+      moment they are used for church service; but there are none good for
+      church service, which cannot bear daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner
+      of building is a convenient style for dwelling-houses, but the natural
+      sense of all religious men causes them to turn from it with pain when it
+      has been used in churches; and this has given rise to the popular idea
+      that the Roman style is good for houses and the Gothic for churches. This
+      is not so; the Roman style is essentially base, and we can bear with it
+      only so long as it gives us convenient windows and spacious rooms; the
+      moment the question of convenience is set aside, and the expression or
+      beauty of the style it tried by its being used in a church, we find it
+      fails. But because the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches
+      they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest
+      sense fit and good for both, nor were they ever brought to perfection
+      except where they were used for both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which,
+      according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as
+      either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I
+      mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have
+      already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural
+      features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or
+      sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure
+      Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by features
+      purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please, altogether
+      independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered impressive
+      by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and entanglements
+      of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and interesting
+      decoration over vast plane surfaces,&mdash;decoration which becomes noble
+      only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by representing natural
+      objects,&mdash;men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore, the question
+      whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in modern days,
+      becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion has been or may
+      yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the art of the
+      mosaicist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I
+      have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is
+      likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion. One
+      great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of others,
+      but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly set upon
+      the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could pronounce, perfect
+      and right before God, who cared about art at all. I have known several
+      very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but in them there was
+      always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts with the matters of
+      this world, causing them to fall into strange distresses and doubts, and
+      often leading them into what they themselves would confess to be errors in
+      understanding, or even failures in duty. I do not say that these men may
+      not, many of them, be in very deed nobler than those whose conduct is more
+      consistent; they may be more tender in the tone of all their feelings, and
+      farther-sighted in soul, and for that very reason exposed to greater
+      trials and fears, than those whose hardier frame and naturally narrower
+      vision enable them with less effort to give their hands to God and walk
+      with Him. But still, the general fact is indeed so, that I have never
+      known a man who seemed altogether right and calm in faith, who seriously
+      cared about art; and when casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to
+      say beforehand by what class of art this impression will on such men be
+      made. Very often it is by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still
+      by false sentiment. I believe that the four painters who have had, and
+      still have, the most influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant
+      Christian mind, are Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin.
+      Raphael, much as he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely
+      looked at by religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly
+      great religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a
+      tear on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture
+      illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it
+      of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the
+      chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been
+      hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in
+      some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind
+      is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable
+      of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the
+      heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it,
+      which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power
+      of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a
+      Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the
+      first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and
+      would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,&mdash;not giving
+      themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or
+      gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the
+      figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and
+      pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand ever
+      traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly sought
+      for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the men who
+      embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it from those
+      who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who read the Bible
+      in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the painters who
+      passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be taught by
+      those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more popular
+      Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the subject
+      was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the
+      Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
+      capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
+      suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
+      coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
+      impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
+      the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
+      association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
+      it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
+      conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity, and,
+      above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration for a
+      picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would otherwise
+      fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of emotion is
+      joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed represent a fact! It
+      matters little whether the fact be well or ill told; the moment we believe
+      the picture to be true, we complain little of its being ill-painted. Let
+      it be considered for a moment, whether the child, with its colored print,
+      inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is
+      not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from
+      the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the
+      connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's
+      "Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right
+      religious tone, it has not always this childish power&mdash;I speak
+      advisedly, this power&mdash;a noble one, and possessed more in youth than
+      at any period of after life, but always, I think, restored in a measure by
+      religion&mdash;of raising into sublimity and reality the rudest symbol
+      which is given to it of accredited truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the
+      truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no
+      longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea.
+      [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in the <i>facts</i>
+      than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the representation of
+      the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or that painter's
+      conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this or that, painter's
+      description of what had actually taken place. And in the Greek Church all
+      painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of tradition. See M. Dideron's
+      admirably written introduction to his Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 7:&mdash;"Un
+      de mes compagnons s'étonnait de re trouver à la Panagia de St. Luc, le
+      saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait dessiné dans le baptistère de St. Marc,
+      à Venise. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout temps le même,
+      non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin,
+      mais jusque pour le nombre et l'épaisseur des plis."] We do not severely
+      criticise the manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh
+      investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern
+      religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment uncertain,
+      is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and this ignorant
+      emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the worst possible
+      temper in which any art can be regarded, but more especially sacred art.
+      For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so also it generally
+      renders expression simple; that is to say a truly religious painter will
+      very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more faulty in his manner of
+      working, than a great irreligious one. And it was in this artless
+      utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of both the workman and the
+      beholder, that all noble schools of art have been cradled; it is in them
+      that they <i>must</i> be cradled to the end of time. It is impossible to
+      calculate the enormous loss of power in modern days, owing to the
+      imperative requirement that art shall be methodical and learned: for as
+      long as the constitution of this world remains unaltered, there will be
+      more intellect in it than there can be education; there will be many men
+      capable of just sensation and vivid invention, who never will have time to
+      cultivate or polish their natural powers. And all unpolished power is in
+      the present state of society lost; in other things as well as in the arts,
+      but in the arts especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake
+      the polish for the power. Until a man has passed through a course of
+      academy studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk,
+      and knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do
+      not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt to
+      think that we can <i>make</i> him an artist by teaching him anatomy, and
+      how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is utterly
+      independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are many
+      peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who have
+      imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be used for
+      our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what is
+      expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a village
+      mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other histories,
+      would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and set it down,
+      roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having. But we are too
+      grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work when it is done;
+      and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing stones smooth at the
+      corners, and we build our church of the smooth square stones, and consider
+      ourselves wise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but
+      I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who
+      suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be utterly
+      barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be granted that
+      they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they were ineffective
+      in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole church as a great
+      Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its illuminations, and the common
+      people of the time were taught their Scripture history by means of them,
+      more impressively perhaps, though far less fully, than ours are now by
+      Scripture reading. They had no other Bible, and&mdash;Protestants do not
+      often enough consider this&mdash;<i>could</i> have no other. We find it
+      somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with printed Bibles; consider what
+      the difficulty must have been when they could be given only in manuscript.
+      The walls of the church necessarily became the poor man's Bible, and a
+      picture was more easily read upon the walls than a chapter. Under this
+      view, and considering them merely as the Bible pictures of a great nation
+      in its youth, I shall finally invite the reader to examine the connection
+      and subjects of these mosaics; but in the meantime I have to deprecate the
+      idea of their execution being in any sense barbarous. I have conceded too
+      much to modern prejudice, in permitting them to be rated as mere childish
+      efforts at colored portraiture: they have characters in them of a very
+      noble kind; nor are they by any means devoid of the remains of the science
+      of the later Roman empire. The character of the features is almost always
+      fine, the expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and
+      draperies always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the
+      groups which are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of
+      Byzantine art to represent violent action are inadequate, most of them
+      ludicrously so, even when the sculptural art is in other respects far
+      advanced. The early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all
+      points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This
+      distinction is of course one of the necessary consequences of the
+      difference in all respects between the repose of the Eastern, and activity
+      of the Western mind, which we shall have to trace out completely in the
+      inquiry into the nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and
+      disregard of chiaroscuro cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they
+      are the only means by which the figures could be rendered clearly
+      intelligible in the distance and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I
+      from considering them barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious
+      art whatsoever, these, and such as these, have been the most effective.
+      They stand exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and
+      waxen images which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world,
+      and the great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to
+      the art itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is
+      there, nor can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however
+      influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of
+      consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a
+      Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is
+      screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large
+      family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is
+      reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare
+      it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all
+      Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the
+      word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the
+      fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts
+      are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of
+      Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been
+      worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant
+      persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works.
+      Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the
+      mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place
+      of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del
+      Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious influence
+      on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of Europe they
+      have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of the most
+      celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any other feelings
+      than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for human skill.
+      Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I believe must
+      always lie, between the two extremes&mdash;of barbarous idol-fashioning on
+      one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other. It consists partly
+      in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as, since the invention of
+      printing, have taken its place; partly in glass-painting; partly in rude
+      sculpture on the outsides of buildings; partly in mosaics; and partly in
+      the frescoes and tempera pictures which, in the fourteenth century, formed
+      the link between this powerful, because imperfect, religious art, and the
+      impotent perfection which succeeded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the
+      inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented
+      in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting could
+      not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions, and
+      frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern
+      book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth
+      naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great
+      importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural effect;
+      and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the common
+      people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning of the
+      painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often of
+      limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth and
+      thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches with
+      inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their size
+      rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color attractive.
+      They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations; neither were they
+      adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such as might withdraw the
+      attention from their subjects. They were before the eyes of the devotee at
+      every interval of his worship; vast shadowings forth of scenes to whose
+      realization he looked forward, or of spirits whose presence he invoked.
+      And the man must be little capable of receiving a religious impression of
+      any kind, who, to this day, does not acknowledge some feeling of awe, as
+      he looks up at the pale countenances and ghastly forms which haunt the
+      dark roofs of the Baptisteries of Parma and Florence, or remains
+      altogether untouched by the majesty of the colossal images of apostles,
+      and of Him who sent apostles, that look down from the darkening gold of
+      the domes of Venice and Pisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to
+      discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind
+      of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow out
+      the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to fulfil
+      our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the feelings of
+      its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was built.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct the
+      reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between
+      ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with
+      writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be large
+      and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to decipher
+      it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that every one
+      would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would rejoice in
+      possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and that the more
+      he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We must take some
+      pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all that is inscribed,
+      or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of the builder or of his
+      times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the
+      church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and
+      new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these
+      persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old Testament
+      history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of Patriarchs up
+      to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the subjects in this
+      series being very nearly the same as in many Northern churches, but
+      significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order to mark to the
+      catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for salvation,&mdash;"Our
+      fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead,"&mdash;and to turn
+      his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna was the type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the
+      church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of Christ
+      enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other, in
+      attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open upon
+      his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN ENTER IN,
+      HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds the mosaic
+      is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE, ENTER BY ME."
+      Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of the west end of
+      the church, is written, with reference to the figure of Christ below: "WHO
+      HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY
+      HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU CONSIDER."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen when
+      he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was
+      supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance into
+      the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance into the
+      spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book which was
+      opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the same manner to
+      regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the invisible Church
+      of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the
+      head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that
+      door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy
+      Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the Church
+      of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the Greek
+      manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second and
+      Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar offices.
+      From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of fire descend
+      upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented standing around
+      the dome; and below them, between the windows which are pierced in its
+      walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each separate people,
+      the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at Pentecost, every man
+      in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the four angles which
+      support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each bearing a tablet upon
+      the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the tablets of the three first
+      angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that of the fourth is written
+      "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being thus put into the mouths of
+      the four angels, the words of it are continued around the border of the
+      dome, uniting praise to God for the gift of the Spirit, with welcome to
+      the redeemed soul received into His Church:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH:
+       HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY.
+         HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST:
+  BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the
+      outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of <i>sanctification</i>.
+      It is the <i>holiness</i> of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to
+      sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels
+      celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this holiness
+      that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels
+      for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that
+      the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive
+      forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity, as
+      summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is vain;
+      namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended into
+      heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault between the
+      first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and resurrection
+      of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate scenes,&mdash;the treason
+      of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with thorns, the descent
+      into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre, and the apparition to
+      Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is the central and
+      principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the subject of the
+      Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is represented as rising into
+      the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and throned upon a rainbow, the
+      type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the twelve apostles are seen upon the
+      Mount of Olives, with the Madonna, and, in the midst of them, the two men
+      in white apparel who appeared at the moment of the Ascension, above whom,
+      as uttered by them, are inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand
+      ye gazing up into heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from
+      you, shall so come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and
+      justice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of
+      the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the
+      crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with
+      Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the
+      cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our
+      assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath their
+      feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which they
+      declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison, Gihon,
+      Tigris, and Euphrates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the
+      witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its
+      centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
+      little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship,
+      and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124, note.]
+      their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of the centre
+      of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on
+      the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,&mdash;"Christ is risen," and
+      "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor lateral chapels
+      and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of New Testament
+      history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in
+      their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation; [Footnote:
+      The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished, and have been replaced
+      by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but if he only entered, as
+      often the common people do to this hour, snatching a few moments before
+      beginning the labor of the day to offer up an ejaculatory prayer, and
+      advanced but from the main entrance as far as the altar screen, all the
+      splendor of the glittering nave and variegated dome, if they smote upon
+      his heart, as they might often, in strange contrast with his reed cabin
+      among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon it only that they might
+      proclaim the two great messages&mdash;"Christ is risen," and "Christ shall
+      come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the
+      dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn
+      into the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph,&mdash;"Christ
+      is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the people,
+      deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from their feet to
+      the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of warning,&mdash;"Christ
+      shall come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look
+      with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry of
+      that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts of
+      the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at once a
+      type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written word of
+      God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all glorious
+      within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of the Law and
+      the Testimony, written within and without. And whether honored as the
+      Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither the gold nor the
+      crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that, as the symbol of
+      the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be of jasper,
+      [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished with all
+      manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the World, that
+      triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of it,&mdash;"I have
+      rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches"? And
+      shall we not look with changed temper down the long perspective of St.
+      Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple,
+      when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above
+      the pavement of the populous square? Men met there from all countries of
+      the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd swaying for
+      ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was
+      seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they
+      would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treasure
+      which the merchantmen might buy without a price, and one delight better
+      than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. Not in the
+      wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the desire of the eyes or
+      the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and
+      those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message written
+      in the dyes of them, that once was written in blood; and a sound in the
+      echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,&mdash;"He
+      shall return, to do judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was
+      given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when
+      she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot
+      it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations
+      of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with
+      confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the
+      treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page,
+      till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In
+      other cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn
+      from religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the
+      grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street,
+      there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify, we
+      may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace or in
+      her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls on which
+      its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of marble
+      from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the
+      victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all shame
+      and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the
+      madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater,
+      because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the
+      letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their laugh, and went
+      their way; and a silence has followed them, not unforetold; for amidst
+      them all, through century after century of gathering vanity and festering
+      guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had uttered in the dead ear of
+      Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into
+      judgment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE DUCAL PALACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter
+      that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal
+      Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices
+      which were raised for half a century after its completion, their
+      characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly
+      copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of
+      Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination,
+      employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in its
+      decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a
+      remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds of
+      those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of Italy
+      every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more daring
+      form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause to the
+      Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of
+      innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it
+      thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon
+      an image more attractive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural
+      invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in
+      self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building
+      thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it
+      doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is
+      actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian
+      antiquaries, whether the main façade of the palace be of the fourteenth or
+      fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course
+      necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of the
+      work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the entire
+      history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I trust
+      that this review may not be found tedious,&mdash;assuredly it will not be
+      fruitless,&mdash;bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of
+      the Venetian character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into
+      the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be thoroughly
+      familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal parts, as it at
+      present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much as a single
+      sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do what I can, by
+      the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him the necessary
+      topographical knowledge:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place;
+      and the following references will clearly explain their relative
+      positions:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+A. St. Mark's Place.
+B. Piazzetta.
+P. V. Procuratie Vecchie.
+P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove.
+P. L. Libreria Vecchia.
+I. Piazzetta de' Leoni.
+T. Tower of St. Mark.
+F F. Great Façade of St. Mark's Church.
+M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the
+    separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had
+    been marked, which would have confused the whole.)
+D D D. Ducal Palace.         g s. Giant's stair.
+C. Court of Ducal Palace.    J. Judgement angle.
+c. Porta della Carta.        a. Fig-tree angle.
+p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw).
+S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs).
+R R. Riva de' Schiavoni.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in the
+      form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B, and
+      another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on the
+      dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the Church
+      of St. Mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three
+      sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively
+      called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Façade;" that towards
+      the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Façade;" and that towards the Rio del
+      Palazzo, the "Rio Façade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by
+      the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes under
+      the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal thoroughfares of
+      the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy, in the mind of a
+      Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and Temple Bar in that of
+      a Londoner,&mdash;at least, at the time when Temple Bar was occasionally
+      decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely resemble each other
+      in form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the
+      appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement will
+      be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and fifty
+      feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a general
+      view of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade (the latter in very steep
+      perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly
+      represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to
+      avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the two
+      bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is the
+      Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the regular
+      thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the Bridge of
+      Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland used to
+      sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above this bridge,
+      and formed by the meeting of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade, will always be
+      called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the
+      drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called the Fig-tree angle,
+      because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall of Man. The long and
+      narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen in perspective behind
+      this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the Piazzetta; and the
+      angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two which terminate it
+      will be called, for a reason presently to be stated, the Judgment angle.
+      Within the square formed by the building is seen its interior court (with
+      one of its wells), terminated by small and fantastic buildings of the
+      Renaissance period, which face the Giant's Stair, of which the extremity
+      is seen sloping down on the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION V. The great façade which fronts the spectator looks southward.
+      Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of
+      the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern Windows."
+      There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at the same
+      level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della Paglia and
+      the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the "Canal Windows."
+      The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark side of the palace,
+      separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long four-storied range of
+      rich architecture. This more distant range is entirely Renaissance: its
+      extremity is not indicated, because I have no accurate sketch of the small
+      buildings and bridges beyond it, and we shall have nothing whatever to do
+      with this part of the palace in our present inquiry. The nearer and
+      undecorated wall is part of the older palace, though much defaced by
+      modern opening of common windows, refittings of the brickwork, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VI. It will be observed that the façade is composed of a smooth
+      mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other. The
+      manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at once
+      by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken right
+      through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of the Sea
+      Façade. Here <i>a</i> and <i>d</i> are the rows of shafts, both in the
+      inner court and on the Façade, which carry the main walls; <i>b</i>, <i>c</i>
+      are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C are the
+      three stories of the interior of the palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple, and
+      that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed, there
+      would be left merely the form of a basilica,&mdash;two high walls, carried
+      on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused ranges
+      of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient masonry
+      are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I have had
+      neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the removal of
+      modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the subdivisions of this
+      story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader; but those of the great
+      upper story, C, are highly important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed
+      that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the
+      façade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable instances
+      I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience, which was
+      noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the Gothic
+      schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall
+      find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain the
+      necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we shall
+      presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning of the
+      fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent chamber for
+      the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the side of the older
+      building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was no need to divide
+      the added portion into two stories. The entire height was given to the
+      single chamber, being indeed not too great for just harmony with its
+      enormous length and breadth. And then came the question how to place the
+      windows, whether on a line with the two others, or above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the best
+      masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the light
+      near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of illumination in
+      the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce light rather in
+      simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern architect, terrified
+      at the idea of violating external symmetry, would have sacrificed both the
+      pictures and the peace of the council. He would have placed the larger
+      windows at the same level with the other two, and have introduced above
+      them smaller windows, like those of the upper story in the older building,
+      as if that upper story had been continued along the façade. But the old
+      Venetian thought of the honor of the paintings, and the comfort of the
+      senate, before his own reputation. He unhesitatingly raised the large
+      windows to their proper position with reference to the interior of the
+      chamber, and suffered the external appearance to take care of itself. And
+      I believe the whole pile rather gains than loses in effect by the
+      variation thus obtained in the spaces of wall above and below the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows,
+      which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is painted
+      the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be hereafter called
+      the "Wall of the Paradise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second
+      windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground,
+      opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace,
+      and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The façade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the
+      Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when
+      people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all
+      on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber,
+      one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the
+      other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea,
+      light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of
+      Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta
+      della Carta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography
+      of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its
+      history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian
+      architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
+      successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
+      Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second superseded
+      the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is
+      left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and the existing
+      building is formed by the union of the two.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader
+will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed
+books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The
+numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given
+with the quotations.
+  Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663.
+  Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829.
+  Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780.
+  Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838.
+  Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811.
+  Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837.
+  Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined to
+      make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of their
+      state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina
+      Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo
+      Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar la
+      isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi, vol. vi.
+      chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello
+      Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the
+      small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future
+      Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the banks of
+      sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges
+      over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built the Church of St.
+      Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he
+      built a palace for the administration of the government. [Footnote:
+      "Ampliò la città, fornilla di casamenti, <i>e per il culto d' Iddio e l'
+      amministrazione della giustizia</i> eresse la capella di S. Marco, e il
+      palazzo di sua residenza."&mdash;Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that piety
+      towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the nominal
+      purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare also
+      Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si è che il suddetto Agnello
+      lo incomminciò da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di S. Marco."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of Venice,
+      and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
+      representation of her power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio
+      little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte
+      della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio;
+      that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Façade; but this was
+      merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the Sea, was
+      called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great water
+      street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to
+      distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the Ducal
+      Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio, stretches
+      for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the boundary of the
+      Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the Ducal Palace,
+      continuing the line of the great water street itself which the Venetians
+      spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are: "Fu cominciato
+      dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et rispondente sul canal
+      grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was built where it now is." "Il
+      palazio fu fatto dove ora pure esiste."&mdash;Vol. iii. chap. 27. The
+      Savina Chronicle, already quoted, says: "in the place called the Bruolo
+      (or Broglio), that is to say on the Piazzetta."]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the
+      existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the Piazzetta,
+      with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at one period
+      was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some magnificence,
+      from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by the Emperor Otho
+      the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The chronicler says that the
+      Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the palace;" [Footnote: "Omni
+      decoritate illius perlustrata."&mdash;Sagornino, quoted by Cadorin and
+      Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express pride in the buildings being
+      worthy of an emperor's examination. This was after the palace had been
+      much injured by fire in the revolt against Candiano IV., [Footnote: There
+      is an interesting account of this revolt in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians
+      speak of the palace as having been destroyed entirely; but, that it did
+      not even need important restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression,
+      quoted by Cadorin and Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says:
+      "Qui Palatii hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the
+      palace are usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo
+      I.; but the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber,
+      speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many miracles."
+      His whole mind seems to have been occupied with ecclesiastical affairs;
+      and his piety was finally manifested in a way somewhat startling to the
+      state, by absconding with a French priest to St. Michael's in Gascony, and
+      there becoming a monk. What repairs, therefore, were necessary to the
+      Ducal Palace, were left to be undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above
+      named.] and just repaired, and richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is
+      spoken of by Sagornino as having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal
+      Palace" (St. Mark's) with ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam
+      non modo marmoreo, verum aureo compsit ornamento."&mdash;<i>Temanza</i>]
+      There can be no doubt whatever that the palace at this period resembled
+      and impressed the other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the
+      Fondaco de Turchi, &amp;c., whose remains have been already described; and
+      that, like them, it was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with
+      gold and color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by
+      fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse parte
+      del palazzo."&mdash;<i>Sansovino</i>. Of the beneficial effect of these
+      fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another
+      emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial praise.
+      [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis sequitatem
+      multipliciter commendavit."&mdash;<i>Cronaca Dandolo</i>, quoted by
+      Cadorin.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again
+      repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says
+      that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every direction;"
+      [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi per ogni
+      verso."&mdash;<i>Sansovino</i>. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle for
+      account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace seems
+      to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the commencement
+      of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace were begun. As,
+      therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time when those works
+      first interfered with it, in the form given to it by Ziani, I shall
+      hereafter always speak of it as the <i>Ziani</i> Palace; and this the
+      rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly clear
+      respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year 1422,
+      speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half remains to
+      this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani." [Footnote: "El
+      palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M. Sebastian Ziani fu fatto
+      compir, come el se vede."&mdash;<i>Chronicle of Pietro Dolfino</i>, Cod.
+      Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as "molto
+      particolare, e distinta."&mdash;<i>Sansovino, Venezia descritta</i>, p.
+      593.&mdash;It terminates in the year 1422.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects
+      that the important change in the Venetian government which gave stability
+      to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297, [Footnote: See
+      Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a
+      man thus characterized by Sansovino:&mdash;"A prompt and prudent man, of
+      unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak,
+      the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable
+      regulations which he introduced into the government."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their
+      importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to be
+      disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism of her
+      citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world. [Footnote:
+      Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the reign of
+      Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure establishment of the
+      aristocratic power was an expression, by the people, of respect for the
+      families which had been chiefly instrumental in raising the commonwealth
+      to such a height of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain
+      limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever
+      before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of
+      the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement,
+      or decoration of the chamber in which they sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another saloon
+      was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, <i>under the Doge Gradenigo</i>, and
+      finished in 1309, <i>in which year the Grand Council first sat in it</i>."
+      [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year, therefore, of the
+      fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and as
+      the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the
+      state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of
+      the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal representation of the
+      Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of
+      Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian
+      historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del
+      Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of the
+      new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in
+      expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon <i>for the
+      assembling</i> of the Great Council, and the room was built which is <i>now</i>
+      called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa parte di fare
+      una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu fatta quella che
+      ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."&mdash;<i>Cronaca Sivos</i>, quoted by
+      Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the Chronicle of
+      Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill written, that I
+      am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:&mdash;"Del 1301 fu preso de
+      fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se adoperava a far e
+      pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin 1423, che fu anni 122."
+      This last sentence, which is of great importance, is luckily unmistakable:&mdash;"The
+      room was used for the meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to
+      say, for 122 years."&mdash;<i>Cod. Ven.</i> tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle
+      extends from 1253 to 1454.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room&mdash;1340-42, page 295-1419. New
+      proposals, p. 298.] <i>Now</i>, that is to say, at the time when the Sivos
+      Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and its name
+      given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace: but I wish
+      the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the commencement of a
+      great architectural epoch, in which took place the first appliance of the
+      energy of the aristocratic power, and of the Gothic style, to the works of
+      the Ducal Palace. The operations then begun were continued, with hardly an
+      interruption, during the whole period of the prosperity of Venice. We
+      shall see the new buildings consume, and take the place of, the Ziani
+      Palace, piece by piece: and when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed
+      upon themselves; being continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth
+      century, they reached the point where they had been begun in the
+      fourteenth, and pursued the track they had then followed some distance
+      beyond the junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the
+      serpent, which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, <i>see</i> the extremity, wherein lay
+      the sting and force of the whole creature,&mdash;the chamber, namely,
+      built by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement
+      and the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent
+      will soon become visible to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Façade, behind the present
+      position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on the roof
+      by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low or high,
+      but probably on a first story. The great façade of the Ziani Palace being,
+      as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as far back and out
+      of the way as possible; secrecy and security being obviously the points
+      first considered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions
+      to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most
+      significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction
+      of that room. "There were, <i>near it</i>," he says, "the Cancellaria, and
+      the <i>Gheba</i> or <i>Gabbia</i>, afterwards called the Little Tower."
+      [Footnote: "Vi era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata
+      poi Torresella,"&mdash;-P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the
+      Vine angle in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert
+      Durer. It appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the
+      Torresella in question.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain
+      apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the Rio
+      Façade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the old
+      Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments at the
+      top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for prisons as
+      late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote: Vide Bettio,
+      Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate
+      tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear
+      the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by
+      ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The
+      stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are
+      utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under
+      the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs
+      of larch, and carefully ventilated. [Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20.
+      "Those who wrote without having seen them described them as covered with
+      lead; and those who have seen them know that, between their flat timber
+      roofs and the sloping leaden roof of the palace the interval is five
+      metres where it is least, and nine where it is greatest."] The new
+      chamber, then, and the prisons, being built, the Great Council first sat
+      in their retired chamber on the Rio in the year 1309.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had
+      no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed by
+      the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of that
+      conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge Gradenigo;
+      who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of Venice armed
+      with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say by poison. He
+      was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only one year; and
+      then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo. There is no
+      mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his reign, but he was
+      succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on whose tomb, still
+      existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be compared by any traveller
+      with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is recorded in the Savina
+      Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate built which is at the entry
+      of the palace, above which is his statue kneeling, with the gonfalon in
+      hand, before the feet of the Lion of St. Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose
+      anche fese far la porta granda che se al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la
+      qual vi e la sua statua che sta in zenocchioni con lo confalon in man,
+      davanti li pie de lo Lion S. Marco."&mdash;<i>Savin Chronicle</i>, Cod.
+      Ven. p. 120.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed
+      their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than
+      that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This
+      door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which are
+      fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not examined
+      myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I take the
+      passages quoted.] in the following terms:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St.
+      Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates....
+      [Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."&mdash;Cadorin, 189, I.]
+      for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the
+      palace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making gold
+      leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace stairs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the
+      reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced by
+      the Porta della Carta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered
+      for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber
+      inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion, began
+      to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be built. The
+      government was now thoroughly established, and it was probably felt that
+      there was some meanness in the retired position, as well as insufficiency
+      in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio. The first definite account
+      which I find of their proceedings, under these circumstances, is in the
+      Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven., No. CXLI. p. 365.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
+      Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine where
+      a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the Greater
+      Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected two
+      procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty ducats a
+      year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
+      Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the commissioners
+      appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the
+      Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the commencement
+      of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote: Sansovino is more
+      explicit than usual in his reference to this decree: "For it having
+      appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not capacious
+      enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio parendo che
+      il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal Grande."&mdash;P.
+      324.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The room then begun is the one now in existence</i>, and its building
+      involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
+      present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
+      prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not
+      mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it
+      has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls rebuilt;
+      but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still stands; and by
+      a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as shown in Figure II.
+      above, the reader will see at once that whatever can be known respecting
+      the design of the Sea Façade, must be gleaned out of the entries which
+      refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
+      time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
+      1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
+      discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
+      1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
+      and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
+      be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342 is
+      falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while
+      Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the Council
+      Chamber as only begun in 1345.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
+      conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.
+      [Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed in
+      1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as that
+      Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls; [Footnote: "II
+      primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365 vi fece il
+      Paradiso in testa della sala."&mdash;<i>Sansovino</i>.] so that the
+      building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its decorations
+      and fittings, however, were long in completion; the paintings on the roof
+      being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi 1400 vi fece il ciclo
+      compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle, ch'era la insegna del
+      Doge Steno."&mdash;<i>Sansovino</i>, lib. viii.] They represented the
+      heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi si messe in oro il
+      ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il pergole del finestra
+      grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e l'altro di stelle, eh'
+      erano la insegne del Doge."&mdash;<i>Sansovino</i>, lib. xiii. Compare
+      also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge
+      Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this time in Venice covered
+      with stars, without any reference to armorial bearings; but Steno claims,
+      under his noble title of Stellifer, an important share in completing the
+      chamber, in an inscription upon two square tablets, now inlaid in the
+      walls on each side of the great window towards the sea:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI
+  HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that
+      window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I
+      think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out
+      and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final decorations
+      occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council sat in the
+      finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal
+      Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of
+      the entire period which I have above described as the central one of her
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two,
+      in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of
+      the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been
+      proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three
+      years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the
+      gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately
+      symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which
+      it was decorated,&mdash;full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the
+      fourteenth century,&mdash;with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace
+      of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new
+      Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the
+      "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more
+      manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the
+      building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the
+      "Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the
+      Proto of the <i>New</i> Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix
+      I., Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position
+      in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
+      towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva
+      dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to
+      the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the
+      water; and the <i>old</i> palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and
+      interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the
+      nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered
+      the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and
+      then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity
+      of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta
+      with the same splendor as the Sea Façade. But no such sweeping measure of
+      renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the
+      plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a
+      gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary
+      additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of the
+      ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon the
+      political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast
+      additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful
+      of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own
+      enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some
+      strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger.
+      It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt, but
+      that no one should <i>propose</i> rebuilding it. The feeling of the
+      desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and
+      the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own
+      weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under the
+      penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own enthusiasm too
+      low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a thousand ducats could
+      not deter from proposing what he believed to be for the good of the state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire which
+      occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's, and
+      part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I shall
+      relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No. cxxv. in the
+      Marcian Library, p. 568.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care
+      to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's
+      house things went on more slowly, <i>for it did not please the Doge</i>
+      [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] <i>to restore it in the form in which it was
+      before</i>; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner,
+      so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden
+      by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who
+      should propose to throw down the <i>old</i> palace, and to rebuild it more
+      richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was magnanimous, and
+      who desired above all things what was honorable to the city, had the
+      thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then proposed that
+      the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the late fire had
+      ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his own private
+      palace, but all the places used for public business) this occasion was to
+      be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they ought to rebuild the
+      palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the greatness to which, by
+      God's grace, their dominions had reached; and that his motive in proposing
+      this was neither ambition, nor selfish interest: that, as for ambition,
+      they might have seen in the whole course of his life, through so many
+      years, that he had never done anything for ambition, either in the city,
+      or in foreign business; but in all his actions had kept justice first in
+      his thoughts, and then the advantage of the state, and the honor of the
+      Venetian name: and that, as far as regarded his private interest, if it
+      had not been for this accident of the fire, he would never have thought of
+      changing anything in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more
+      honorable form; and that during the many years in which he had lived in
+      it, he had never endeavored to make any change, but had always been
+      content with it, as his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well
+      that, if they took in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them,
+      being now very old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to
+      another life before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that
+      therefore they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this
+      building for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and
+      its Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by
+      his successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to
+      observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which had
+      been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that he
+      might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that he
+      sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes on
+      to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the Doge;
+      and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses of the
+      work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work; and the
+      palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at present seen;
+      but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended his life, and
+      not only did not see the work brought to a close, but hardly even begun."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts
+      which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the whole
+      palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember, that,
+      at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred years in
+      building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it; and
+      it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to destroy and
+      rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose in
+      our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of Parliament, under the
+      title of the "old palace," and rebuild <i>them</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once
+      be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we
+      now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in
+      the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were in
+      it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices of
+      public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower of
+      olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one; and
+      any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
+      allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
+      most of the public offices, Mocenigo <i>did</i> propose to pull down and
+      rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
+      Council Chamber, of which the whole façade to the Sea consisted, never
+      entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
+      connected with the Ducal residence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
+      forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422
+      [Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild the
+      palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari was
+      elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according to
+      the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but previously,
+      according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari enter the Senate
+      as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber was used for the
+      first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate as Doge,&mdash;the
+      3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle; [Footnote: "Nella
+      quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran Consiglio salvo nell'
+      anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno che il Duce Foscari
+      venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua creatione."&mdash;Copy in Marcian
+      Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is probably correct, by an anonymous
+      MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum; [Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by
+      the context) sequente fo fatto Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti
+      non esta piu fatto Gran Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua
+      (Foscari's) creation fo fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el
+      Marchese di Mantoa," &amp;c., p. 426.]&mdash;and, the following year, on
+      the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace
+      of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare Appendix I. Vol. III.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly
+      called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,&mdash;and
+      of Venice herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I
+      dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of Mocenigo.
+      A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been called to his
+      account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this instance
+      mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had forgotten
+      what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces might be built
+      upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take the place, or
+      recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her unfrequented
+      shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her fortunes, the
+      city never flourished again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate
+      details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued under
+      succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I am not in
+      this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the architecture
+      of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the following. The palace
+      of Ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the Piazzetta built, so as
+      both to continue and to resemble, in most particulars, the work of the
+      Great Council Chamber. It was carried back from the Sea as far as the
+      Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta della Carta, begun in 1439, and
+      finished in two years, under the Doge Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste
+      fatture si compirono sotto il dogade del Foscari, nel 1441."&mdash;<i>Pareri</i>,
+      p. 131.] the interior buildings connected with it were added by the Doge
+      Christopher Moro, (the Othello of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This
+      identification has been accomplished, and I think conclusively, by my
+      friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all the leisure which, during the
+      last twenty years his manifold office of kindness to almost every English
+      visitant of Venice have left him, in discovering and translating the
+      passages of the Venetian records which bear upon English history and
+      literature. I shall have occasion to take advantage hereafter of a portion
+      of his labors, which I trust will shortly be made public.] in 1462.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we
+      have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was
+      close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the <i>new</i> Council
+      Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still left
+      between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more probable,
+      the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire of 1419, and
+      replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever buildings, old or
+      new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion of the Porta della
+      Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479, together with so much
+      of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon of Gradenigo, then known
+      as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it became necessary to
+      reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the palace behind the
+      Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal. This work was entrusted
+      to the best Renaissance architects of the close of the fifteenth and
+      opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci executing the Giant's
+      staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum of the public money,
+      Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work must have been completed
+      towards the middle of the sixteenth century. The architects of the palace,
+      advancing round the square and led by fire, had more than reached the
+      point from which they had set out; and the work of 1560 was joined to the
+      work of 1301-1340, at the point marked by the conspicuous vertical line in
+      Figure II on the Rio Façade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this
+      finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire,
+      burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious
+      pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the
+      Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a
+      mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the Great
+      Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an entirely new
+      palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading architects of
+      Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or the possibility
+      of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given in writing, have
+      been preserved, and published by the Abbé Cadorin, in the work already so
+      often referred to; and they form one of the most important series of
+      documents connected with the Ducal Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental resemblance
+      to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was first given in
+      favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others, especially
+      Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute designs of their
+      own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his immortal honor, chiefly
+      Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for the Gothic pile, and
+      prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and Tintoret painted his noblest
+      picture on the wall from which the Paradise of Guariento had withered
+      before the flames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were
+      however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier work
+      of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was the
+      transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to the
+      other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of
+      Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The
+      completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form;
+      with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases
+      among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and
+      defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I
+      suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the
+      details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I shall
+      not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here, because I
+      could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this volume, or by
+      means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to us in the art
+      of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the third volume,
+      Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large figures of the
+      details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable every person who
+      is interested in the subject to possess them; so that the cost and labor
+      of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether wasted. I shall
+      therefore direct the reader's attention only to such points of interest as
+      can be explained in the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning
+      of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very
+      nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance
+      were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should be
+      enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness of
+      this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the pains
+      to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other
+      four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been attained,
+      he will at once observe how their effect depends on some modification of
+      the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of buttresses, or by turrets
+      and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be noted also that this principle
+      of breaking the angle is peculiarly Gothic, arising partly out of the
+      necessity of strengthening the flanks of enormous buildings, where
+      composed of imperfect materials, by buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of
+      the conditions of Gothic warfare, which generally required a tower at the
+      angle; partly out of the natural dislike of the meagreness of effect in
+      buildings which admitted large surfaces of wall, if the angle were
+      entirely unrelieved. The Ducal Palace, in its acknowledgment of this
+      principle, makes a more definite concession to the Gothic spirit than any
+      of the previous architecture of Venice. No angle, up to the time of its
+      erection, had been otherwise decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of
+      red marble, and the sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman
+      work, for the plane surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect,
+      two exceptions only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque
+      gargoyle on its north-west angle, and the angels which project from the
+      four inner angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being
+      plainly made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur,
+      which I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern
+      influence will always be distinctly traceable in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its
+      completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The central
+      window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was entirely
+      restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the Doge Steno;
+      so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the principal
+      interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle sculpture, which
+      is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the two bearing
+      arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and their capitals
+      increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject; above each capital,
+      on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is introduced, consisting,
+      in the great lower arcade, of two or more figures of the size of life; in
+      the upper arcade, of a single angel holding a scroll: above these angels
+      rise the twisted pillars with their crowning niches, already noticed in
+      the account of parapets in the seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken
+      line of decoration from the ground to the top of the angle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the
+      palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's, and
+      is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated, only the
+      three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the Fig-tree angle,
+      and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according to the arrangement
+      just explained,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their
+      order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the
+      reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the
+      great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner
+      stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most
+      important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the builder.
+      If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he built the
+      palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson which he
+      wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it is sure to
+      be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they themselves desired to
+      have expressed in the principal edifice of their city, this is the place
+      in which we may be secure of finding it legibly inscribed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong
+      to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the
+      Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is the
+      Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the
+      Renaissance spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of
+      all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank
+      confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the
+      results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that the
+      principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence in its
+      own wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called the
+      angle of the Fig-tree:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its subject is the FALL OF MAN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration, the
+      significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been built at
+      various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the sole purpose
+      of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
+      principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
+      turns to the Piazetta (the façade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw
+      above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital, which
+      sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than the head
+      of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preëminence of the
+      former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was first
+      executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in execution,
+      and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather suppose it
+      to have been the earliest completed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness,
+      the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the sculpture,&mdash;fig
+      in the one case, vine in the other,&mdash;was a necessary adjunct. Its
+      trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of the palace;
+      boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching out above the
+      figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for several feet, with its
+      deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or superb than the sweep of
+      this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad leaves lapping round the
+      budding fruit, and sheltering from sight, beneath their shadows, birds of
+      the most graceful form and delicate plumage. The branches are, however, so
+      strong, and the masses of stone hewn into leafage so large, that,
+      notwithstanding the depth of the undercutting, the work remains nearly
+      uninjured; not so at the Vine angle, where the natural delicacy of the
+      vine-leaf and tendril having tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he
+      has passed the proper limits of his art, and cut the upper stems so
+      delicately that half of them have been broken away by the casualties to
+      which the situation of the sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains
+      is, however, so interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen
+      it for the subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of
+      this chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought
+      to be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the
+      composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses, there
+      is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending leaves, and
+      in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to prove to us the
+      power of the designer. I have already referred to this Plate as a
+      remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it is almost
+      impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther than in the
+      fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of the tendrils:
+      note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty joints of the vine
+      in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only half the finish of the
+      work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several cases, the sculptor has
+      shown the under sides of the leaves turned boldly to the light, and has
+      literally <i>carved every rib and vein upon them, in relief</i>; not
+      merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of the leaf, and actually
+      project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous veins which chequer the
+      membranous tissues between them, and which the sculptor has represented
+      conventionally as relieved like the others, in order to give the vine leaf
+      its peculiar tessellated effect upon the eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the
+      figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many respects,
+      that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that they had
+      indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth century.
+      Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the Church of San
+      Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of far finer
+      workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal Palace, yet
+      so like them, that I think there can be no question that the head of Noah
+      was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of that of the
+      statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is represented in
+      death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp, the teeth carefully
+      sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and majesty, though very
+      ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant wreaths, disposed with
+      the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of design, far down upon the
+      shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body, carefully studied, and the
+      veins and sinews perfectly and easily expressed, yet without any attempt
+      at extreme finish or display of technical skill. This monument bears date
+      1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI&mdash;NOIE AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII.
+      INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen, in the year of the incarnation,
+      1317, in the month of September," &amp;c.] and its sculptor was justly
+      proud of it; thus recording his name:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS,
+      LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently
+      worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing hair
+      and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins on the
+      arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being evidently more
+      practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in those of the
+      figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of this early
+      period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret and wonder
+      being so equally marked on the features of all the three brothers that it
+      is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of the heads of the
+      brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not with the rest of
+      the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet, on the other side
+      of the arch which springs from the angle capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the
+      group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are
+      protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle
+      and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in
+      nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to
+      1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred
+      yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge
+      Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the
+      Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are
+      better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the tree,
+      with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more nobly
+      treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has
+      very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk between
+      the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his hand. But,
+      though the whole group is much more free in design than those of the
+      earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it always
+      strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it is of
+      immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the tree,
+      though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the fig-tree from
+      which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to nature; they
+      are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges, and their curves
+      are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled drapery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade,
+      the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their
+      positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate
+      XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right. A
+      diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his hand a
+      scroll with this inscription:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  EFICE Q
+  SOFRE
+  TUR AFA
+  EL REVE
+  RENDE
+  QUIETU
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote: "Oh,
+      venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The peculiar
+      office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to tradition, the
+      restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir Charles Eastlake
+      told me, that sometimes in this office he is represented bearing the gall
+      of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded me of the peculiar superstitions
+      of the Venetians respecting the raising of storms by fiends, as embodied
+      in the well known tale of the Fisherman and St. Mark's ring.] I could not
+      decipher the inscription on the scroll borne by the angel Michael; and the
+      figure of Gabriel, which is by much the most beautiful feature of the
+      Renaissance portion of the palace, has only in its hand the Annunciation
+      lily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating
+      the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression of
+      two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence upon
+      Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general purpose
+      of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I imagine, intended
+      to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in which the small figure
+      of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just touching the hem of his
+      garment. We have next to examine the course of divinity and of natural
+      history embodied by the old sculpture in the great series of capitals
+      which support the lower arcade of the palace; and which, being at a height
+      of little more than eight feet above the eye, might be read, like the
+      pages of a book, by those (the noblest men in Venice) who habitually
+      walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade at the time of their first
+      meeting each other for morning converse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their
+      order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.) that
+      there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower story;
+      and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then the more
+      ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first, which is
+      not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine angle; the
+      eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and the
+      thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are
+      octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in
+      every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the
+      angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on
+      the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding
+      forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the
+      groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have given
+      one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope to give
+      most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them here, as the
+      scale would have been too small to allow me to show the expression of the
+      figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower leaves are reduced
+      to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left dependent for its
+      effect on the bold position of the figures. In referring to the figures on
+      the octagonal capitals, I shall call the outer side, fronting either the
+      Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side; and so count round from left to
+      right; the fourth side being thus, of course, the innermost. As, however,
+      the first five arches were walled up after the great fire, only three
+      sides of their capitals are left visible, which we may describe as the
+      front and the eastern and western sides of each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its
+      wings expanded, covering his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other, a
+      pair of scissors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the façade,
+      should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can
+      hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I
+      will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical
+      meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it
+      would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb
+      introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but
+      generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the
+      hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are
+      very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are
+      left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one
+      web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its jaws,
+      and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming itself, with
+      a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far the most
+      beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads,
+      large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one in
+      front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in its
+      right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the nut
+      inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has
+      luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing hair
+      falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling hair,
+      deep cut with drill holes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only
+      with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought
+      expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of
+      the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads
+      are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with
+      sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not a
+      little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features small
+      and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and great men in
+      them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull smooth-faced
+      dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of their stolid
+      cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as the other
+      children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed coxcombs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length
+      statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription.
+      In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief
+      embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the
+      abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR" (contracted
+      IPAT.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand, and
+      sceptre in left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away.
+      He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a sceptre
+      in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He has a
+      flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much injured, but
+      has once been very noble in expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard,
+      and bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which
+      is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it and
+      the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from the
+      higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he pours
+      out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there is no
+      attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is, "LARGITAS ME
+      ONORAT."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of
+      showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a plate
+      or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct imitation. The
+      changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always injuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur in
+      the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a
+      leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XLIX. <i>Second side</i>. Constancy; not very characteristic. An
+      armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL
+      TIMENS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets as
+      the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a woman in
+      loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in the
+      interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a very bold
+      countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by his side,
+      "Set down my name," is the best personification of the Venetian
+      "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be well for us
+      all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the man with the
+      ink-horn, "Set down my name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION L. <i>Third side</i>. Discord; holding up her finger, but
+      needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA SUM,
+      DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like person
+      with a veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is the Atë of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the
+      fourth book:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,
+   With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;
+   And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,
+   That nought but gall and venim comprehended,
+   And wicked wordes that God and man offended:
+   Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,
+   And both the parts did speake, and both contended;
+   And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,
+   That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity we
+      have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for the
+      other sense of the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LI. <i>Fourth side</i>. Patience. A female figure, very
+      expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
+      left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
+      masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the <i>PHYSICIAN</i>
+      in the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the
+      hags who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
+      Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
+      Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
+      hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
+      Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
+      smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LII. <i>Fifth side</i>. Despair. A female figure thrusting a
+      dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down among
+      the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest figures of
+      the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In the
+      Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears, instead
+      of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented as
+      a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's vision of
+      Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that this part
+      of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the attention of Sir
+      Philip Sidney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIII. <i>Sixth side</i>. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek,
+      but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind
+      legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI * *;"
+      the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like "A'ONOEXIBEO."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and
+      that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems;
+      represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the
+      finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head
+      of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol.
+      ii. p. 226.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her above
+      associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIV. <i>Seventh side</i>. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a
+      small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription
+      nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI,
+      CERO," remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the
+      helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is
+      covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, <i>is
+      bound by a cord round her neck to an image</i> which she carries in her
+      hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "Full large of limbe and every joint
+  He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the
+      Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LV. <i>Eighth side</i>. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the
+      Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA
+      ROBUOBTINEO."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of
+      Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood,
+      but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in
+      the second book:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew,
+   Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight:
+   Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew.
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   And ever and anone with rosy red
+   The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye,
+   That her became, as polisht yvory
+   Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd
+   With fayre vermilion or pure castory."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects
+      are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of the
+      degradation of human instincts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap
+      ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious
+      twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but
+      still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque. His
+      dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a
+      bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It
+      plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head,
+      founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap
+      made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise.
+      It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it
+      wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a
+      curved sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a chain
+      armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a two-edged
+      sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round
+      helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with a
+      top like a fir-cone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand,
+      ending below in a fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. <i>First side</i>. Faith. She has her left
+      hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA IN
+      DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her left,
+      a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic books, and
+      has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is still more
+      spiritual and noble:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "She was araied all in lilly white,
+  And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
+  With wine and water fild up to the hight,
+  In which a serpent did himselfe enfold,
+  That horrour made to all that did behold;
+  But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood:
+  And in her other hand she fast did hold
+  A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood;
+  Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LVIII. <i>Second side</i>. Fortitude. A long-bearded man
+      [Samson?] tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the
+      somewhat vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than
+      Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM
+      VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as
+      merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue
+      having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian
+      symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given
+      generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin,
+      knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing
+      back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and
+      slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is
+      square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above
+      her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins
+      deeply infixed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt,
+      however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere
+      manliness or courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LIX. <i>Third side</i>. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water
+      and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy nearly
+      so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat vulgar and
+      most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards continually repeated,
+      as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College) temperance is confused with
+      mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or gluttony; whereas the Greek
+      Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the moderator of <i>all</i> the
+      passions, and so represented by Giotto, who has placed a bridle upon her
+      lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of which she is binding to the
+      scabbard. In his system, she is opposed among the vices, not by Gula or
+      Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the Temperance of Spenser, or Sir
+      Guyon, but with mingling of much sternness:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
+   That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
+   His carriage was full comely and upright;
+   His countenance demure and temperate;
+   But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
+   That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea of
+      Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
+      inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
+      opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which is
+      of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he most
+      justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term [Greek:
+      ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various intemperances
+      with respect to various objects, and set forth under the image of a black,
+      vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side of Prudence or
+      Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a crested and
+      noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles) to the
+      chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
+      throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
+      laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the virtues
+      which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally opposed
+      by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is Spenser's
+      Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we find the
+      subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance; a
+      graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
+      forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
+      first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
+      Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
+   Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
+   That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser, for
+      it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
+      philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LX. <i>Fourth side</i>. Humility; with a veil upon her head,
+      carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN
+      ME."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized in
+      the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in early
+      life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to imitate,
+      and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an exquisite grace
+      to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek youth. It is, of
+      course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish systems, but I have
+      not any notes of the manner of its representation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXI. <i>Fifth side</i>. Charity. A woman with her lap full of
+      loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it across
+      a broad gap in the leafage of the capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In the
+      Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by having a
+      circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is crowned with
+      flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and fruit, and with
+      her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears above her, to provide
+      her with the means of continual offices of beneficence, while she tramples
+      under foot the treasures of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in
+      the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always
+      represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in
+      Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and, with
+      Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear fire, she
+      could not have been discerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea
+      afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and
+      sculptors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXII. <i>Sixth side</i>. Justice. Crowned, and with sword.
+      Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good
+      capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has
+      also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue, representing
+      her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding scales, not by the
+      beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing that the equality of
+      the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws, but to her own
+      immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands. In one scale is an
+      executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an angel crowning a man who
+      seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been working at a desk or table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons riding
+      securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the
+      betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIII. <i>Seventh side</i>. Prudence. A man with a book and a
+      pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the
+      shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so frequently
+      during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of men occupied in
+      any civil capacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees of
+      dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being opposed
+      sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find, in any of
+      the representations of her, that her truly distinctive character, namely,
+      <i>forethought</i>, is enough insisted upon: Giotto expresses her
+      vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things by painting her
+      as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with compasses in her
+      right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of looking at many things
+      in small compass. But forethought or anticipation, by which, independently
+      of greater or less natural capacities, one man becomes more <i>prudent</i>
+      than another, is never enough considered or symbolized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
+      Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIV. <i>Eighth side</i>. Hope. A figure full of devotional
+      expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which
+      is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy this hand
+      does not appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
+      not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
+      others, it seems to me the <i>testing</i> virtue,&mdash;that by the
+      possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are
+      Christians or not; for many men have charity, that is to say, general
+      kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual <i>hope</i>
+      of, or longing for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged,
+      rising in the air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know
+      if Spenser was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an
+      anchor, a symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place,
+      anchors are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is
+      the characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope
+      is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,&mdash;the first time
+      as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
+      beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
+   An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. <i>First side</i>. Luxury (the opposite of
+      chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
+      forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
+      drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
+      those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His Luxury
+      rides upon a goat:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
+   Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
+   And in his hand a burning heart he bare."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is the
+      Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more
+      indicative of the <i>intense</i> difference between the mediaeval and the
+      Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the thirteenth
+      century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central year about
+      which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be gathered; a kind
+      of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most touching and
+      impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by the greatest
+      writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters; namely, the year
+      1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now, therefore, to
+      Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's still existing
+      portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for the central
+      mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents Cupid; as one
+      of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan and Death; and he
+      himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and fillet, and feet ending
+      in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. letter iv.] thrust down into
+      Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who
+      has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of
+      conception between the mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents
+      Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but
+      still no plaything of the Graces, but full of terror:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "With that the darts which his right hand did straine
+   Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,
+   And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine,
+   That all his many it afraide did make."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is.
+      Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope,
+      Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty.
+      After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,
+   Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
+   Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,
+   Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread
+   Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity,
+   Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the Renaissance,
+      as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in every faded
+      form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our literature, and our
+      minds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVI. <i>Second side</i>. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a
+      jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird,
+      which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "His belly was upblownt with luxury,
+   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
+   And like a crane his necke was long and fyne,
+   Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast,
+   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of ivy.
+      Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVII. <i>Third side</i>. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and
+      stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with
+      ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his helmet.
+      The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it as
+      the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep
+      under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a
+      feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle
+      called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team
+      of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her palace
+      she is thus described:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "So proud she shyned in her princely state,
+   Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne;
+   And sitting high, for lowly she did hate:
+   Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne
+   A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne;
+   And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,
+   Wherein her face she often vewed fayne."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and
+      Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father and
+      the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride
+      which vents itself in insult to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXVIII. <i>Fourth side</i>. Anger. A woman tearing her dress
+      open at her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the
+      Renaissance Copy it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest
+      of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides upon
+      a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood. Rage, or
+      Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me very strange
+      that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of
+      the <i>restrained</i> Anger, which is infinitely the most terrible; both
+      of them make him violent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXIX. <i>Fifth side</i>. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over
+      her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous
+      for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny
+      channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by famine;
+      the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring and intense,
+      yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the Renaissance copy,
+      "AVARITIA IMPLETOR."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god Mammon
+      and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power. Note the
+      position of the house of Richesse:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
+  That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness,
+      although they are vices totally different in their operation on the human
+      heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of Judas
+      and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of the heart;
+      but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that is, the
+      inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,&mdash;thus destroying
+      peace of mind,&mdash;is probably productive of much more misery in heart,
+      and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is not so
+      inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly proceed from
+      vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be consistent with
+      much charity; not so avarice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXX. <i>Sixth side</i>. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken
+      away, having had its arms round two branches of trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless,
+      in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as
+      desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice
+      especially upon the clergy,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde,
+  Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin,
+  Like to an holy monck, the service to begin.
+  And in his hand his portesse still he bare,
+  That much was worne, but therein little redd."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd,
+  When such an one had guiding of the way."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse,
+      indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly
+      characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXI. <i>Seventh side</i>. Vanity. She is smiling complacently
+      as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses,
+      and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in
+      the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas
+      generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it in
+      Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity shall
+      be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts
+      of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this sin,&mdash;which,
+      after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal, of all,
+      fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a feather or
+      to drown a fly,"&mdash;definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think,
+      has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria, more
+      properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely
+      worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXII. <i>Eighth side</i>. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of
+      expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a
+      serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle of
+      her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as
+      having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with
+      an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping; a
+      serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the eyes;
+      she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames consuming her
+      body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of Giotto, because the
+      idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not suggested by the size of the
+      ear: in other respects it is even finer, joining the idea of fury, in the
+      wolf on which he rides, with that of corruption on his lips, and of
+      discoloration or distortion in the whole mind:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                      "Malicious Envy rode
+  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
+  Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
+  That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+  <i>And in a kirtle of discolourd say
+  He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies</i>,
+  And in his bosome secretly there lay
+  An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
+  In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in
+      the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight
+      birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which, however,
+      was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all varied in form
+      and action, but not so as to require special description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is
+      grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and
+      the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that it
+      has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance series,
+      from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with
+      a child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his
+      own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no
+      means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a
+      parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as in
+      direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next in
+      order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating
+      human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante
+      placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have
+      been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         "All in sable sorrowfully clad,
+  Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere:
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  A pair of pincers in his hand he had,
+  With which he pinched people to the heart."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth canto
+      of the fourth book:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade,
+   That neither day nor night from working spared;
+   But to small purpose yron wedges made:
+   Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade.
+
+   Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent,
+   Ne better had he, ne for better cared;
+   With blistered hands among the cinders brent."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure is
+      stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a very
+      moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as "Mia." If
+      this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the companion,
+      than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is intended to
+      unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred Sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXV. <i>Second side</i>. Cheerfulness. A woman with long
+      flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open
+      lips, as singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by Spenser
+      to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy,
+      "ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully
+      developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from
+      them in the earlier capitals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXVI. <i>Third side</i>. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find
+      it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a man
+      <i>riding</i>, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English
+      residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a
+      feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with one
+      hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells,
+      or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXVII. <i>Fourth side</i>. Destroyed, all but a book, which
+      identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy; there
+      represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent life
+      with the pursuit of literature?).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all his
+      characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the
+      convent, but of wedded life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXVIII. <i>Fifth side</i>. Only a scroll is left; but, from the
+      copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM DILIGO."
+      It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the virtues
+      which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite
+      character in the "Faerie Queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXIX. <i>Sixth side</i>. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a
+      crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The
+      Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly
+      conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits. In
+      her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red,
+   Purfled with gold and pearle;...
+   Her wanton palfrey all was overspred.
+   With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
+   Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the
+      description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXX. <i>Seventh side</i>. Injustice. An armed figure holding a
+      halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the
+      particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented at
+      the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while various
+      deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia" is a
+      furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child,
+      who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is
+      inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round,
+      coarsely cut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its haunches.
+      Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired with bells
+      about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair projecting on each
+      side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks, hoofs, and bristles
+      sharply cut; and a lion and lioness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is
+      thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me later
+      than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is embarrassing,
+      as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe Selvatico is right in
+      supposing it to have been intended for a general illustration of Idleness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated,
+      and fastened by a buckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds
+      by the haunches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. A man with a parrot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and
+      dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand, her
+      right on her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand upon
+      the leaves of the capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right laid
+      on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large
+      heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that
+      these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins, Tartars,
+      Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians. Either the
+      inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to note them.]
+      and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth side, which is
+      totally different from all the rest, and looks like a portrait. It is
+      thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in every way. It wears a
+      cap surmounted by two winged lions; and, therefore, I think Selvatico must
+      have inaccurately written the list given in the note, for this head is
+      certainly meant to express the superiority of the Venetian character over
+      that of other nations. Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture,
+      than its appreciation of the signs of dignity of character in the
+      features, and the way in which it can exalt the principal figure in any
+      subject by a few touches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the
+      sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of the
+      palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its
+      figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise;
+      Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator;
+      Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the
+      musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are
+      the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated
+      with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a long
+      stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters "GRAMMATIC"
+      remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double beard
+      and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. Destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle wrought
+      into a lion's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. Destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most
+      interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and
+      the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers as
+      their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they are
+      placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was laid.
+      The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are now
+      decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty because
+      the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its
+      expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the
+      signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the
+      fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually
+      stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of
+      interrogation), and then as I would read them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the
+      houses of the planets are thus arranged:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The house of the Sun,      is Leo.
+      "          Moon,     "  Cancer.
+      "          Mars,     "  Aries and Scorpio.
+      "          Venus,    "  Taurus and Libra.
+      "          Mercury,  "  Gemini and Virgo.
+      "          Jupiter,  "  Sagittarius and Pisces.
+      "          Saturn,   "  Capricorn.
+      "          Herschel, "  Aquarius.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we
+      have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and
+      Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn at
+      all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is
+      grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel
+      planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of Man:
+      it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the angle;
+      or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from which I
+      shall not depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXVII. <i>The first side</i>, then, or that towards the Sea,
+      has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure
+      beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the
+      leaves of the capital. His inscription is:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXVIII. <i>Second side</i>. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius
+      and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in radiating
+      folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast, ornamented by
+      small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the drooping bonnet and
+      long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot forth to express the rays
+      of the star, are the most remarkable characteristic of the figure. He
+      raises his sceptre in his left hand over Sagittarius, represented as the
+      centaur Chiron; and holds two thunnies in his right. Something rough, like
+      a third fish, has been broken away below them; the more easily because
+      this part of the group is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in
+      the light, relieved on the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription
+      is:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA." [Footnote: The comma in these
+      inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform mark, I believe of contraction,
+      and the small for a zigzag mark of the same kind. The dots or periods are
+      similarly marked on the stone.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Or,
+  "Inde Jovis dona
+   Pisces simul atque Chirona."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of
+      Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION LXXXIX. <i>Third side</i>. Mars, in his houses Aries and
+      Scorpio. Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways
+      on the ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in
+      his left hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the
+      group, for it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a
+      bright line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight
+      carries a shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a
+      banner upon his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for
+      some time. It should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be
+      good <i>Venetian</i> Latin for "I am of iron."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XC. <i>Fourth side</i>. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented
+      under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from
+      his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a
+      letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum
+      "signe" stands for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCI. <i>Fifth side</i>. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra.
+      The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is
+      deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a
+      mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very
+      nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is
+      exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCII. <i>Sixth side</i>. Mercury, represented as wearing a
+      pendent cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in
+      reclining attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I
+      cannot understand the inscription, though more than usually legible.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCIII. <i>Seventh side</i>. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This
+      sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most picturesque
+      of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat, upon the sea,
+      who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her left draws a crab
+      out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I believe, represented
+      in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather think the Venetian was
+      not aware of this, and that he meant to express the peculiar sweetness of
+      the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the lagoons. Whether this was
+      intended by putting the planet in the boat, may be questionable, but
+      assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by the dress of the figure.
+      For all the draperies of the other figures on this capital, as well as on
+      the rest of the façade, are disposed in severe but full folds, showing
+      little of the forms beneath them; but the moon's drapery <i>ripples</i>
+      down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest the trembling of the moonlight
+      on the waves. This beautiful idea is highly characteristic of the
+      thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five hundred men may be now found
+      who could have cut the drapery, as such, far better, for one who would
+      have disposed its folds with this intention. The inscription is:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCIV. <i>Eighth side</i>. God creating Man. Represented as a
+      throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the
+      head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The
+      inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of
+      "formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble, before
+      the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely ascertained the
+      rest.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Or
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
+  From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore&mdash;the principal one of
+      the old palace,&mdash;to have been intended to signify, first, the
+      formation of the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly,
+      the entire subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God,
+      as determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in
+      fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only
+      consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble
+      Christianity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the
+      whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole
+      strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian
+      casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself cast
+      all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give drawings of
+      them on a large scale in my folio work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting
+      from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the
+      Fig-tree angle the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of
+      dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in
+      some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its
+      figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar
+      significance: for the capital represents the <i>arts of sculpture and
+      architecture</i>; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far
+      too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one capital
+      only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the architect's
+      feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying, and of the
+      value of color generally in his own art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCVI. <i>First side</i>. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A
+      figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green
+      serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital. The
+      chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up open,
+      with the palm outwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a
+      small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is highly
+      finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at the Vine
+      angle. Inscription effaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work
+      on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark
+      red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form
+      of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth
+      century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without any
+      other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the Ducal
+      Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the fourteenth
+      century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has been
+      working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST. E(N?)AS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a
+      kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed <i>on
+      a little range of windows of the fifth order</i>, having roses set,
+      instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich cornice,
+      and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us of the date
+      of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been universal in the
+      early fourteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is working,
+      marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups of the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic
+      thirteenth century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian
+      capitals, see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark
+      red spotted marble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a delicate
+      recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered with a
+      rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red marble.
+      Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * * ANVS."
+      There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two of them
+      popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front, two on the
+      fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned workmen in
+      the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult our present
+      architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the mason's yard
+      with their men." It would be difficult to find a more interesting
+      expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work was undertaken
+      at this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals,
+      and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its
+      effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in the
+      entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio work. In
+      spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with great care
+      in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute chasing obtained
+      by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered bees on the
+      honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong simplicity of its
+      general form, cannot be too much admired. There are also more grace, life,
+      and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side of it, and under the
+      heads, than in any other capital of the series, though the earliness of
+      the workmanship is marked by considerable hardness and coldness in the
+      larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman, better acquainted with bears and
+      wolves than it was possible to become in St. Mark's Place, would have put
+      far more life into these heads, but he could not have composed them more
+      skilfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCVIII. <i>First side</i>. A lion with a stag's haunch in his
+      mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the peculiar
+      way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or furrowed
+      on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the Ducal Palace,
+      to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment we reach the
+      Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed simply, "LEO."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body
+      wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers
+      are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed
+      "LUPUS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his
+      mouth, its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across
+      the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other
+      side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. Entirely broken away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth;
+      at least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed
+      species of dog, with ugly flap ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior
+      professions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very
+      expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer. Inscribed
+      "LAPICIDA SUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat
+      bowl or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription
+      is gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument
+      for cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on two
+      horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very
+      carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of
+      cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The
+      inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which
+      lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but
+      according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll
+      which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a
+      large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is
+      inscribed "FABER SUM."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of
+      the planets on human life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according
+      to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been
+      prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or other
+      impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then forgotten to
+      return to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on
+      it. The legend above is
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.)
+      "Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken.
+      Inscribed
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the
+      lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note the
+      o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o; showing,
+      together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full
+      and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how
+      ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a Roman
+      ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. A youth with a hawk on his fist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX." The sue governs youth for nineteen
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder.
+      Inscribed
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV." Mars governs manhood for fifteen years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap,
+      reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII." Jupiter governs age for twelve years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.) Saturn
+      governs decrepitude until death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. The dead body lying on a mattress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI." Last comes death, the penalty of sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression
+      of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its
+      devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that
+      devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been
+      restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft
+      which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The
+      shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is coarse
+      and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It represents
+      the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress at a window,
+      then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the bridal, the birth and
+      the death of a child. But I have not been able to examine these sculptures
+      properly, because the pillar is encumbered by the railing which surrounds
+      the two guns set before the Austrian guard-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the
+      months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are,
+      however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>First side</i>. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the
+      beginning of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather
+      fan in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. June. Carrying cherries in a basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter,
+      because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called
+      "the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the
+      conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and
+      large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon the
+      pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the
+      straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite,
+      beats (the grain?) in a basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding
+      a branch of vine. Very beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. October and November. I could not make out their
+      occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. December. Killing pigs, as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. January warming his feet, and February frying fish.
+      This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter as
+      the cherries are of the Venetian summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and there,
+      and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or
+      twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth
+      century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has
+      nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with
+      their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the
+      Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources. This,
+      however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of the last
+      capital, which are both fine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of
+      these capitals, as they are not worth description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely
+      changing the succession of the figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the
+      old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all events,
+      it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight different
+      kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given, and groups
+      well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are inscribed
+      above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as much
+      disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art, namely,
+      ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA. Zerexis
+      (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter, whether
+      meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common gourds,
+      divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like a bottle
+      compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long water-melons, which,
+      roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as
+      having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the "Luxuria"
+      for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm face, a robe up
+      to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The inscription is also
+      different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures laying
+      their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads, or chins,
+      or on the leaves around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in
+      features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth
+      century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta
+      façade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is copied
+      from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the part of
+      the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has merely lost
+      some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be always
+      thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and indeed it
+      is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied, very
+      graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work, though
+      with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to that of
+      the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or first side,
+      Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven other sides
+      examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures of lawgivers,
+      in the following order:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Second side</i>. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE." Aristotle who declares laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Third side</i>. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and
+      Lazari call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the
+      ISIPIONE of the fifth side for the word Isidore?]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fourth side</i>. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE." Solon, one of the seven
+      sages of Greece, who declares laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead
+      of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this
+      sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Fifth side</i>. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated
+      Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Sixth side</i>. Numa Pompilius building churches.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in Roman
+      armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier capitals).
+      They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Seventh side</i>. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed:
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with
+      clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and
+      quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes out
+      of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch, with
+      the stone tablets between.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Eighth side</i>. Trajan doing justice to the Widow.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA."
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling
+      before his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar
+      interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character of
+      the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that government of
+      its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of its stability; as
+      these stones of Justice and Judgment are the foundation of its halls of
+      council. And this profession of their faith may be interpreted in two
+      ways. Most modern historians would call it, in common with the continual
+      reference to the principles of justice in the political and judicial
+      language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the speech of the Doge
+      Mocenigo, above,&mdash;"first justice, and <i>then</i> the interests of
+      the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.] nothing more than a
+      cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may easily be proved to
+      have been so in myriads of instances. But in the main, I believe the
+      expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not believe, of the majority of
+      the leading Venetians of this period whose portraits have come down to us,
+      that they were deliberately and everlastingly hypocrites. I see no
+      hypocrisy in their countenances. Much capacity of it, much subtlety, much
+      natural and acquired reserve; but no meanness. On the contrary, infinite
+      grandeur, repose, courage, and the peculiar unity and tranquillity of
+      expression which come of sincerity or <i>wholeness</i> of heart, and which
+      it would take much demonstration to make me believe could by any
+      possibility be seen on the countenance of an insincere man. I trust,
+      therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the fifteenth century did, in the
+      main, desire to do judgment and justice to all men; but, as the whole
+      system of morality had been by this time undermined by the teaching of the
+      Romish Church, the idea of justice had become separated from that of
+      truth, so that dissimulation in the interest of the state assumed the
+      aspect of duty. We had, perhaps, better consider, with some carefulness,
+      the mode in which our own government is carried on, and the occasional
+      difference between parliamentary and private morality, before we judge
+      mercilessly of the Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their
+      political and criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like
+      a confession of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered,
+      and with more probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in
+      an age of violence?&mdash;the only means by which Law could establish its
+      footing in the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day
+      justifiably desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater
+      approximation to the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally,
+      if we examine, with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present
+      impressions of Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the
+      first place, that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are
+      romantic fables: in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved
+      to have been guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian
+      powers in being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of
+      their political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
+      Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
+      government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which
+      contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The
+      capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their character;
+      their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight leaves, thrown
+      into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the flanks; but
+      these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not without
+      meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I possess of
+      ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear to have been
+      restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones; others, though
+      apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly wrought; but those of
+      them, which are both genuine and carefully treated, are even finer in
+      composition than any, except the eighteenth, in the lower arcade. The
+      traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the corridor, and examine with
+      great care the series of capitals which extend on the Piazzetta side from
+      the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster which carries the party wall of the
+      Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful composition in massy
+      capitals meant for hard service and distant effect, these are among the
+      finest things I know in Gothic art; and that above the fig-tree is
+      remarkable for its sculpture of the four winds; each on the side turned
+      towards the wind represented. Levante, the east wind; a figure with rays
+      round its head, to show that it is always clear weather when that wind
+      blows, raising the sun out of the sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned,
+      holding the sun in its right hand: Ponente, the west wind; plunging the
+      sun into the sea: and Tramontana, the north wind; looking up at the north
+      star. This capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason
+      than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of
+      Milton:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+            "Thwart of these, as fierce,
+  Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
+  Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
+  Sirocco and Libecchio."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on
+      the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the
+      fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all
+      carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier which
+      sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the
+      forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of
+      the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The
+      forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old;
+      the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the upper arcade: the
+      first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the time of Foscari, is
+      over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the
+      apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one
+      spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and the other of the fifteenth
+      century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the
+      spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of junction
+      is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in the
+      opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on which the
+      above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from the capital
+      of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is a leaf from
+      the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked in imitation
+      of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the Renaissance
+      capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the natural manner
+      of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great ingenuity to
+      distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that of fig. 14.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig.
+      14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should not;
+      but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14 gained, both
+      largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness and coarseness
+      of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared on this small
+      scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses of fig. 12 have
+      vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line engraving, unless by
+      the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore, abandoned, for the
+      present, all endeavor to represent any more important mass of the early
+      sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a few months, casts of
+      many portions will be within the reach of the inhabitants of London, and
+      that they will be able to judge for themselves of their perfect, pure,
+      unlabored naturalism; the freshness, elasticity, and softness of their
+      leafage, united with the most noble symmetry and severe reserve,&mdash;no
+      running to waste, no loose or experimental lines, no extravagance, and no
+      weakness. Their design is always sternly architectural; there is none of
+      the wildness or redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the
+      strength, freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the
+      undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer winds,
+      as the sands are by the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents
+      the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period, i.
+      e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,&mdash;of what nature and
+      by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this
+      investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces
+      us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered
+      it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid
+      farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our
+      examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper arcade
+      there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the third
+      order on the Rio Façade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting the
+      original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further details
+      respecting these portions, as well as some necessary confirmations of my
+      statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix I., Vol. III. I
+      feared wearying the general reader by introducing them into the text.] I
+      examined the capitals of the four other windows on the façade, and of
+      those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and I found them all
+      to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain their traceries: I
+      believe the stone framework of these windows must have been so cracked and
+      injured by the flames of the great fire, as to render it necessary to
+      replace it by new traceries; and that the present mouldings and capitals
+      are base imitations of the original ones. The traceries were at first,
+      however, restored in their complete form, as the holes for the bolts which
+      fastened the bases of their shafts are still to be seen in the
+      window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner mouldings on the soffits.
+      How much the stone facing of the façade, the parapets, and the shafts and
+      niches of the angles, retain of their original masonry, it is also
+      impossible to determine; but there is nothing in the workmanship of any of
+      them demanding especial notice; still less in the large central windows on
+      each façade which are entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is
+      admirable in these portions of the building is the disposition of their
+      various parts and masses, which is without doubt the same as in the
+      original fabric, and calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the
+      same impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes
+      of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the severe
+      and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by the
+      wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case, though
+      widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least
+      intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls
+      of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the men
+      by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of priceless
+      treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its being
+      despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by piece
+      being destroyed for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate
+      subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
+      destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
+      be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art in
+      Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
+      Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
+      valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have no
+      idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
+      persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
+      pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
+      they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
+      judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
+      filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
+      garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
+      partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
+      generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
+      in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
+      without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good ones),
+      and when this reputation has once been completely established, it little
+      matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are so
+      completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with the
+      beauties which they have heard attributed to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for
+      the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly or
+      neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being placed
+      in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of ostentation, and to
+      be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the fame and value of such
+      pictures, little more is necessary than that they should be kept bright,
+      partly by cleaning, which is incipient destruction, and partly by what is
+      called "restoring," that is, painting over, which is of course total
+      destruction. Nearly all the gallery pictures in modern Europe have been
+      more or less destroyed by one or other of these operations, generally
+      exactly in proportion to the estimation in which they are held; and as,
+      originally, the smaller and more highly finished works of any great master
+      are usually his worst, the contents of many of our most celebrated
+      galleries are by this time, in reality, of very small value indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble
+      painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat of
+      the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was little
+      likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom there was
+      little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best things are done
+      in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of accomplishing some
+      great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a camposanto from one end
+      to the other, especially when the time has been short, and circumstances
+      disadvantageous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of
+      their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places where
+      they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast and
+      comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the present
+      age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected, whitewashed by
+      custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the walls, piecemeal
+      in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is an advantage more
+      than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not often "restored." What
+      is left of them, however fragmentary, however ruinous, however obscured
+      and defiled, is almost always <i>the real thing</i>; there are no fresh
+      readings: and therefore the greatest treasures of art which Europe at this
+      moment possesses are pieces of old plaster on ruinous brick walls, where
+      the lizards burrow and bask, and which few other living creatures ever
+      approach; and torn sheets of dim canvas, in waste corners of churches; and
+      mildewed stains, in the shape of human figures, on the walls of dark
+      chambers, which now and then an exploring traveller causes to be unlocked
+      by their tottering custode, looks hastily round, and retreats from in a
+      weary satisfaction at his accomplished duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the
+      Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
+      reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
+      altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention of
+      the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens, that
+      public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture, will pay
+      fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There are, of
+      course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
+      conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
+      and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
+      over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
+      and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the roof;
+      but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
+      recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
+      there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same time,
+      in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value in the
+      city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world), curiously
+      illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were set on the
+      floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch the rain which
+      came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling; while in the Ducal
+      Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid on the floor to be
+      repainted; and I was myself present at the re-illumination of the breast
+      of a white horse, with a brush, at the end of a stick five feet long,
+      luxuriously dipped in a common house-painter's vessel of paint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
+      continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate manner,
+      over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the Sala del Gran
+      Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in Venice (1851-2) to
+      the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in tolerable condition,&mdash;the
+      largest work of Tintoret, and the most wonderful piece of pure, manly, and
+      masterly oil-painting in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
+      patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
+      regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to bring
+      them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of stating
+      what pictures <i>are</i>, and what <i>were</i>, in the interior of the
+      Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the "Paradise"
+      of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di
+      Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were full of
+      pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so
+      many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes
+      when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the Alps,
+      crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the
+      Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on
+      the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing
+      into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls
+      had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the
+      rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with
+      their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NOTE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
+      important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
+      references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
+      republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
+      photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my own
+      drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of this
+      smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
+      separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
+      cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
+      old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures in
+      this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace façade was
+      drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it is
+      worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater part of
+      the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry," will be
+      republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its original
+      wood-blocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
+      St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for ever
+      removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in sea wind
+      and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I have useful
+      record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of these and of
+      the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in the preceding
+      volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St. Mark's Rest,"
+      become to me every hour of my life more precious both for their art and
+      their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me, in my old age, to
+      fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what pence they can spare for
+      these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
+      Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
+      giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
+      already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue work
+      of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
+      entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Posting Date: December 10, 2011 [EBook #9804]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 19, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STONES OF VENICE [INTRODUCTIONS] ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Keren Vergon, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+BY JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE:
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES
+(PRINTED SEPARATELY)
+FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
+
+
+BY
+JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
+purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
+those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a
+permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at
+first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the
+principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been
+modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and
+present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of
+plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of
+other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader
+shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the
+publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of
+forwardness.
+
+The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter
+out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index,
+abridged and corrected.
+
+BRANTWOOD,
+
+_3rd May_, 1879.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. The Quarry
+
+II. The Throne
+
+III. Torcello
+
+IV. St. Mark's
+
+V. The Ducal Palace
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE QUARRY.
+
+
+SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third,
+which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led
+through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
+strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
+countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred
+with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean,
+where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries
+in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
+their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as
+they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind
+than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may,
+perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to
+form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of
+Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest
+which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
+gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so
+during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including
+the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing
+severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the
+change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in
+great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was
+composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment
+when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and
+Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were
+passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially
+to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive
+appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist.
+des Rep. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each
+of the principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix
+III., "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was
+continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy,
+her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine
+hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked
+by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final
+and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo
+trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti
+buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino_,)
+Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader,
+with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
+out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing
+its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among
+the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually
+organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the _visible_
+commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the
+Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari
+followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large
+acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in
+Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the
+battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454,
+Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the
+Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State,
+[Footnote: Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the
+discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.]
+and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious
+form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish
+invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the
+league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement
+of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by
+their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509,
+and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their
+territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the
+fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the
+diminution of her internal strength.
+
+SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between
+the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at
+many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism;
+and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of
+their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]
+
+SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
+both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By
+directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru,
+liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
+
+SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall
+be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great
+Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust
+that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any
+more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
+against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of
+their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence
+of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest
+councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has
+time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are
+sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection
+of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the
+almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire
+was enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular
+circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other
+city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But
+the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of
+her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church,
+[Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size
+and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian
+group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
+greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it
+less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice,
+next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to
+national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks,
+supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the
+mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also,
+in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.] who now rests
+beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not
+satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed
+around his tomb.
+
+SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which
+we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual
+religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my
+present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of
+which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able
+to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote:
+                    "In that temple porch,
+  (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+  Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+  And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+  Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+  For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+  On his stony pillow."
+
+I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries,
+and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the
+spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all
+else that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true
+that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her
+prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus
+rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more
+than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V.,
+which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great
+tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or
+the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted
+out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
+from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her
+knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.
+[Footnote: At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The
+Papal Power in Venice."]
+
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
+it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
+contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
+restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the
+annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be
+ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of
+law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was
+subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears
+usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every
+instance in which private passion sought its gratification through
+public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
+public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence,
+that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless
+forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than
+that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only
+[Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax
+e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy
+were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked
+battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank
+under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed
+with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of
+lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are
+no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack
+of a foreign enemy.]
+
+SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
+would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which
+the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which
+the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true
+connection with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+SECTION XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were
+painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna
+or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of
+the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the
+ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there
+is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of
+one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal.
+The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of
+Venice was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
+here give a general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent a travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, a cent mils de
+la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cite que j'aye jamais veue et qui
+plus faict d'honneur a ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Memoires de Commynes, liv.
+vii. ch. xviii.]
+
+SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
+Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
+some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real
+life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
+"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
+There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
+fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
+English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
+to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of
+architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand
+this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the
+connection of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the
+East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the
+various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once
+for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all
+the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many
+beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all
+Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and
+what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic,
+Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks
+gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the
+arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture,
+are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from
+Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
+
+SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
+shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier
+derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he
+should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the
+shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if
+the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three
+families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest
+architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the
+sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
+spiritualization of both.
+
+SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are
+the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote:
+Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."]
+
+SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
+clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result,
+until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service;
+except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it,
+and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often
+very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity:
+seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it;
+invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
+over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest
+at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman
+Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of
+the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many
+respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of
+imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores
+of the Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
+gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
+Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange,
+gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so
+would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has
+been undisturbed. [Footnote: The reader will find the _weak_ points of
+Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,--
+Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained.
+
+Section XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into
+two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other
+at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque,
+properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative
+perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But
+I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art
+together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the
+same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of
+the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the
+fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be
+found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may
+be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an
+architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the
+degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to
+higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter
+forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
+branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects
+more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of
+government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of
+the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed,
+losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived
+of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change.
+
+SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While
+in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps,
+appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with
+the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with
+which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual
+character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its
+influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to
+the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the
+influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two
+nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of
+derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs
+of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and
+idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid
+asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both
+horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over
+its golden paralysis.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system
+to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the
+Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of
+worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the
+sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.
+[Footnote: Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all
+imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their
+minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and
+mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the
+North, and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they
+met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very
+centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of
+the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck,
+is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to
+mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures
+were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious
+still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
+decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of
+that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first,
+an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas.
+Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader
+will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two
+aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was
+separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above,
+large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming
+the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
+gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
+"Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily
+thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square
+pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and
+civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone;
+but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been
+made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the
+nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one
+of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great
+European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession
+of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
+first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote:
+Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether
+the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen
+being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by
+their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever
+other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such
+vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first
+division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist
+of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part
+of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
+not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for
+the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in
+art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But
+their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long
+prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people
+had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the
+practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very
+primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
+architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab
+forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would
+probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab
+school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it
+will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those
+which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The
+churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the
+Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it.
+But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans
+introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture,
+already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and
+Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited
+in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect
+the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the
+Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
+artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the
+city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an
+ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole
+peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of
+certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and
+entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence
+of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the
+engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the
+Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the
+_distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the
+churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the
+ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
+Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third
+division of the essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic)
+style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is
+transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from
+the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century;
+that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the
+central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year
+1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe
+de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St.
+Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly
+supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of
+every art she has since practised.
+
+SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality
+in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps,"
+chap. ii.)
+
+All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at
+once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a
+flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then
+perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the
+representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous
+under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs
+without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity,
+gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic
+affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and
+lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of
+landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually
+usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
+prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
+confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and
+Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of
+besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and
+ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect,
+and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the
+fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in
+England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of
+George II.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard
+it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture,
+and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does
+not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in
+buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should
+lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor
+is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to
+regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly
+the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern
+times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying
+the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools
+and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through
+them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere
+else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay.
+I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader
+with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of
+the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features
+with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and
+pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
+I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon
+two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
+attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The
+tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of
+the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the
+period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical
+element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is
+as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is
+a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a
+faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without
+painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
+bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are
+simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large,
+but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have
+looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+    "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
+    bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
+    It may be called one of the last links which connect the
+    declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
+    which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
+    defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+    which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
+    we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
+    the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
+    and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
+    reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
+    Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is
+another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478,
+after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of
+Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks,
+carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced
+by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the
+blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly
+tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of
+one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian
+superlative by translation.
+
+    "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+    proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
+    sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
+    opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
+    intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il
+    predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
+    con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
+    fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi
+    lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge;
+    capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of
+the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering
+this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested
+in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).
+
+    "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+    scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
+    arts attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the
+inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do
+not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous
+mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such
+utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of
+intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast,
+could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's
+countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the
+solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend
+of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much
+the zecchin.
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.]
+
+SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter;
+but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting
+piece of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal facades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."
+[Footnote: The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+quality.] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the
+seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series
+of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the
+others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
+reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della
+Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside
+whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning
+of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This
+is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea facade is earlier; of
+which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible:
+for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
+shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and
+lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea facade
+being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena
+Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is
+Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at
+the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the
+statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the
+reader.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to
+follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit
+to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied
+the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea facade,
+eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by
+thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right
+to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that
+next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I
+thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the
+18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace;
+and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated,
+the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire
+series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers
+above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it,
+fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have
+lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got
+Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems
+are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but
+she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone_.
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the
+Reformation on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I
+shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the
+Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself
+is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the
+Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very
+forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps,"
+in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's:
+"Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the
+Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the
+difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a
+subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume
+that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not
+understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they
+simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at
+present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with
+rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with
+obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but
+never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of
+votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear
+conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good
+architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad;
+that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly
+visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
+the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating
+about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured
+that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must
+enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble
+and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it
+must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or
+Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all
+foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and
+that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
+inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a
+law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty,
+and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad;
+and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for
+the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
+and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the
+reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
+foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
+looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture,
+the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form,
+as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask
+the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
+and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might
+together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though
+perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have
+therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which
+I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and
+simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of
+architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
+will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a
+simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From
+that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very
+singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether
+unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to
+dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done;
+for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion
+of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture,
+and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than
+dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair
+trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and
+be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I
+shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent
+reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary
+preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of
+Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble,
+poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal;
+and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of
+architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries
+been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be
+serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have
+hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the
+arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done
+meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why
+could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came
+it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose
+no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully
+conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? [Footnote:
+Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself
+capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
+vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance.
+Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist
+merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate
+itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became
+themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was
+turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of
+both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's
+people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and
+died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been
+borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of
+faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was
+borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony
+or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an
+intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further
+use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship
+the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come,
+then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us
+know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed
+to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look
+upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her
+palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the
+sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we
+shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on
+which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should
+efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+[FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE THRONE.
+
+
+SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in
+which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
+toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
+countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of
+the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had
+surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest,
+scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the
+long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for
+the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
+sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of
+the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men,
+an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to
+be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive
+halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder,
+there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly
+cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe
+in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as
+his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but
+that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some
+slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are
+far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy;
+but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than
+atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the
+midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the
+mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast
+sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the
+north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the
+east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black
+weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal,
+under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the
+ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue,
+soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps
+beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our
+own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and
+changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun
+declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly
+named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city,
+the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one
+long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and
+willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua
+rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage
+of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended
+themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the
+craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole
+horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing
+through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back
+into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away
+eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty
+fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of
+evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea,
+until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer
+burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it
+magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
+gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
+reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
+through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
+rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
+opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat
+moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet,
+upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of
+rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the
+shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
+palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so
+adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent;
+when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the
+gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's
+Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the
+mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of
+the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the
+boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of
+silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its
+sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,
+[Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that
+the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene
+so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its
+history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her
+existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the
+fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the
+mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that
+all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as
+the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to
+destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which
+seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well
+as of the sea.
+
+SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with
+change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their
+influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the
+noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only
+by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and
+though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated
+ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
+traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has
+been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin,
+and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are
+little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the
+imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
+importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and
+disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
+surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there
+must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent
+feeling of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may
+indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which
+they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from
+the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their
+own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are
+in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the
+objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern
+fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of
+decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into
+dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow
+deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the
+centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever
+saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless
+interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his
+great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty
+years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city
+have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries,
+that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their
+tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the
+Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the
+novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of
+the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot
+of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the
+great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs
+had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of
+_their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the
+delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court,
+and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have
+sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail
+over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth,
+and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous
+a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the
+day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built
+by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of
+nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped
+by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the
+true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and
+trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long
+denied her dominion.
+
+SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no
+feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange
+sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and
+enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain
+upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the
+distribution of its debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and
+sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the
+plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here
+and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm
+substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which
+descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern
+slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain
+bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks
+out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain
+washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of
+the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky
+barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which
+continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of
+the ruins of ages.
+
+SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by
+insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which
+appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually;
+the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the
+Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment
+to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly
+expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part
+of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of
+brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these
+same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to
+check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The
+finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the
+rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however
+pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of
+the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before
+they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown
+down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the
+eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds
+forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a
+tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid
+change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is
+built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE.
+
+SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this
+great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place
+to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the
+Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of
+from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided
+into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank
+and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and
+other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the
+neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most
+places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at
+low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding
+channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to
+the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets,
+consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to
+be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the
+contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low
+water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of
+seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance
+by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the
+openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a
+clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which
+appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different
+periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their
+size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and
+churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and
+encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the
+metropolis.
+
+SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet
+(varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides
+of Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause
+continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a
+reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land
+is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the
+form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages:
+there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the
+mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy
+breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic,
+but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's
+having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its
+true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of
+piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in
+spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the
+quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance
+before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But
+the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty
+inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and
+at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark
+plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches
+of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of
+the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the
+fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five
+feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow
+the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea
+water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes
+upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed
+that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to
+and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is
+often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher
+ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what
+it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the
+windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the
+melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of
+the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls
+and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright
+investiture and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the
+waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness
+beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor
+and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the
+tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a
+questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the
+horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for
+his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the
+sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children
+were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and
+yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let
+it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things
+which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole
+existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or
+compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the
+sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would
+again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had
+stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of
+the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and
+bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other
+parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have
+become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the
+tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
+water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible:
+even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in
+landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the
+highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance
+halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood
+and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water,
+a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
+water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
+intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
+would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
+peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
+
+SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast
+between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the
+romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he
+have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
+instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the
+wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been
+permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers
+into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of
+the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have
+understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the
+void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand!
+How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us
+most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then
+in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how
+little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy
+margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among
+their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation
+possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden
+clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white
+scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather
+and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the
+East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+[SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+TORCELLO.
+
+
+SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which
+near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a
+higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass,
+raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow
+creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for
+some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds
+whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool
+beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On
+this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic
+type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder
+us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we
+may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of
+ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
+ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
+purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
+sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
+hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
+mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
+space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
+level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north
+and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
+and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched
+with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at
+momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the
+south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and
+pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and
+almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we
+gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
+cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry),
+the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than
+the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable
+church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see
+little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the
+sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and
+gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor
+any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
+company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
+
+SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
+of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
+there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
+shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
+southern sky.
+
+Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
+and VENICE.
+
+Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this
+day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
+of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
+mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
+mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
+rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
+people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
+paths of the sea.
+
+The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
+left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
+the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
+up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
+temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
+of meadow land.
+
+SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile
+is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
+broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of
+the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the
+Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present
+some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly
+larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each
+side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow
+field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable
+footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the
+form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth
+being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and
+that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that
+they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the
+first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of
+the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is
+far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the
+pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and
+their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the
+arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a
+cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator
+receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been
+which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could
+not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished
+as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of
+building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight
+and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."]
+who sought in the hurried erection of their Island church such a shelter
+for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not
+attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the
+other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the
+churches which they had seen destroyed.
+
+There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some
+of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God
+by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation
+prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of
+luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely
+devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance
+and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and
+architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy
+stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which
+answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole
+building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the
+cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of
+the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last
+Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are
+raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space
+between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the
+semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at
+once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home
+left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted
+but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed."
+
+SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible
+that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may
+have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series
+of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not,
+however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am
+rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the
+building was originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics
+representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and
+Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the
+significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with
+imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in
+the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
+political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
+satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
+mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural
+or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one
+should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not
+appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great
+facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of
+Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That
+Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable
+through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the
+figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of
+intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder,
+but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the
+faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of
+founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but
+only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite
+mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead
+which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in
+them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the
+wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
+
+SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in
+the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of
+all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish
+and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
+actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure.
+The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the
+best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for
+their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
+exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most
+conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the
+six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose
+a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the
+singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The
+bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two
+face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description,
+though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or
+pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of
+the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this
+screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was
+constructed.
+
+SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of
+its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked
+at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of
+the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the
+staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in
+the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase
+being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich,
+but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those
+which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the
+mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the
+proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of
+the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the
+original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
+procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
+crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
+sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
+surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
+course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
+the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
+is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
+sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
+always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
+chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
+always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
+thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
+to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
+the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
+became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
+dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
+little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
+it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
+bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection,
+that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
+price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
+fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
+overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
+art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
+is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
+which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
+treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
+the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
+already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament
+is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of
+their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for
+architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract
+perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so
+easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no
+remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so
+slight an effort.
+
+SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance,
+whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect
+would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the
+rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that
+its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious
+spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the
+building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts;
+itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the
+nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of
+the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to
+the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved
+front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a
+narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern
+pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper
+surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid
+upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by
+instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in
+any way moving beneath the preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather
+almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of
+the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe
+and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so
+that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are
+firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in
+venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval
+cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches.
+It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of
+decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service,
+and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature
+of a church be the best possible. [Footnote: Appendix V., "Modern
+Pulpits."]
+
+SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves
+about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I
+believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to
+listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
+unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place
+appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the
+same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression,
+irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the
+first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the
+speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a
+very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest
+of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I
+have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are
+peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
+rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
+erection in other parts of the building:--and though this may often be
+done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
+than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
+think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
+preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
+sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
+hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
+encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the
+delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for
+when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of
+work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade
+by them.
+
+SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
+clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
+employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease
+of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as
+a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as
+the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care
+and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we
+shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
+delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
+golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
+sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
+cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly
+come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
+prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
+restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that
+duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in
+happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be
+necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his
+faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life
+or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge
+over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an
+hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor
+to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage
+on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days
+together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been
+forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and
+to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by
+this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary
+with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and
+languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts
+of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame
+them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by
+this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the
+Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the
+openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth
+her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead
+in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with
+changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from
+which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes
+upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains
+recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener
+alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear
+with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of
+oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may
+be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he
+speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have
+gathered in their thirst.
+
+SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello
+is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
+occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls
+to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which
+lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps
+or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
+intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
+the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access
+intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
+arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort
+(for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not
+for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more
+conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no
+furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well
+worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative
+of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was
+never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter
+absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
+
+SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to
+remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the
+episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the
+minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently
+symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot.
+Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of
+men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the
+midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the
+eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man
+had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who
+saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like
+an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the
+Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which
+they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as
+the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and
+have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His
+name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the
+sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the
+dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth
+conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of
+her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her
+palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend
+the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of
+Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble
+ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with
+the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the
+strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the
+pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been
+closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of
+their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls,
+amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of
+the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that
+ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
+
+  THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT,
+  AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ST. MARK'S.
+
+
+SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as
+the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
+entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
+hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
+Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
+work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he
+have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be
+represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so
+often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he
+himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye
+with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in
+repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!
+
+SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the
+ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it
+was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose
+him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that
+before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was
+thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I
+believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of
+St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader
+who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie
+Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by
+him.] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and
+embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church
+of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the
+"Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice,
+1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia
+well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before
+setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a
+small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some
+houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being
+driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark,
+snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace
+be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to
+foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne piu veduta Citta;" but the
+fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.
+
+SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not,
+St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be
+considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue,
+standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the
+opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said
+to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and
+the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not
+to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early
+time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St.
+Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and
+on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to
+say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the
+bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a
+small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between
+the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza,
+of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
+
+SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
+removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the
+present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My
+authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the
+Ducal Palace.] gave a very different character to the Square of St.
+Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint,
+and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed,
+occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor.
+St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed,
+to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal
+Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the
+Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."]
+
+SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the
+Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was
+partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and
+with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on
+under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building
+being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
+considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,
+[Footnote: "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the
+Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the
+reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have
+consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church
+itself:
+
+  "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
+  Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
+
+is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
+probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
+Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
+according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
+being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
+supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
+though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
+But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
+consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
+1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
+probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter
+the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of
+any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above
+the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
+Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the
+pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the
+exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and
+tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance
+school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret
+substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the
+Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed
+Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.] happily, though with no good
+will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they
+destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter;
+meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of
+periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible.
+
+SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
+stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
+fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
+difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
+Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how
+long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
+additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily
+distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely
+executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of
+evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another
+over the northern door of the facade; the first representing the
+interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church.
+
+SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
+consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
+that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what
+appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful
+impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body
+of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976;
+but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion
+excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The
+following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by
+the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.
+
+"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
+the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so
+that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
+venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
+Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
+confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
+and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now
+depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed,
+and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the
+people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers
+for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a
+slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the
+altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
+exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which
+the body of the Evangelist was laid."
+
+SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They
+were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as,
+for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark
+extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers,
+which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint
+and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall
+not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian
+Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means
+effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved
+mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after
+the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of
+the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior
+of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer,
+then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the
+Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet
+embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux"
+over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most
+other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely
+represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in
+order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of
+picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand
+things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or
+two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague
+background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might
+get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some
+useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with
+the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence
+too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day,
+and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole
+church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment
+still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the
+other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
+being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics
+had been executed at that period, and their absence in the
+representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in
+order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such
+works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St.
+Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not
+appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the
+northern door; [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right,
+however.)] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other
+piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the
+building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the
+bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And
+this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence
+respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we
+have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet
+here is one of the most important exterior decorations assuredly
+retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style
+would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric.
+However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to
+remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh,
+twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions
+to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the
+fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the
+seventeenth.
+
+SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I
+may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
+leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
+by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
+seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to
+the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
+building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary,
+direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with
+anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects
+the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
+influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
+therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested
+by the obscurities of chronology.
+
+SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St.
+Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
+cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
+us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can
+see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray
+gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the
+centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes
+in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter,
+and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails,
+before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim
+houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there,
+and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and
+small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little,
+crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side;
+and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of
+red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show
+here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister
+arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid
+out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not
+uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are
+walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the
+grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there
+stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark
+places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where
+the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which
+has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth,
+perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up
+to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades,
+shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking
+fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape,
+and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen,
+melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above
+that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though
+they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black
+points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into
+invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
+birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so
+harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast
+between the cliffs and sea.
+
+SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of
+all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
+secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense
+and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
+cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
+have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and
+on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or
+catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the
+city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the
+river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land
+at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moise, which may be considered
+as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English
+cathedral gateway.
+
+SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide
+where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
+salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
+brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high
+houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an
+inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and
+chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows
+with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here
+and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some
+inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high
+over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be,
+occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about
+eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is
+narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable
+shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in
+those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares
+laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases
+entering at the front only,--and fading away in a few feet from the
+threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but
+which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back
+of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious
+shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a
+penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a
+little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded
+flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at
+the fruiterer's, where the dark-green watermelons are heaped upon the
+counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel
+leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is
+nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded
+patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next
+comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a
+very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over
+certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be denned or
+enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop of the
+calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the Madonna
+is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of
+three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
+Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
+gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they
+have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
+
+SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black
+Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble,
+deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of
+vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its
+side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence
+to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza,
+(mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first
+by the frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another
+time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near
+the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of
+lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them
+into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and
+then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great
+light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of
+St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
+chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
+themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
+that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
+into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
+broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
+sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.
+
+SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of
+ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great
+square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
+far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long
+low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold,
+and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
+vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
+alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
+and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
+and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
+together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
+of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
+leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
+the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
+interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
+branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
+round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
+stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
+flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
+sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
+it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
+as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
+interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
+acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
+Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
+language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
+men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
+another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
+with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
+of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden
+strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with
+stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break
+into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes
+and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore
+had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid
+them with coral and amethyst.
+
+Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
+is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
+restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
+upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among
+the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living
+plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely,
+that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
+
+SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath
+it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway
+of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a
+countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian,
+rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of
+the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
+the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them
+that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and
+caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
+almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the
+middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
+Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
+jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the
+sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will,
+would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of
+the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
+unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
+unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
+desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with
+cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
+clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church
+porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it
+continually.
+
+That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
+let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
+passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
+d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there.
+The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the
+turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
+
+SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
+with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
+in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
+figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
+glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
+the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that
+it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed;
+for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and
+curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the
+pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might
+be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain
+back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that
+gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon
+his breast.
+
+The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
+right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower:
+the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest
+of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp,
+perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines;
+but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
+countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
+stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is
+a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of
+flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in
+summer.
+
+It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
+Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
+died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe
+half of what we know of her former fortunes.
+
+SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it
+is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its
+walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with
+age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
+altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
+beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands
+and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its
+translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the
+color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light
+fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye
+can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of
+Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and
+there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the
+"Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has
+expressed the ancient division in the single massy line,
+
+  "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
+
+and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
+the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
+every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
+running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
+fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
+not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
+verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the
+choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the
+grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence
+of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall.
+Venice has made her choice.
+
+SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
+another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he
+and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his
+lips.
+
+Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
+rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper
+twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
+the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a
+vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy
+aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters
+only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray
+or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts
+a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall
+in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is
+from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of
+the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered
+with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
+to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints
+flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under
+foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one
+picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and
+terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of
+prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running
+fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures
+of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption;
+for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at
+last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every
+stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes
+with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its
+feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the
+church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of
+the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when
+the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
+traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes
+raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is
+not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and
+always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow
+of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised
+in power, or returning in judgment.
+
+SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
+people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
+various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
+places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and,
+for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
+number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their
+appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the
+step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of
+St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
+which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
+porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
+then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss
+and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
+lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if
+comforted.
+
+SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
+characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
+devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
+their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
+there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
+than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
+the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
+architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
+embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
+on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
+of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
+Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
+comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter,
+which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named,
+must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient
+causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether
+to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence
+which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind,
+and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in
+the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of
+building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained
+with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness;
+preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close
+air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious
+services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular
+legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition,
+which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end
+of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally
+civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the
+true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as
+far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the
+Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed
+Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be
+regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered
+ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at
+Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger
+number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that
+is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
+Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
+northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
+the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all
+the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of
+the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has
+retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole
+church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with
+silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.]
+
+SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
+were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
+employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the
+torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye
+traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole
+residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I
+never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any
+feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their
+understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the
+English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services
+for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many
+of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now
+surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no
+prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in
+vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the
+ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive
+attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries.
+The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is
+forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long
+been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those
+to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
+than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
+English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
+and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
+shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
+tombs in the desecrated cloister.
+
+SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
+present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
+meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
+be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
+abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
+present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
+Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
+relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
+influencing the feelings of a civilized community.
+
+The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
+carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
+architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
+should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
+construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
+art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
+expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
+merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
+its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
+in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
+retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
+domes appear to have lost for ever.
+
+SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
+respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
+in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
+possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
+Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
+nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
+general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
+soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
+exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
+and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
+enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
+with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
+ages.
+
+SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
+the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
+confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the
+great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
+incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
+before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
+reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
+influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
+school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
+massive materials.
+
+It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
+find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
+setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
+outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
+cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
+London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide
+"Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to
+have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different
+species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties
+which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the
+reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of
+the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are
+varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance,
+in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with
+marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of
+the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built
+of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and
+exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes
+the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in
+the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of
+buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the
+forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as
+in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman
+and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one
+internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on
+this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
+
+SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
+chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
+incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
+now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
+builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
+is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
+masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
+acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
+builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
+facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
+the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
+contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
+of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
+life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
+Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
+of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
+knight.
+
+These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
+be our business to develop.
+
+SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
+to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
+quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the
+mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely
+with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances,
+in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on
+the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as
+great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the
+natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as
+possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the
+limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by
+cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many
+marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There
+would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone
+as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if
+the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins
+of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out
+of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a
+quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and
+partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the
+island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his
+edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious
+marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the
+sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the
+observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the
+colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole
+surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular
+enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a
+view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any
+regular service in the support of the building.
+
+An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
+for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
+alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
+to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
+cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
+and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
+have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
+every relic with which he was entrusted.
+
+SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
+Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
+under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
+other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
+twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
+porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
+freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
+instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
+been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
+admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
+inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
+practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
+of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
+practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
+prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
+departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
+ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant
+vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a
+shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than
+the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
+emotion.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
+this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its
+erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method,
+considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
+
+In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
+find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood,
+that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme
+ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another,
+namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the
+Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of
+the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any
+perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift
+just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an
+ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St.
+Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever
+set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it
+is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that
+the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf
+man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
+orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
+discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
+common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
+manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
+the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
+the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
+bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
+St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
+took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
+which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
+barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
+of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
+palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
+had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
+this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
+foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
+beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
+frescoes of Giorgione.
+
+SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
+protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
+church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
+remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
+which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and
+let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the
+architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to
+be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
+thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
+of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of
+brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
+marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
+or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
+will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.
+
+SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding
+the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at
+least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even
+when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed
+parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the
+wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to
+cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface,
+but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
+string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
+aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
+the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary
+that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
+proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
+work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
+the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
+the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
+incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.
+
+SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As
+the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
+incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
+of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
+mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
+less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
+delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
+depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
+source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
+therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
+whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
+thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
+the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
+otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.
+
+SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
+smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
+structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
+left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
+appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
+becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only
+does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
+labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
+than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
+size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
+rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
+themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
+any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
+the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
+and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
+to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
+support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
+tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
+allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
+direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the
+structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his
+pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial
+in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may
+be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
+lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
+quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
+said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with
+color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there
+is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the
+procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from
+this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but
+in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his
+walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the
+portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in
+this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the
+walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of
+the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his
+eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the
+mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to
+bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of
+all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
+wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
+the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,
+[Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza
+che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the
+verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of
+natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will
+be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work
+of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of
+precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and
+brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk
+required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons,
+and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be,
+without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the
+attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like
+that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of
+joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a
+single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the
+spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the
+structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
+construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the
+shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
+sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
+bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
+of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
+in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to
+its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not
+blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of
+hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being
+dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief
+part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and
+tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard
+work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we
+perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be
+crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in
+the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the
+best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or
+crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real
+size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either
+inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value;
+that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore
+ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are
+even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of
+materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to
+see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set
+in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and
+where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon
+their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among
+the mazes of their azure veins.
+
+SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since
+the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
+diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
+diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
+must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the
+series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that,
+on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind
+of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been
+sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the
+rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of
+smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained
+under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing
+of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The
+stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do
+so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily
+measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between
+them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same
+proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the
+quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the
+facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to
+select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however,
+often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very
+fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has
+neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one
+column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he
+obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts
+fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he
+cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for
+available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his
+ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from
+immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does
+not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
+obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
+to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
+often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
+important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
+admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
+must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
+varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
+altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
+complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
+its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
+and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
+Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
+smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
+for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens
+that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so
+great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone,
+not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the
+disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates
+successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges
+in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will
+enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins.
+And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the
+alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double
+good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation
+of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a
+farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever
+similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that
+they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to
+disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the
+building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the
+whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any
+one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is
+perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of
+the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical
+patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly
+deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in
+reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that
+in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to
+accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and
+the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
+subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
+inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those
+of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
+ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
+themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort,
+as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
+lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
+knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it
+is discovered, into deeper truths.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in
+cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is
+evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based
+on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there
+can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not
+admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever
+ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch
+deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences
+which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of
+the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which
+may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black
+recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque
+projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any
+form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with
+robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous
+goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable
+shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the
+sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as
+he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the
+design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble,
+where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender
+pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must
+not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind
+be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine
+discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is
+to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the
+features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions
+of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes
+rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out,
+until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences
+of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental
+designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the
+Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
+builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
+exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss
+which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear
+bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such
+conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of
+the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation,
+rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced
+to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more
+intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory
+rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body.
+This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of
+creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations,
+Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so
+concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the
+rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism;
+secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often
+colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the
+treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase,
+or shallow hieroglyphic.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
+animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
+iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds
+to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
+practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find
+artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their
+elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would
+be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human
+and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general
+importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we
+constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges
+of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent
+of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must
+expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and
+diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the
+manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic
+ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been
+directly derived.
+
+SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
+must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
+to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
+architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
+relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation
+of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
+intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
+worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
+to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is
+sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted,
+and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may
+anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and
+that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the
+feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern
+cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the
+neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that
+fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care
+little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to
+contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the
+incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or
+thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
+involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
+originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace
+of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a
+line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting
+which could be added with advantage.
+
+SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
+thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force,
+and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow,
+there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and
+obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without
+danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like
+glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with
+holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the
+light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this
+artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an
+effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it
+will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still
+totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that
+the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden
+points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other
+portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps
+inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be
+wearied by the lightness of the general handling.
+
+SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
+force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color
+as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that
+the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
+decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
+system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
+understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
+nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
+Southern nations.
+
+SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
+never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
+has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
+believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
+that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
+in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.
+
+Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
+better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
+and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
+that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
+builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
+could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
+any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
+all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
+prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
+Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
+think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
+Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
+Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
+color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
+ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
+color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
+in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
+is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
+builders, which we have finally to examine.
+
+SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
+that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the
+porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it;
+but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
+namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred
+it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could.
+The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He
+had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded
+the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be
+painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and
+green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of
+abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his
+hawthorn blue.
+
+SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
+definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
+the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
+of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a
+matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees
+green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far
+more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
+mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
+abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development
+of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous
+depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
+compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to
+be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more
+delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes
+very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved
+by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the
+flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they
+appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented
+exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage;
+breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the
+lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and
+pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in
+nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be
+colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality.
+Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect
+bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in
+portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be
+definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere
+labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and
+there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might
+be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other
+manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the
+necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready
+to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in
+the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best
+means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones
+are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means,
+for they are all permanent.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
+chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit
+of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the
+_naivete_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed
+to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and
+internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in
+pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a
+temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast
+illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded
+with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without
+in letters of enamel and gold.
+
+SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is
+not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final
+consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this
+time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his
+attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of
+color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All
+these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent
+with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of
+color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have
+seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth,
+and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft
+tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none
+of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and
+therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even
+desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind
+addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is
+altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague
+impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be
+disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the
+building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for
+the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting
+up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us
+like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with
+our hand.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
+will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
+architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
+him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
+familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
+were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
+exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
+developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
+nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression
+of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
+exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning,
+except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal
+reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all
+other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture
+faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible
+to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient
+for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or
+the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no
+faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume
+as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so
+rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of
+architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all
+good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the
+effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar
+confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of
+decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the
+result of distance, together with perfect expression of the
+peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable
+artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness,
+neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the
+subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any
+pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates,
+and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two
+buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St.
+Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them
+the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the
+endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new
+Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it
+is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a
+noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was
+hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
+most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
+eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
+inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent
+alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
+illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and
+pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest,
+with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's.
+The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the
+opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate
+the impossibility of illustration.
+
+SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger
+scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp
+folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness.
+The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more
+than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more
+than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same
+depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with
+close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially
+necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow
+sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds
+is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces,
+like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the
+Plate.
+
+The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
+between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
+illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
+alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
+pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale
+green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch
+square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be
+satisfied. [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are
+exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the
+blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the
+effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color
+of a fruit piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an
+azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in
+the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small
+circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each
+only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the
+outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue
+crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled
+hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate
+conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the
+engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers,
+the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine
+architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's
+alone.
+
+From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
+imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection
+to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we
+may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
+vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars
+upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder
+remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky:
+and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are
+everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that
+church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler
+things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who
+delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the
+reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the
+streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what
+there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the
+men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity,
+and let him judge between us.
+
+SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
+especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
+ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following
+chapter. [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION
+XXXIII above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large
+jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I
+must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the
+inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it,
+as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the
+churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the
+first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of
+ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament
+of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character.
+
+SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
+endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to
+be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of
+offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately
+expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church,
+as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its
+purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to
+deal with briefly and candidly.
+
+The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
+presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
+ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our
+own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a
+cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a
+preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation
+was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral.
+
+SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
+modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier
+architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous.
+But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely
+uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work
+beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate
+ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget
+that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and
+beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was
+rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which
+fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that
+what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was
+then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city,
+of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and
+streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a
+peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most
+elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meetinghouse has by his
+white-washed walls and square-cut casements. [Footnote: See the farther
+notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV. Stones of Venice.]
+
+SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and
+then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a
+kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because,
+while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat
+ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our
+abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for
+every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal
+baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not
+because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the
+revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof
+was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our
+cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and
+then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the
+fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those
+churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all
+the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what
+it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know,
+if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they
+take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily
+to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and
+sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or
+furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in
+modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and
+much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost
+exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have
+not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were
+deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly
+promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is
+now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good
+architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from
+which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe
+it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit
+itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to
+ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly
+to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and
+lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
+dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle
+was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when
+the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave.
+There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in
+pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches
+were larger than in most other buildings, because they had to hold more
+people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they
+were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional
+offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and
+religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and
+familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn
+the facade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of
+every house in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches
+of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the
+Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the
+dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the
+distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that
+the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of
+profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be
+drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church
+architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least
+one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house.
+
+SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I
+must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately
+marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that
+every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as
+exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that
+they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as
+beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of
+style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely
+more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the
+confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse,
+not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the
+quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic
+service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the
+fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced
+oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which
+were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks
+and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting,
+buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere
+size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples
+elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the
+adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing
+intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the
+forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when
+they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely
+to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more
+richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the
+carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible:
+all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical
+buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were
+built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna,
+or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door,
+and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the
+grotesques of the brackets and the gables.
+
+SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question
+respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally
+different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So
+long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest
+continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of
+inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question
+whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving
+beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active
+life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and
+color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the
+curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they
+are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say,
+may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if
+once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see
+in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest
+services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire
+to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house
+of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb
+instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask
+whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should
+worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim
+whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters,
+must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray.
+
+SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the
+ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is
+evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the
+permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be
+dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow
+that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical.
+It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the
+church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable
+to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the
+dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as
+there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's
+opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles
+which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice,
+so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience
+may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use,
+which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church
+service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear
+daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style
+for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes
+them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and
+this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for
+houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is
+essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us
+convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of
+convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style it
+tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the
+Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore
+less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for
+both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were
+used for both.
+
+SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which,
+according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as
+either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I
+mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have
+already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural
+features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or
+sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure
+Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by
+features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please,
+altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered
+impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and
+entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and
+interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which
+becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by
+representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore,
+the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in
+modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion
+has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the
+art of the mosaicist?
+
+SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I
+have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is
+likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion.
+One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of
+others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly
+set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could
+pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I
+have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but
+in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts
+with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange
+distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves
+would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I
+do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler
+than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in
+the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for
+that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose
+hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort
+to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general
+fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether
+right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when
+casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what
+class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is
+by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I
+believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most
+influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are
+Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as
+he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by
+religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great
+religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear
+on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture
+illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it
+of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the
+time.
+
+SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the
+chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been
+hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in
+some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind
+is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable
+of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the
+heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it,
+which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power
+of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a
+Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the
+first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and
+would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving
+themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or
+gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the
+figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and
+pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand
+ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly
+sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the
+men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it
+from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who
+read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the
+painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be
+taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more
+popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the
+subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul
+and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan
+hag.
+
+SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
+capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
+suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
+coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
+impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
+the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
+association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
+it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
+conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity,
+and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration
+for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would
+otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of
+emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed
+represent a fact! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill
+told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little
+of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the
+child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is
+Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a
+strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests
+with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the
+grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and
+whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not
+always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one,
+and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but
+always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into
+sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of
+accredited truth.
+
+SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the
+truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no
+longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an
+idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in
+the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the
+representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or
+that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this
+or that, painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in
+the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of
+tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his
+Iconographie Chretienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'etonnait de re
+trouver a la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait
+dessine dans le baptistere de St. Marc, a Venise. Le costume des
+personnages est partout et en tout temps le meme, non-seulement pour la
+forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le
+nombre et l'epaisseur des plis."] We do not severely criticise the
+manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh
+investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern
+religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment
+uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and
+this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the
+worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more
+especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so
+also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly
+religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more
+faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it
+was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of
+both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have
+been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end
+of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in
+modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be
+methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world
+remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be
+education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid
+invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural
+powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society
+lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts
+especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for
+the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy
+studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and
+knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do
+not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt
+to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy,
+and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is
+utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are
+many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who
+have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be
+used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what
+is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a
+village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other
+histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and
+set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having.
+But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work
+when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing
+stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth
+square stones, and consider ourselves wise.
+
+SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but
+I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who
+suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be
+utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be
+granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they
+were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole
+church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its
+illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their
+Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though
+far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no
+other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_
+have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with
+printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they
+could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily
+became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the
+walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the
+Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the
+reader to examine the connection and subjects of these mosaics; but in
+the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any
+sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in
+permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored
+portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are
+they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman
+empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the
+expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies
+always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which
+are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to
+represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so,
+even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early
+Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement,
+but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course
+one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects
+between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind,
+which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the
+nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro
+cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by
+which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance
+and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them
+barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever,
+these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand
+exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images
+which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the
+great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art
+itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor
+can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however
+influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of
+consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a
+Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is
+screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large
+family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is
+reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare
+it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all
+Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the
+word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the
+fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts
+are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of
+Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been
+worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant
+persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works.
+Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the
+mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place
+of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del
+Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious
+influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of
+Europe they have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of
+the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any
+other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for
+human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I
+believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous
+idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other.
+It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as,
+since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in
+glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings;
+partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which,
+in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because
+imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it.
+
+SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the
+inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented
+in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting
+could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions,
+and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern
+book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth
+naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great
+importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural
+effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the
+common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning
+of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often
+of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth
+and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches
+with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their
+size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color
+attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations;
+neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such
+as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before
+the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast
+shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of
+spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of
+receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not
+acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances
+and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of
+Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of
+the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look
+down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa.
+
+SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to
+discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind
+of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow
+out the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to
+fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the
+feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was
+built.
+
+Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct
+the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between
+ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with
+writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be
+large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to
+decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that
+every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would
+rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and
+that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We
+must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all
+that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of
+the builder or of his times.
+
+SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the
+church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and
+new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these
+persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old
+Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of
+Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the
+subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern
+churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order
+to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for
+salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are
+dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna
+was the type.
+
+SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the
+church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of
+Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other,
+in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open
+upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN
+ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds
+the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE,
+ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of
+the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of
+Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE
+REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU
+CONSIDER."
+
+Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen
+when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was
+supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance
+into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance
+into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book
+which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the
+same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the
+invisible Church of God.
+
+SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the
+head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that
+door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy
+Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the
+Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the
+Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second
+and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar
+offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of
+fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented
+standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are
+pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each
+separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at
+Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the
+four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each
+bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the
+tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that
+of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being
+thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are
+continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the
+gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His
+Church:
+
+    "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH:
+       HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY.
+         HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST:
+  BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD."
+
+And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the
+outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_.
+It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to
+sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels
+celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this
+holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels
+for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that
+the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive
+forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity,
+as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is
+vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended
+into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault
+between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and
+resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate
+scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with
+thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre,
+and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is
+the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the
+subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is
+represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and
+throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the
+twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna,
+and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at
+the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are
+inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
+heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so
+come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice."
+
+SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of
+the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the
+crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with
+Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the
+cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our
+assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath
+their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which
+they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison,
+Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.
+
+SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the
+witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its
+centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
+little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship,
+and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124,
+note.] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of
+the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once
+fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor
+lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of
+New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the
+Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of
+Revelation; [Footnote: The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished,
+and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but
+if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching
+a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an
+ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the
+altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated
+dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange
+contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon
+it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like
+wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning
+palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter
+Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon
+the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that
+opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence
+of warning,--"Christ shall come."
+
+SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look
+with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry
+of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts
+of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at
+once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written
+word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all
+glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of
+the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether
+honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither
+the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that,
+as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be
+of jasper, [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished
+with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the
+World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of
+it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all
+riches"? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long
+perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing
+domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of
+it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there
+from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above
+the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or
+thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple,
+attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would
+forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy
+without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and
+the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain
+ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those
+marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the
+colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that
+once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults,
+that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do
+judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as
+she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten
+this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without
+excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the
+North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused
+and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of
+the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the
+Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other
+cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from
+religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the
+grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street,
+there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify,
+we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace
+or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls
+on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of
+marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined
+the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all
+shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled
+with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin
+was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God,
+burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their
+laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not
+unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of
+gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had
+uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things
+God will bring thee into judgment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DUCAL PALACE.
+
+
+SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter
+that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal
+Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices
+which were raised for half a century after its completion, their
+characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly
+copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of
+Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination,
+employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in
+its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a
+remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds
+of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of
+Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more
+daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause
+to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of
+innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it
+thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon
+an image more attractive.
+
+SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural
+invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in
+self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building
+thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it
+doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is
+actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian
+antiquaries, whether the main facade of the palace be of the fourteenth
+or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course
+necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of
+the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the
+entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I
+trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not
+be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of
+the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into
+the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be
+thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal
+parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much
+as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do
+what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him
+the necessary topographical knowledge:
+
+Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place;
+and the following references will clearly explain their relative
+positions:
+
+A. St. Mark's Place.
+B. Piazzetta.
+P. V. Procuratie Vecchie.
+P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove.
+P. L. Libreria Vecchia.
+I. Piazzetta de' Leoni.
+T. Tower of St. Mark.
+F F. Great Facade of St. Mark's Church.
+M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the
+    separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had
+    been marked, which would have confused the whole.)
+D D D. Ducal Palace.         g s. Giant's stair.
+C. Court of Ducal Palace.    J. Judgement angle.
+c. Porta della Carta.        a. Fig-tree angle.
+p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw).
+S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs).
+R R. Riva de' Schiavoni.
+
+
+[Illustration: FIG. I. The Ducal Palace--Ground Plan.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. II. The Ducal Palace--Bird's eye View.]
+
+
+The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in
+the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B,
+and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on
+the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the
+Church of St. Mark.
+
+Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three
+sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively
+called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Facade;" that towards
+the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Facade;" and that towards the Rio del
+Palazzo, the "Rio Facade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by
+the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes
+under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal
+thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy,
+in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and
+Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar
+was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely
+resemble each other in form.
+
+SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the
+appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement
+will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and
+fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a
+general view of the Sea Facade and Rio Facade (the latter in very steep
+perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly
+represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to
+avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the
+two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is
+the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the
+regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the
+Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland
+used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above
+this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Facade and Rio Facade,
+will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a
+sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called
+the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall
+of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen
+in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the
+Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two
+which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated,
+the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its
+interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and
+fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's
+Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left.
+
+SECTION V. The great facade which fronts the spectator looks southward.
+Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of
+the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern
+Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at
+the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della
+Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the
+"Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark
+side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long
+four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is
+entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no
+accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we
+shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our
+present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older
+palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows,
+refittings of the brickwork, etc.
+
+SECTION VI. It will be observed that the facade is composed of a smooth
+mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other.
+The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at
+once by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken
+right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of
+the Sea Facade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both
+in the inner court and on the Facade, which carry the main walls;
+_b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C
+are the three stories of the interior of the palace.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. III.]
+
+The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple,
+and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed,
+there would be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls,
+carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable.
+
+The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused
+ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient
+masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I
+have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the
+removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the
+subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader;
+but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important.
+
+SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed
+that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the
+facade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable
+instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience,
+which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the
+Gothic schools.
+
+The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall
+find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain
+the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we
+shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning
+of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent
+chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the
+side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was
+no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height
+was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just
+harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question
+how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or
+above them.
+
+The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the
+best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the
+light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of
+illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce
+light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern
+architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would
+have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would
+have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and
+have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper
+story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued
+along the facade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the
+paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He
+unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with
+reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external
+appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather
+gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces
+of wall above and below the windows.
+
+SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows,
+which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is
+painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be
+hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise."
+
+In nearly the centre of the Sea Facade, and between the first and second
+windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace,
+and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony."
+
+The facade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the
+Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when
+people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all
+on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber,
+one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the
+other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea,
+light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of
+Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta
+della Carta.
+
+SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography
+of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its
+history.
+
+We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian
+architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.
+
+The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
+successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
+Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
+superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are
+all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and
+the existing building is formed by the union of the two.
+
+We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader
+will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed
+books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The
+numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given
+with the quotations.
+  Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663.
+  Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829.
+  Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780.
+  Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838.
+  Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811.
+  Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837.
+  Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.]
+
+1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
+
+In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined
+to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of
+their state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina
+Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo
+Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar
+la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi,
+vol. vi. chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or
+Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement
+of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the
+future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the
+banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build
+wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built
+the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace
+now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.
+[Footnote: "Amplio la citta, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d'
+Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la capella di S.
+Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that
+piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the
+nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare
+also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si e che il suddetto
+Agnello lo incommincio da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di
+S. Marco."]
+
+The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of
+Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
+representation of her power.
+
+SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio
+little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte
+della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio;
+that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Facade; but this
+was merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the
+Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great
+water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to
+distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the
+Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio,
+stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the
+boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the
+Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which
+the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are:
+"Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et
+rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was
+built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure
+esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted,
+says: "in the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say on
+the Piazzetta."]
+
+We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the
+existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the
+Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at
+one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some
+magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by
+the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The
+chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the
+palace;" [Footnote: "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino,
+quoted by Cadorin and Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express
+pride in the buildings being worthy of an emperor's examination. This
+was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against
+Candiano IV., [Footnote: There is an interesting account of this revolt
+in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been
+destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important
+restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and
+Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii
+hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are
+usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but
+the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber,
+speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many
+miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with
+ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way
+somewhat startling to the state, by absconding with a French priest to
+St. Michael's in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs,
+therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be
+undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named.] and just repaired, and
+richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as
+having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with
+ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum
+aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_] There can be no doubt
+whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the
+other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi,
+&c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it
+was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color.
+
+SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by
+fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse
+parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these
+fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another
+emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial
+praise. [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis
+sequitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted
+by Cadorin.]
+
+Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again
+repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says
+that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every
+direction;" [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi
+per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle
+for account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace
+seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the
+commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace
+were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time
+when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by
+Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and
+this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly
+clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year
+1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half
+remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani."
+[Footnote: "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M.
+Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro
+Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as
+"molto particolare, e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p.
+593.--It terminates in the year 1422.]
+
+So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.
+
+SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects
+that the important change in the Venetian government which gave
+stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,
+[Footnote: See Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge
+Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and
+prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who
+laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by
+the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government."
+
+We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their
+importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to
+be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism
+of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world.
+[Footnote: Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the
+reign of Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure
+establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the
+people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental
+in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity.
+
+The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain
+limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever
+before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of
+the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement,
+or decoration of the chamber in which they sat.
+
+We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another
+saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge
+Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council
+first sat in it_." [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year,
+therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice
+was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval
+with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation,
+coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal
+representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace
+is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles.
+
+SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian
+historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del
+Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of
+the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in
+expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for
+the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is
+_now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa
+parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu
+fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_,
+quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the
+Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill
+written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del
+1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se
+adoperava a far e pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin
+1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great
+importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the
+meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122
+years."--_Cod. Ven._ tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from
+1253 to 1454.
+
+Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New
+proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the
+Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and
+its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace:
+but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the
+commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the
+first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the
+Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then
+begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole
+period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings
+consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and
+when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being
+continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they
+reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and
+pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the
+junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent,
+which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws.
+
+SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay
+the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built
+by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and
+the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent
+will soon become visible to us.
+
+The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Facade, behind the
+present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on
+the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low
+or high, but probably on a first story. The great facade of the Ziani
+Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as
+far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being
+obviously the points first considered.
+
+SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions
+to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most
+significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction
+of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the
+_Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi
+era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi
+Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle
+in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It
+appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in
+question.]
+
+Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain
+apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the
+Rio Facade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the
+old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments
+at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for
+prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote:
+Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice
+that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose,
+in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made
+against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to
+prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the
+Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported,
+small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable
+rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated.
+[Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen
+them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them
+know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof
+of the palace the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine
+where it is greatest."] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being
+built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio
+in the year 1309.
+
+SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had
+no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed
+by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of
+that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge
+Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of
+Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say
+by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only
+one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo.
+There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his
+reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on
+whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be
+compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is
+recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate
+built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue
+kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St.
+Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se
+al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in
+zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S.
+Marco."--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120.]
+
+SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed
+their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than
+that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This
+door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which
+are fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not
+examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I
+take the passages quoted.] in the following terms:--
+
+"1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St.
+Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates....
+[Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."--Cadorin, 189, I.]
+for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the
+palace."
+
+"1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making
+gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace
+stairs."
+
+The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the
+reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced
+by the Porta della Carta.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered
+for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber
+inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion,
+began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be
+built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was
+probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as
+well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio.
+The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under
+these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven.,
+No. CXLI. p. 365.]
+
+"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
+Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine
+where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the
+Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected
+two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty
+ducats a year."
+
+It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
+Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the
+commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their
+report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the
+commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote:
+Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree:
+"For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not
+capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio
+parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal
+Grande."--P. 324.]
+
+_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building
+involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
+present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
+prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not
+mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it
+has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls
+rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still
+stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as
+shown in Figure II. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can
+be known respecting the design of the Sea Facade, must be gleaned out of
+the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.
+
+Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
+time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
+1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
+discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
+1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
+and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
+be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342
+is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while
+Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the
+Council Chamber as only begun in 1345.]
+
+The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
+conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.
+[Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed
+in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as
+that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls;
+[Footnote: "II primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365
+vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino_.] so that
+the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its
+decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the
+paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi
+1400 vi fece il ciclo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle,
+ch'era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. viii.] They
+represented the heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi
+si messe in oro il ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il
+pergole del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e
+l'altro di stelle, eh' erano la insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_,
+lib. xiii. Compare also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the
+bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this
+time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial
+bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an
+important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two
+square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window
+towards the sea:
+
+  "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI
+  HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT."
+
+And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that
+window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I
+think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out
+and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final
+decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council
+sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the
+Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it,
+the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the
+central one of her life.
+
+SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two,
+in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of
+the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been
+proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three
+years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the
+gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately
+symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which
+it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the
+fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of
+the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new
+Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as
+the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and
+more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the
+building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the
+"Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the
+Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix I.,
+Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in
+Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
+towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva
+dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Facade as important as that to
+the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the
+water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and
+interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the
+nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered
+the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and
+then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity
+of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta
+with the same splendor as the Sea Facade. But no such sweeping measure of
+renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the
+plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a
+gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary
+additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of
+the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon
+the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast
+additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful
+of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own
+enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some
+strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger.
+It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt,
+but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the
+desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and
+the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it.
+
+SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own
+weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under
+the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own
+enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a
+thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be
+for the good of the state.
+
+Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire
+which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's,
+and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I
+shall relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No.
+cxxv. in the Marcian Library, p. 568.]
+
+SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care
+to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's
+house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge_
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] _to restore it in the form in which it
+was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better
+manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was
+forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any
+one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to
+rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was
+magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the
+city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then
+proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the
+late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his
+own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this
+occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they
+ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the
+greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and
+that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish
+interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole
+course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done
+anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but
+in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the
+advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as
+far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this
+accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything
+in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and
+that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never
+endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as
+his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took
+in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very
+old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life
+before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore
+they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building
+for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its
+Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his
+successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to
+observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which
+had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that
+he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that
+he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes
+on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the
+Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses
+of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work;
+and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at
+present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended
+his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but
+hardly even begun."
+
+SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts
+which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the
+whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember,
+that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred
+years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat
+in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to
+destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should
+propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of
+Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once
+be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we
+now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in
+the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were
+in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices
+of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower
+of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one;
+and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
+allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
+most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and
+rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
+Council Chamber, of which the whole facade to the Sea consisted, never
+entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
+connected with the Ducal residence.
+
+I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
+forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422
+[Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild
+the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari
+was elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according
+to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but
+previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari
+enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber
+was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate
+as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle;
+[Footnote: "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran
+Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno
+che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua
+creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is
+probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum;
+[Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto
+Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran
+Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation fo
+fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c.,
+p. 426.]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first
+hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare
+Appendix I. Vol. III.]
+
+SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly
+called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of
+Venice,--and of Venice herself.
+
+The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I
+dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of
+Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been
+called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this
+instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had
+forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces
+might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take
+the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her
+unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her
+fortunes, the city never flourished again.
+
+SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate
+details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued
+under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I
+am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the
+architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the
+following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing facade to the
+Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most
+particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back
+from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta
+della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge
+Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogade
+del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131.] the interior buildings
+connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro, (the Othello
+of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This identification has been accomplished, and
+I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all
+the leisure which, during the last twenty years his manifold office of
+kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in
+discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which
+bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take
+advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will
+shortly be made public.] in 1462.
+
+SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we
+have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was
+close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council
+Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still
+left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more
+probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire
+of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever
+buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion
+of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479,
+together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon
+of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it
+became necessary to reconstruct the entire facades of the portion of the
+palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal.
+This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close
+of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci
+executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum
+of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work
+must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century.
+The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by
+fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and
+the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point
+marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure II on the Rio Facade.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this
+finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire,
+burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious
+pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the
+Sea Facade, and most of those on the Rio Facade, leaving the building a
+mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the
+Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an
+entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading
+architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or
+the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given
+in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbe Cadorin, in
+the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most
+important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace.
+
+I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental
+resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was
+first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others,
+especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute
+designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his
+immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for
+the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and
+Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise
+of Guariento had withered before the flames.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were
+however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier
+work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was
+the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to
+the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of
+Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The
+completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form;
+with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases
+among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and
+defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I
+suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy.
+
+SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the
+details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I
+shall not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here,
+because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this
+volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to
+us in the art of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the
+third volume, Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large
+figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable
+every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that
+the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether
+wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to such
+points of interest as can be explained in the text.
+
+SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning
+of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very
+nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance
+were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should
+be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness
+of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the
+pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other
+four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been
+attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some
+modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of
+buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be
+noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly
+Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks
+of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by
+buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare,
+which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural
+dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large
+surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal
+Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite
+concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of
+Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise
+decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the
+sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane
+surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions
+only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its
+north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner
+angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly
+made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which
+I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence
+will always be distinctly traceable in them.
+
+SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its
+completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The
+central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was
+entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the
+Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the
+principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle
+sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the
+two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and
+their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject;
+above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is
+introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more
+figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel
+holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their
+crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the
+seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the
+ground to the top of the angle.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the
+palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's,
+and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated,
+only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the
+Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according
+to the arrangement just explained,--
+
+First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade).
+
+Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade).
+
+Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade).
+
+Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade).
+
+Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their
+order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the
+reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the
+great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner
+stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most
+important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the
+builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he
+built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson
+which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it
+is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they
+themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their
+city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly
+inscribed.
+
+SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong
+to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the
+Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is
+the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the
+Renaissance spirit.
+
+The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of
+all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank
+confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the
+results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that
+the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence
+in its own wisdom.
+
+Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves.
+
+The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called
+the angle of the Fig-tree:
+
+Its subject is the FALL OF MAN.
+
+The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine:
+
+Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH.
+
+The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle:
+
+Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
+
+It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration,
+the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been
+built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the
+sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two
+schools.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
+principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
+turns to the Piazetta (the facade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw
+above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital,
+which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than
+the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preeminence
+of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was
+first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in
+execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather
+suppose it to have been the earliest completed.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness,
+the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the
+sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary
+adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of
+the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching
+out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for
+several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or
+superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad
+leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight,
+beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate
+plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone
+hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the
+undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine
+angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having
+tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits
+of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have
+been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the
+sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so
+interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the
+subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of this
+chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to
+be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the
+composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses,
+there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending
+leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to
+prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this
+Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it
+is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther
+than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of
+the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty
+joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only
+half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several
+cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned
+boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon
+them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of
+the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous
+veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the
+sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in
+order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the
+eye.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the
+figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many
+respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that
+they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth
+century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the
+Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of
+far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal
+Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the
+head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of
+that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is
+represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp,
+the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and
+majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant
+wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of
+design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body,
+carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily
+expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of
+technical skill. This monument bears date 1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI--NOIE
+AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen,
+in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c.]
+and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name:
+
+  "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS,
+      LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS."
+
+SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently
+worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing
+hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins
+on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being
+evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in
+those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of
+this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret
+and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three
+brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of
+the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not
+with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet,
+on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital.
+
+SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the
+group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are
+protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle
+and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in
+nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to
+1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred
+yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge
+Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354.
+
+SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the
+Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are
+better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the
+tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more
+nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.
+
+The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has
+very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk
+between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his
+hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those
+of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it
+always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it
+is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the
+tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the
+fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to
+nature; they are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges,
+and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled
+drapery.
+
+SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade,
+the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their
+positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate
+XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right.
+A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his
+hand a scroll with this inscription:
+
+  EFICE Q
+  SOFRE
+  TUR AFA
+  EL REVE
+  RENDE
+  QUIETU
+
+i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote:
+"Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The
+peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to
+tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir
+Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is
+represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded
+me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising
+of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well known tale of the Fisherman
+and St. Mark's ring.] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll
+borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much
+the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has
+only in its hand the Annunciation lily.
+
+SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating
+the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression
+of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence
+upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general
+purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I
+imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in
+which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just
+touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of
+divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the
+great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace;
+and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the
+eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men
+in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade
+at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse.
+
+SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their
+order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.)
+that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower
+story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then
+the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first,
+which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine
+angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and
+the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle.
+
+SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are
+octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in
+every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the
+angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on
+the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding
+forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the
+groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have
+given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope
+to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them
+here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the
+expression of the figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower
+leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left
+dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In
+referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the
+outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side;
+and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of
+course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up
+after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left
+visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western
+sides of each.
+
+SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle.
+
+In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its
+wings expanded, covering his breast.
+
+On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves.
+
+On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other,
+a pair of scissors.
+
+It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the facade,
+should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can
+hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I
+will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical
+meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it
+would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb
+introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but
+generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the
+hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are
+very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small.
+
+SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are
+left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one
+web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its
+jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming
+itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far
+the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds.
+
+THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads,
+large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned.
+
+FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one
+in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in
+its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the
+nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds.
+
+The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has
+luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing
+hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling
+hair, deep cut with drill holes.
+
+This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only
+with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought
+expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of
+the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads
+are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with
+sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not
+a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features
+small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and
+great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull
+smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of
+their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as
+the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed
+coxcombs.
+
+FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length
+statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription.
+In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief
+embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the
+abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR"
+(contracted IPAT.).
+
+On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand,
+and sceptre in left.
+
+On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away.
+He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a
+sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He
+has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much
+injured, but has once been very noble in expression.
+
+SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard,
+and bad.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which
+is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it
+and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues.
+
+_First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from
+the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he
+pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there
+is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is,
+"LARGITAS ME ONORAT."
+
+In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of
+showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a
+plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct
+imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always
+injuries.
+
+This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur
+in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a
+leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients.
+
+SECTION XLIX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An
+armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL
+TIMENS."
+
+This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets
+as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a
+woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in
+the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a
+very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by
+his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the
+Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be
+well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the
+man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name."
+
+SECTION L. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but
+needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA
+SUM, DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like
+person with a veil.
+
+She is the Ate of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the
+fourth book:
+
+  "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,
+   With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;
+   And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,
+   That nought but gall and venim comprehended,
+   And wicked wordes that God and man offended:
+   Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,
+   And both the parts did speake, and both contended;
+   And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,
+   That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided."
+
+Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity
+we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for
+the other sense of the word.
+
+SECTION LI. _Fourth side_. Patience. A female figure, very
+expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
+left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
+
+She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
+masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in
+the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags
+who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
+Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
+Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
+hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
+Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
+smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."
+
+SECTION LII. _Fifth side_. Despair. A female figure thrusting a
+dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down
+among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest
+figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MOS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In
+the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears,
+instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each
+side.
+
+This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented
+as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's
+vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that
+this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the
+attention of Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+SECTION LIII. _Sixth side_. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek,
+but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind
+legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI *
+*;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like
+"A'ONOEXIBEO."
+
+I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and
+that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo."
+
+This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems;
+represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the
+finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head
+of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay,
+vol. ii. p. 226.]
+
+Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her
+above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood.
+
+SECTION LIV. _Seventh side_. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a
+small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription
+nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI,
+CERO," remain.
+
+By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the
+helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is
+covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, _is
+bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her
+hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet.
+
+In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,--
+
+      "Full large of limbe and every joint
+  He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
+
+For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the
+Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III.
+
+SECTION LV. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the
+Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA
+ROBUOBTINEO."
+
+I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of
+Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood,
+but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in
+the second book:
+
+  "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew,
+   Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight:
+   Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+   And ever and anone with rosy red
+   The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye,
+   That her became, as polisht yvory
+   Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd
+   With fayre vermilion or pure castory."
+
+SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects
+are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of
+the degradation of human instincts.
+
+_First side_. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap
+ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious
+twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but
+still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque.
+His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back.
+
+_Second side_. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a
+bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It
+plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow.
+
+_Third side_. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head,
+founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap
+made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand.
+
+_Fourth side_. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise.
+It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it
+wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg.
+
+_Fifth side_. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a
+curved sword.
+
+_Sixth side_. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a
+chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a
+two-edged sword.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round
+helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with
+a top like a fir-cone.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand,
+ending below in a fish.
+
+SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Faith. She has her left
+hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA
+IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her
+left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic
+books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia)
+is still more spiritual and noble:
+
+  "She was araied all in lilly white,
+  And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
+  With wine and water fild up to the hight,
+  In which a serpent did himselfe enfold,
+  That horrour made to all that did behold;
+  But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood:
+  And in her other hand she fast did hold
+  A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood;
+  Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood."
+
+SECTION LVIII. _Second side_. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?]
+tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat
+vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than
+Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM
+VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as
+merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue
+having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian
+symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given
+generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin,
+knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing
+back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and
+slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is
+square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above
+her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins
+deeply infixed.
+
+Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt,
+however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere
+manliness or courage.
+
+SECTION LIX. _Third side_. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water
+and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy
+nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat
+vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards
+continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College)
+temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or
+gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the
+moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who
+has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of
+which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed
+among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the
+Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much
+sternness:
+
+  "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
+   That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
+   His carriage was full comely and upright;
+   His countenance demure and temperate;
+   But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
+   That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
+
+The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
+of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
+inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
+opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
+is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
+most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
+[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
+intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
+image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
+of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
+crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
+to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
+throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
+laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
+virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
+opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
+Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
+find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
+a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
+forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
+first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
+Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
+
+  "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
+   Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
+   That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
+
+The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser,
+for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
+philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.
+
+SECTION LX. _Fourth side_. Humility; with a veil upon her head,
+carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN
+ME."
+
+This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized
+in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in
+early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to
+imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an
+exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek
+youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish
+systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation.
+
+SECTION LXI. _Fifth side_. Charity. A woman with her lap full of
+loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it
+across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital.
+
+Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In
+the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by
+having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is
+crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and
+fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears
+above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of
+beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth.
+
+The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in
+the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always
+represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in
+Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and,
+with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear
+fire, she could not have been discerned.
+
+Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea
+afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and
+sculptors.
+
+SECTION LXII. _Sixth side_. Justice. Crowned, and with sword.
+Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE."
+
+This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good
+capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has
+also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue,
+representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding
+scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing
+that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws,
+but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands.
+In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an
+angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been
+working at a desk or table.
+
+Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons
+riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music.
+
+Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the
+betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity.
+
+SECTION LXIII. _Seventh side_. Prudence. A man with a book and a
+pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the
+shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so
+frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of
+men occupied in any civil capacity.
+
+This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees
+of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being
+opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find,
+in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive
+character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto
+expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things
+by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with
+compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of
+looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or
+anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural
+capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never
+enough considered or symbolized.
+
+The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
+Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.
+
+SECTION LXIV. _Eighth side_. Hope. A figure full of devotional
+expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand
+which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy
+this hand does not appear.
+
+Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
+not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
+others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
+which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
+for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
+even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
+for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
+air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
+was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
+symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
+are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
+characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is
+aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the
+Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
+beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
+
+  "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
+   An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."
+
+SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Luxury (the opposite of
+chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
+forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
+drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."
+
+These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
+those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His
+Luxury rides upon a goat:
+
+  "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
+   Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
+   And in his hand a burning heart he bare."
+
+But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is
+the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more
+indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediaeval and
+the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented.
+
+I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the
+thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central
+year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be
+gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most
+touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by
+the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters;
+namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now,
+therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's
+still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for
+the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents
+Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan
+and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and
+fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii.
+letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of
+Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as
+furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the
+mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of
+a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of
+the Graces, but full of terror:
+
+  "With that the darts which his right hand did straine
+   Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,
+   And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine,
+   That all his many it afraide did make."
+
+His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is.
+Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope,
+Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty.
+After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame,
+
+  "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,
+   Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
+   Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,
+   Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread
+   Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity,
+   Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy."
+
+Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the
+Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in
+every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our
+literature, and our minds.
+
+SECTION LXVI. _Second side_. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a
+jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird,
+which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM."
+
+Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine:
+
+  "His belly was upblownt with luxury,
+   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
+   And like a crane his necke was long and fyne,
+   Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast,
+   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne."
+
+He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of
+ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance.
+
+SECTION LXVII. _Third side_. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and
+stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with
+ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his
+helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA."
+
+Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it
+as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep
+under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a
+feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle
+called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a
+team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her
+palace she is thus described:
+
+  "So proud she shyned in her princely state,
+   Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne;
+   And sitting high, for lowly she did hate:
+   Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne
+   A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne;
+   And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,
+   Wherein her face she often vewed fayne."
+
+The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and
+Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father
+and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.)
+
+Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride
+which vents itself in insult to others.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. _Fourth side_. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at
+her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance Copy
+it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME."
+
+Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest
+of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides
+upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood.
+Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me
+very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any
+representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the
+most terrible; both of them make him violent.
+
+SECTION LXIX. _Fifth side_. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over
+her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous
+for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny
+channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by
+famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring
+and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the
+Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR."
+
+Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god
+Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power.
+Note the position of the house of Richesse:
+
+  "Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
+  That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide."
+
+It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness,
+although they are vices totally different in their operation on the
+human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of
+Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of
+the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that
+is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus
+destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in
+heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is
+not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly
+proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be
+consistent with much charity; not so avarice.
+
+SECTION LXX. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken
+away, having had its arms round two branches of trees.
+
+I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless,
+in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as
+desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice
+especially upon the clergy,--
+
+  "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde,
+  Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin,
+  Like to an holy monck, the service to begin.
+  And in his hand his portesse still he bare,
+  That much was worne, but therein little redd."
+
+And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices:
+
+  "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd,
+  When such an one had guiding of the way."
+
+Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse,
+indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly
+characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
+
+SECTION LXXI. _Seventh side_. Vanity. She is smiling complacently
+as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with
+roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
+
+There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in
+the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas
+generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it
+in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity
+shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the
+thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this
+sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal,
+of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a
+feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser,
+I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria,
+more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however,
+entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+
+SECTION LXXII. _Eighth side_. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of
+expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a
+serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle
+of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.
+
+Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as
+having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with
+an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping;
+a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the
+eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames
+consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of
+Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not
+suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer,
+joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of
+corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole
+mind:
+
+                      "Malicious Envy rode
+  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
+  Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
+  That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+  _And in a kirtle of discolourd say
+  He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_,
+  And in his bosome secretly there lay
+  An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
+  In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
+
+He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in
+the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
+
+SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight
+birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which,
+however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all
+varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description.
+
+SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is
+grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and
+the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that
+it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance
+series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
+
+_First side_. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a
+child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his
+own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."
+
+The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no
+means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a
+parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as
+in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next
+in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating
+human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante
+placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have
+been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser--
+
+         "All in sable sorrowfully clad,
+  Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A pair of pincers in his hand he had,
+  With which he pinched people to the heart."
+
+He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth
+canto of the fourth book:
+
+  "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade,
+   That neither day nor night from working spared;
+   But to small purpose yron wedges made:
+   Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade.
+
+   Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent,
+   Ne better had he, ne for better cared;
+   With blistered hands among the cinders brent."
+
+It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure
+is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a
+very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as
+"Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the
+companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is
+intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred
+Sorrow.
+
+SECTION LXXV. _Second side_. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing
+hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as
+singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS."
+
+We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by
+Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy,
+"ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully
+developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from
+them in the earlier capitals.
+
+SECTION LXXVI. _Third side_. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find
+it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a
+man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English
+residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a
+feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with
+one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and
+bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb."
+
+SECTION LXXVII. _Fourth side_. Destroyed, all but a book, which
+identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy;
+there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent
+life with the pursuit of literature?).
+
+Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all
+his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the
+convent, but of wedded life.
+
+SECTION LXXVIII. _Fifth side_. Only a scroll is left; but, from the
+copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM
+DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the
+virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only.
+
+The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite
+character in the "Faerie Queen."
+
+SECTION LXXIX. _Sixth side_. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a
+crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The
+Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly
+conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits.
+In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect,
+
+  "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red,
+   Purfled with gold and pearle;...
+   Her wanton palfrey all was overspred.
+   With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
+   Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave."
+
+Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the
+description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted.
+
+SECTION LXXX. _Seventh side_. Injustice. An armed figure holding a
+halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the
+particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented
+at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while
+various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia"
+is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger.
+
+_Eighth side_. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child,
+who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is
+inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?"
+
+SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round,
+coarsely cut.
+
+FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its
+haunches. Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired
+with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair
+projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks,
+hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness.
+
+SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is
+thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade.
+
+The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me
+later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is
+embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe
+Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general
+illustration of Idleness.
+
+_First side_. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated,
+and fastened by a buckle.
+
+_Second side_. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand.
+
+_Third side_. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds
+by the haunches.
+
+_Fourth side_. A man with a parrot.
+
+_Fifth side_. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and
+dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand,
+her right on her breast.
+
+_Sixth side_. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand
+upon the leaves of the capital.
+
+_Seventh side_. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand.
+
+_Eighth side_. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right
+laid on his breast.
+
+SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large
+heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that
+these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins,
+Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians.
+Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to
+note them.] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth
+side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a
+portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in
+every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and,
+therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list
+given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the
+superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations.
+Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation
+of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in
+which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches.
+
+SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the
+sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of
+the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part
+of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the
+wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the
+orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus,
+the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining
+are the following:
+
+_First side_. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated
+with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS."
+
+_Second side_. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a
+long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters
+"GRAMMATIC" remain.
+
+_Third side_. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double
+beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his
+back.
+
+_Fourth side_. Destroyed.
+
+_Fifth side_. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on
+it.
+
+_Sixth side_. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *"
+
+_Seventh side_. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle
+wrought into a lion's head.
+
+_Eighth side_. Destroyed.
+
+SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most
+interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and
+the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers
+as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they
+are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was
+laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are
+now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty
+because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its
+expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the
+signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the
+fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually
+stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of
+interrogation), and then as I would read them.
+
+SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the
+houses of the planets are thus arranged:
+
+The house of the Sun,      is Leo.
+      "          Moon,     "  Cancer.
+      "          Mars,     "  Aries and Scorpio.
+      "          Venus,    "  Taurus and Libra.
+      "          Mercury,  "  Gemini and Virgo.
+      "          Jupiter,  "  Sagittarius and Pisces.
+      "          Saturn,   "  Capricorn.
+      "          Herschel, "  Aquarius.
+
+The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we
+have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and
+Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn
+at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is
+grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel
+planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of
+Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the
+angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from
+which I shall not depart.
+
+SECTION LXXXVII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea,
+has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure
+beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the
+leaves of the capital. His inscription is:
+
+"ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE."
+
+SECTION LXXXVIII. _Second side_. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius
+and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in
+radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast,
+ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the
+drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot
+forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable
+characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand
+over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two
+thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been
+broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group
+is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on
+the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is:
+
+"INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA."
+[Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform
+mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the
+same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked on the stone.]
+
+Or,
+  "Inde Jovis dona
+   Pisces simul atque Chirona."
+
+Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of
+Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron."
+
+SECTION LXXXIX. _Third side_. Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio.
+Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the
+ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left
+hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for
+it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright
+line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a
+shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon
+his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It
+should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_
+Latin for "I am of iron."
+
+SECTION XC. _Fourth side_. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented
+under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from
+his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription:
+
+"TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI."
+
+I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a
+letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum
+"signe" stands for.
+
+SECTION XCI. _Fifth side_. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra.
+The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is
+deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a
+mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very
+nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is
+exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs:
+
+"LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*."
+
+SECTION XCII. _Sixth side_. Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent
+cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining
+attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot
+understand the inscription, though more than usually legible.
+
+"OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE."
+
+SECTION XCIII. _Seventh side_. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This
+sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most
+picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat,
+upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her
+left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I
+believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather
+think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express
+the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the
+lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat,
+may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by
+the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on
+this capital, as well as on the rest of the facade, are disposed in
+severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the
+moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest
+the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is
+highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five
+hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such,
+far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this
+intention. The inscription is:
+
+"LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
+
+SECTION XCIV. _Eighth side_. God creating Man. Represented as a
+throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the
+head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The
+inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of
+"formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble,
+before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely
+ascertained the rest.
+
+"DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
+
+Or
+
+   "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
+  From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
+
+I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the
+old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of
+the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire
+subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as
+determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in
+fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
+
+Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only
+consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble
+Christianity.
+
+In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the
+whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole
+strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian
+casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself
+cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give
+drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work.
+
+SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting
+from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the
+Fig-tree angle the first.
+
+It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of
+dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in
+some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its
+figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar
+significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and
+architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far
+too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one
+capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the
+architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying,
+and of the value of color generally in his own art.
+
+SECTION XCVI. _First side_. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A
+figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green
+serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital.
+The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up
+open, with the palm outwards.
+
+_Second side_. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a
+small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is
+highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at
+the Vine angle. Inscription effaced.
+
+_Third side_. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work
+on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark
+red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form
+of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth
+century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without
+any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the
+Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the
+fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO."
+
+_Fourth side_. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has
+been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST.
+E(N?)AS."
+
+_Fifth side_. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a
+kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble.
+
+_Sixth side_. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed
+_on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses
+set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich
+cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us
+of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been
+universal in the early fourteenth century.
+
+There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is
+working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups
+of the time.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth
+century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals,
+see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted
+marble.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a
+delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered
+with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red
+marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * *
+ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two
+of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front,
+two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned
+workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult
+our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the
+mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more
+interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work
+was undertaken at this time.
+
+SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals,
+and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its
+effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in
+the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio
+work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with
+great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute
+chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered
+bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong
+simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are
+also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side
+of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series,
+though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable
+hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman,
+better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become
+in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but
+he could not have composed them more skilfully.
+
+SECTION XCVIII. _First side_. A lion with a stag's haunch in his
+mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the
+peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or
+furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the
+Ducal Palace, to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment
+we reach the Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed
+simply, "LEO."
+
+_Second side_. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body
+wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers
+are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed
+"LUPUS."
+
+_Third side_. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth,
+its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across
+the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other
+side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS."
+
+_Fourth side_. Entirely broken away.
+
+_Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at
+least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone.
+
+_Sixth side_. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed
+species of dog, with ugly flap ears.
+
+_Seventh side_. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth.
+
+_Eighth side_. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees.
+
+SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior
+professions.
+
+_First side_. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very
+expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer.
+Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM."
+
+_Second side_. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl
+or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is
+gone.
+
+_Third side_. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for
+cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable.
+
+_Fourth side_. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on
+two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Fifth side_. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very
+carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of
+cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The
+inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"?
+
+_Sixth side_. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which
+lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but
+according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA."
+
+_Seventh side_. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll
+which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Eighth side_. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a
+large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is
+inscribed "FABER SUM."
+
+SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of
+the planets on human life.
+
+_First side_. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according
+to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been
+prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or
+other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then
+forgotten to return to it.
+
+_Second side_. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on
+it. The legend above is
+
+"MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X."
+
+Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.)
+"Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years."
+
+_Third side_. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken.
+Inscribed
+
+"ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII."
+
+Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the
+lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note
+the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o;
+showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same
+kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained,
+and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded
+to a Roman ear.
+
+_Fourth side_. A youth with a hawk on his fist.
+
+"IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX."
+The sue governs youth for nineteen years.
+
+_Fifth side_. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder.
+Inscribed
+
+"SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV."
+Mars governs manhood for fifteen years.
+
+_Sixth side_. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap,
+reading.
+
+"SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII."
+Jupiter governs age for twelve years.
+
+_Seventh side_. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.
+
+"DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.)
+Saturn governs decrepitude until death.
+
+_Eighth side_. The dead body lying on a mattress.
+
+"ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI."
+Last comes death, the penalty of sin.
+
+SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression
+of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its
+devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that
+devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been
+restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.
+
+SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft
+which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The
+shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is
+coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It
+represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress
+at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the
+bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to
+examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by
+the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian
+guard-house.
+
+SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the
+months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are,
+however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series.
+
+_First side_. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the
+beginning of the year.
+
+_Second side_. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather
+fan in her hand.
+
+_Third side_. June. Carrying cherries in a basket.
+
+I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter,
+because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called
+"the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the
+conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I.
+
+The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and
+large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon
+the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut.
+
+_Fourth side_. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the
+straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite,
+beats (the grain?) in a basket.
+
+_Fifth side_. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a
+branch of vine. Very beautiful.
+
+_Sixth side_. October and November. I could not make out their
+occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire.
+
+_Seventh side_. December. Killing pigs, as usual.
+
+_Eighth side_. January warming his feet, and February frying fish.
+This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter
+as the cherries are of the Venetian summer.
+
+The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and
+there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS.
+
+This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or
+twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth
+century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has
+nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with
+their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the
+Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources.
+This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of
+the last capital, which are both fine.
+
+I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of
+these capitals, as they are not worth description.
+
+SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely
+changing the succession of the figures.
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the
+old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all
+events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight
+different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given,
+and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are
+inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as
+much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art,
+namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA.
+Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter,
+whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common
+gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like
+a bottle compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long
+water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to
+this day.
+
+SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh.
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth.
+
+THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as
+having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the
+"Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm
+face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The
+inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?).
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth.
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures
+laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads,
+or chins, or on the leaves around them.
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth.
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh.
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in
+features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta
+facade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is
+copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the
+part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has
+merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be
+always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and
+indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied,
+very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work,
+though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to
+that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or
+first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven
+other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures
+of lawgivers, in the following order:
+
+_Second side_. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed:
+
+"ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE."
+Aristotle who declares laws.
+
+_Third side_. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari
+call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of
+the fifth side for the word Isidore?]
+
+_Fourth side_. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed:
+
+"SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE."
+Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares
+laws.
+
+Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead
+of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this
+sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery.
+
+_Fifth side_. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed:
+
+"ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE."
+
+A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated
+Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away.
+
+_Sixth side_. Numa Pompilius building churches.
+
+"NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE."
+
+Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in
+Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier
+capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery.
+
+_Seventh side_. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed:
+
+"QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE."
+
+Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with
+clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and
+quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes
+out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch,
+with the stone tablets between.
+
+_Eighth side_. Trajan doing justice to the Widow.
+
+"TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA."
+
+He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling
+before his horse.
+
+SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar
+interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character
+of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that
+government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of
+its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the
+foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith
+may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in
+common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the
+political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the
+speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the
+interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.]
+nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may
+easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the
+main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not
+believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose
+portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and
+everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much
+capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no
+meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the
+peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or
+_wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to
+make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of
+an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the
+fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to
+all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time
+undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had
+become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the
+interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps,
+better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own
+government is carried on, and the occasional difference between
+parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the
+Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and
+criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession
+of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more
+probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of
+violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in
+the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably
+desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to
+the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine,
+with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of
+Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place,
+that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables:
+in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been
+guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in
+being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their
+political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
+Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
+government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
+
+SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which
+contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The
+capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their
+character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight
+leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the
+flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not
+without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I
+possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear
+to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones;
+others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly
+wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully
+treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth,
+in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the
+corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which
+extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster
+which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples
+of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and
+distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art;
+and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculpture of the four
+winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante,
+the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is
+always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the
+sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand:
+Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana,
+the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be
+carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater
+distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:
+
+            "Thwart of these, as fierce,
+  Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
+  Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
+  Sirocco and Libecchio."
+
+I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on
+the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the
+fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all
+carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier
+which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say,
+the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the
+pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower
+arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but
+they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the
+upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the
+time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with
+its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the
+Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and
+the other of the fifteenth century.
+
+SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the
+spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of
+junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in
+the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on
+which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from
+the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is
+a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked
+in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the
+Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the
+natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great
+ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that
+of fig. 14.
+
+SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig.
+14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should
+not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14
+gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness
+and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared
+on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses
+of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line
+engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore,
+abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important
+mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a
+few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the
+inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for
+themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness,
+elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble
+symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or
+experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is
+always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or
+redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength,
+freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the
+undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer
+winds, as the sands are by the sea.
+
+SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents
+the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period,
+i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and
+by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this
+investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces
+us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered
+it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject.
+
+SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid
+farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our
+examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper
+arcade there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the
+third order on the Rio Facade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting
+the original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further
+details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary
+confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix
+I., Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them
+into the text.] I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the
+facade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and
+I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain
+their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must
+have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to
+render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present
+mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The
+traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as
+the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are
+still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner
+mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the facade, the
+parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their
+original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is
+nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice;
+still less in the large central windows on each facade which are
+entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these
+portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and
+masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and
+calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression.
+
+SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes
+of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the
+severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by
+the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case,
+though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least
+intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls
+of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the
+men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of
+priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its
+being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by
+piece being destroyed for ever.
+
+SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate
+subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
+destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
+be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art
+in Europe.
+
+The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
+Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
+valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have
+no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
+persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
+pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
+they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
+judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
+filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
+garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
+partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
+generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
+in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
+without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good
+ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it
+little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are
+so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with
+the beauties which they have heard attributed to it.
+
+SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for
+the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly
+or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being
+placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of
+ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the
+fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they
+should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient
+destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting
+over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery
+pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or
+other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the
+estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and
+more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst,
+the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time,
+in reality, of very small value indeed.
+
+SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble
+painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat
+of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was
+little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom
+there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best
+things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of
+accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a
+camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been
+short, and circumstances disadvantageous.
+
+SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of
+their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places
+where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast
+and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the
+present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected,
+whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the
+walls, piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is
+an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not
+often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however
+ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real
+thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest
+treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old
+plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and
+which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim
+canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape
+of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an
+exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode,
+looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his
+accomplished duty.
+
+SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the
+Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
+reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
+altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention
+of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens,
+that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture,
+will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There
+are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
+conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
+and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
+over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
+and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the
+roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
+recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
+there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same
+time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value
+in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world),
+curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were
+set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch
+the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling;
+while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid
+on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the
+re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end
+of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common
+house-painter's vessel of paint.
+
+This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
+continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
+manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
+Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in
+Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in
+tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most
+wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world.
+
+SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
+patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
+regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to
+bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of
+stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior
+of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the
+"Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the
+Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were
+full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as
+precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of
+majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the
+great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen
+rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe
+in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God
+had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the
+mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its
+burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher
+than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of
+purple flower and shadowy pine.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
+important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
+references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
+republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
+photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my
+own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of
+this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
+separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
+cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
+old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures
+in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace facade
+was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it
+is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater
+part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry,"
+will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its
+original wood-blocks.
+
+But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
+St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for
+ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in
+sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I
+have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of
+these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in
+the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St.
+Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for
+their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me,
+in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what
+pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen,
+Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
+
+Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
+Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
+giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
+already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue
+work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
+entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+#7 in our series by John Ruskin
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+Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9804]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 19, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STONES OF VENICE [INTRODUCTIONS] ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Keren Vergon
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+BY JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE:
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES
+(PRINTED SEPARATELY)
+FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
+
+
+BY
+JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
+purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
+those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a
+permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at
+first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the
+principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been
+modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and
+present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of
+plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of
+other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader
+shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the
+publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of
+forwardness.
+
+The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter
+out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index,
+abridged and corrected.
+
+BRANTWOOD,
+
+_3rd May_, 1879.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. The Quarry
+
+II. The Throne
+
+III. Torcello
+
+IV. St. Mark's
+
+V. The Ducal Palace
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE QUARRY.
+
+
+SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third,
+which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led
+through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
+strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
+countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred
+with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean,
+where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries
+in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
+their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as
+they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind
+than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may,
+perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to
+form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of
+Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest
+which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
+gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so
+during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including
+the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing
+severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the
+change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in
+great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was
+composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment
+when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and
+Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were
+passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially
+to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive
+appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist.
+des Rep. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each
+of the principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix
+III., "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was
+continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy,
+her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine
+hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked
+by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final
+and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo
+trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti
+buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino_,)
+Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader,
+with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
+out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing
+its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among
+the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually
+organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the _visible_
+commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the
+Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari
+followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large
+acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in
+Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the
+battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454,
+Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the
+Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State,
+[Footnote: Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the
+discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.]
+and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious
+form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish
+invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the
+league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement
+of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by
+their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509,
+and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their
+territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the
+fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the
+diminution of her internal strength.
+
+SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between
+the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at
+many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism;
+and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of
+their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]
+
+SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
+both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By
+directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru,
+liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
+
+SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall
+be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great
+Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust
+that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any
+more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
+against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of
+their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence
+of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest
+councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has
+time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are
+sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection
+of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the
+almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire
+was enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular
+circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other
+city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But
+the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of
+her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church,
+[Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size
+and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian
+group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
+greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it
+less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice,
+next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to
+national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks,
+supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the
+mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also,
+in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.] who now rests
+beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not
+satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed
+around his tomb.
+
+SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which
+we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual
+religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my
+present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of
+which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able
+to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote:
+                    "In that temple porch,
+  (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+  Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+  And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+  Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+  For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+  On his stony pillow."
+
+I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries,
+and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the
+spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all
+else that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true
+that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her
+prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus
+rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more
+than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V.,
+which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great
+tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or
+the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted
+out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
+from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her
+knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.
+[Footnote: At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The
+Papal Power in Venice."]
+
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
+it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
+contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
+restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the
+annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be
+ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of
+law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was
+subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears
+usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every
+instance in which private passion sought its gratification through
+public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
+public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence,
+that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless
+forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than
+that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only
+[Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax
+e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy
+were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked
+battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank
+under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed
+with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of
+lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are
+no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack
+of a foreign enemy.]
+
+SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
+would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which
+the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which
+the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true
+connection with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+SECTION XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were
+painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna
+or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of
+the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the
+ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there
+is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of
+one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal.
+The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of
+Venice was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
+here give a general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent a travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, a cent mils de
+la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cite que j'aye jamais veue et qui
+plus faict d'honneur a ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Memoires de Commynes, liv.
+vii. ch. xviii.]
+
+SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
+Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
+some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real
+life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
+"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
+There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
+fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
+English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
+to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of
+architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand
+this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the
+connection of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the
+East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the
+various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once
+for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all
+the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many
+beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all
+Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and
+what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic,
+Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks
+gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the
+arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture,
+are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from
+Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
+
+SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
+shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier
+derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he
+should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the
+shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if
+the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three
+families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest
+architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the
+sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
+spiritualization of both.
+
+SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are
+the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote:
+Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."]
+
+SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
+clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result,
+until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service;
+except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it,
+and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often
+very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity:
+seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it;
+invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
+over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest
+at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman
+Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of
+the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many
+respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of
+imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores
+of the Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
+gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
+Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange,
+gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so
+would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has
+been undisturbed. [Footnote: The reader will find the _weak_ points of
+Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,--
+Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained.
+
+Section XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into
+two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other
+at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque,
+properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative
+perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But
+I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art
+together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the
+same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of
+the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the
+fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be
+found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may
+be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an
+architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the
+degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to
+higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter
+forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
+branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects
+more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of
+government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of
+the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed,
+losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived
+of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change.
+
+SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While
+in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps,
+appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with
+the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with
+which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual
+character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its
+influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to
+the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the
+influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two
+nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of
+derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs
+of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and
+idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid
+asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both
+horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over
+its golden paralysis.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system
+to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the
+Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of
+worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the
+sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.
+[Footnote: Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all
+imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their
+minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and
+mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the
+North, and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they
+met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very
+centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of
+the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck,
+is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to
+mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures
+were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious
+still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
+decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of
+that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first,
+an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas.
+Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader
+will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two
+aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was
+separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above,
+large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming
+the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
+gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
+"Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily
+thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square
+pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and
+civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone;
+but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been
+made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the
+nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one
+of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great
+European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession
+of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
+first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote:
+Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether
+the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen
+being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by
+their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever
+other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such
+vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first
+division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist
+of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part
+of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
+not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for
+the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in
+art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But
+their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long
+prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people
+had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the
+practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very
+primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
+architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab
+forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would
+probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab
+school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it
+will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those
+which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The
+churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the
+Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it.
+But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans
+introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture,
+already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and
+Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited
+in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect
+the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the
+Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
+artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the
+city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an
+ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole
+peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of
+certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and
+entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence
+of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the
+engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the
+Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the
+_distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the
+churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the
+ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
+Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third
+division of the essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic)
+style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is
+transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from
+the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century;
+that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the
+central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year
+1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe
+de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St.
+Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly
+supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of
+every art she has since practised.
+
+SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality
+in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps,"
+chap. ii.)
+
+All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at
+once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a
+flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then
+perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the
+representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous
+under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs
+without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity,
+gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic
+affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and
+lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of
+landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually
+usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
+prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
+confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and
+Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of
+besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and
+ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect,
+and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the
+fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in
+England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of
+George II.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard
+it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture,
+and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does
+not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in
+buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should
+lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor
+is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to
+regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly
+the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern
+times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying
+the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools
+and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through
+them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere
+else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay.
+I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader
+with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of
+the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features
+with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and
+pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
+I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon
+two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
+attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The
+tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of
+the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the
+period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical
+element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is
+as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is
+a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a
+faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without
+painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
+bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are
+simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large,
+but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have
+looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+    "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
+    bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
+    It may be called one of the last links which connect the
+    declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
+    which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
+    defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+    which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
+    we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
+    the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
+    and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
+    reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
+    Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is
+another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478,
+after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of
+Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks,
+carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced
+by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the
+blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly
+tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of
+one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian
+superlative by translation.
+
+    "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+    proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
+    sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
+    opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
+    intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il
+    predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
+    con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
+    fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi
+    lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge;
+    capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of
+the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering
+this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested
+in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).
+
+    "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+    scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
+    arts attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the
+inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do
+not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous
+mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such
+utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of
+intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast,
+could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's
+countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the
+solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend
+of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much
+the zecchin.
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.]
+
+SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter;
+but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting
+piece of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal facades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."
+[Footnote: The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+quality.] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the
+seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series
+of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the
+others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
+reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della
+Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside
+whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning
+of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This
+is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea facade is earlier; of
+which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible:
+for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
+shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and
+lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea facade
+being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena
+Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is
+Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at
+the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the
+statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the
+reader.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to
+follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit
+to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied
+the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea facade,
+eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by
+thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right
+to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that
+next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I
+thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the
+18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace;
+and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated,
+the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire
+series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers
+above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it,
+fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have
+lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got
+Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems
+are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but
+she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone_.
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the
+Reformation on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I
+shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the
+Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself
+is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the
+Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very
+forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps,"
+in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's:
+"Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the
+Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the
+difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a
+subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume
+that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not
+understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they
+simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at
+present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with
+rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with
+obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but
+never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of
+votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear
+conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good
+architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad;
+that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly
+visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
+the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating
+about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured
+that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must
+enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble
+and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it
+must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or
+Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all
+foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and
+that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
+inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a
+law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty,
+and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad;
+and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for
+the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
+and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the
+reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
+foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
+looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture,
+the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form,
+as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask
+the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
+and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might
+together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though
+perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have
+therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which
+I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and
+simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of
+architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
+will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a
+simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From
+that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very
+singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether
+unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to
+dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done;
+for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion
+of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture,
+and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than
+dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair
+trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and
+be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I
+shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent
+reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary
+preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of
+Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble,
+poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal;
+and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of
+architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries
+been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be
+serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have
+hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the
+arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done
+meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why
+could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came
+it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose
+no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully
+conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? [Footnote:
+Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself
+capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
+vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance.
+Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist
+merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate
+itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became
+themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was
+turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of
+both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's
+people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and
+died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been
+borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of
+faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was
+borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony
+or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an
+intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further
+use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship
+the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come,
+then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us
+know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed
+to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look
+upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her
+palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the
+sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we
+shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on
+which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should
+efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+[FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE THRONE.
+
+
+SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in
+which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
+toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
+countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of
+the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had
+surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest,
+scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the
+long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for
+the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
+sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of
+the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men,
+an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to
+be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive
+halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder,
+there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly
+cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe
+in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as
+his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but
+that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some
+slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are
+far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy;
+but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than
+atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the
+midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the
+mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast
+sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the
+north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the
+east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black
+weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal,
+under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the
+ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue,
+soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps
+beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our
+own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and
+changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun
+declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly
+named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city,
+the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one
+long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and
+willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua
+rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage
+of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended
+themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the
+craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole
+horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing
+through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back
+into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away
+eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty
+fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of
+evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea,
+until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer
+burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it
+magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
+gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
+reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
+through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
+rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
+opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat
+moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet,
+upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of
+rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the
+shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
+palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so
+adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent;
+when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the
+gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's
+Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the
+mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of
+the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the
+boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of
+silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its
+sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,
+[Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that
+the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene
+so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its
+history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her
+existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the
+fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the
+mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that
+all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as
+the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to
+destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which
+seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well
+as of the sea.
+
+SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with
+change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their
+influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the
+noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only
+by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and
+though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated
+ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
+traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has
+been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin,
+and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are
+little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the
+imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
+importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and
+disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
+surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there
+must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent
+feeling of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may
+indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which
+they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from
+the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their
+own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are
+in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the
+objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern
+fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of
+decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into
+dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow
+deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the
+centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever
+saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless
+interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his
+great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty
+years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city
+have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries,
+that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their
+tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the
+Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the
+novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of
+the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot
+of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the
+great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs
+had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of
+_their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the
+delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court,
+and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have
+sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail
+over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth,
+and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous
+a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the
+day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built
+by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of
+nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped
+by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the
+true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and
+trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long
+denied her dominion.
+
+SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no
+feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange
+sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and
+enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain
+upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the
+distribution of its debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and
+sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the
+plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here
+and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm
+substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which
+descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern
+slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain
+bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks
+out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain
+washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of
+the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky
+barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which
+continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of
+the ruins of ages.
+
+SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by
+insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which
+appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually;
+the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the
+Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment
+to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly
+expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part
+of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of
+brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these
+same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to
+check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The
+finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the
+rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however
+pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of
+the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before
+they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown
+down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the
+eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds
+forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a
+tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid
+change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is
+built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE.
+
+SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this
+great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place
+to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the
+Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of
+from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided
+into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank
+and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and
+other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the
+neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most
+places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at
+low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding
+channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to
+the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets,
+consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to
+be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the
+contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low
+water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of
+seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance
+by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the
+openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a
+clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which
+appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different
+periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their
+size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and
+churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and
+encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the
+metropolis.
+
+SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet
+(varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides
+of Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause
+continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a
+reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land
+is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the
+form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages:
+there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the
+mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy
+breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic,
+but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's
+having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its
+true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of
+piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in
+spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the
+quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance
+before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But
+the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty
+inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and
+at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark
+plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches
+of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of
+the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the
+fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five
+feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow
+the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea
+water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes
+upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed
+that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to
+and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is
+often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher
+ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what
+it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the
+windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the
+melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of
+the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls
+and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright
+investiture and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the
+waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness
+beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor
+and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the
+tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a
+questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the
+horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for
+his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the
+sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children
+were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and
+yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let
+it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things
+which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole
+existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or
+compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the
+sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would
+again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had
+stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of
+the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and
+bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other
+parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have
+become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the
+tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
+water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible:
+even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in
+landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the
+highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance
+halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood
+and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water,
+a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
+water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
+intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
+would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
+peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
+
+SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast
+between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the
+romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he
+have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
+instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the
+wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been
+permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers
+into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of
+the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have
+understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the
+void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand!
+How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us
+most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then
+in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how
+little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy
+margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among
+their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation
+possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden
+clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white
+scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather
+and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the
+East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+[SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+TORCELLO.
+
+
+SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which
+near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a
+higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass,
+raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow
+creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for
+some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds
+whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool
+beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On
+this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic
+type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder
+us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we
+may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of
+ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
+ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
+purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
+sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
+hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
+mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
+space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
+level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north
+and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
+and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched
+with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at
+momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the
+south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and
+pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and
+almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we
+gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
+cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry),
+the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than
+the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable
+church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see
+little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the
+sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and
+gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor
+any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
+company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
+
+SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
+of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
+there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
+shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
+southern sky.
+
+Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
+and VENICE.
+
+Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this
+day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
+of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
+mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
+mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
+rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
+people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
+paths of the sea.
+
+The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
+left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
+the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
+up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
+temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
+of meadow land.
+
+SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile
+is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
+broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of
+the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the
+Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present
+some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly
+larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each
+side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow
+field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable
+footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the
+form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth
+being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and
+that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that
+they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the
+first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of
+the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is
+far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the
+pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and
+their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the
+arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a
+cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator
+receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been
+which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could
+not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished
+as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of
+building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight
+and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."]
+who sought in the hurried erection of their Island church such a shelter
+for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not
+attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the
+other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the
+churches which they had seen destroyed.
+
+There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some
+of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God
+by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation
+prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of
+luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely
+devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance
+and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and
+architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy
+stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which
+answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole
+building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the
+cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of
+the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last
+Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are
+raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space
+between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the
+semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at
+once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home
+left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted
+but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed."
+
+SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible
+that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may
+have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series
+of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not,
+however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am
+rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the
+building was originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics
+representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and
+Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the
+significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with
+imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in
+the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
+political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
+satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
+mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural
+or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one
+should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not
+appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great
+facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of
+Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That
+Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable
+through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the
+figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of
+intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder,
+but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the
+faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of
+founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but
+only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite
+mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead
+which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in
+them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the
+wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
+
+SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in
+the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of
+all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish
+and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
+actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure.
+The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the
+best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for
+their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
+exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most
+conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the
+six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose
+a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the
+singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The
+bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two
+face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description,
+though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or
+pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of
+the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this
+screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was
+constructed.
+
+SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of
+its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked
+at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of
+the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the
+staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in
+the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase
+being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich,
+but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those
+which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the
+mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the
+proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of
+the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the
+original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
+procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
+crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
+sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
+surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
+course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
+the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
+is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
+sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
+always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
+chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
+always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
+thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
+to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
+the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
+became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
+dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
+little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
+it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
+bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection,
+that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
+price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
+fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
+overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
+art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
+is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
+which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
+treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
+the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
+already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament
+is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of
+their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for
+architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract
+perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so
+easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no
+remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so
+slight an effort.
+
+SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance,
+whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect
+would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the
+rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that
+its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious
+spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the
+building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts;
+itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the
+nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of
+the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to
+the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved
+front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a
+narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern
+pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper
+surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid
+upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by
+instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in
+any way moving beneath the preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather
+almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of
+the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe
+and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so
+that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are
+firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in
+venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval
+cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches.
+It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of
+decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service,
+and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature
+of a church be the best possible. [Footnote: Appendix V., "Modern
+Pulpits."]
+
+SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves
+about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I
+believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to
+listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
+unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place
+appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the
+same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression,
+irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the
+first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the
+speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a
+very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest
+of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I
+have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are
+peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
+rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
+erection in other parts of the building:--and though this may often be
+done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
+than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
+think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
+preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
+sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
+hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
+encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the
+delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for
+when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of
+work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade
+by them.
+
+SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
+clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
+employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease
+of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as
+a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as
+the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care
+and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we
+shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
+delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
+golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
+sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
+cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly
+come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
+prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
+restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that
+duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in
+happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be
+necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his
+faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life
+or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge
+over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an
+hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor
+to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage
+on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days
+together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been
+forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and
+to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by
+this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary
+with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and
+languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts
+of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame
+them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by
+this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the
+Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the
+openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth
+her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead
+in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with
+changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from
+which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes
+upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains
+recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener
+alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear
+with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of
+oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may
+be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he
+speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have
+gathered in their thirst.
+
+SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello
+is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
+occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls
+to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which
+lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps
+or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
+intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
+the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access
+intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
+arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort
+(for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not
+for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more
+conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no
+furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well
+worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative
+of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was
+never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter
+absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
+
+SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to
+remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the
+episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the
+minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently
+symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot.
+Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of
+men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the
+midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the
+eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man
+had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who
+saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like
+an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the
+Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which
+they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as
+the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and
+have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His
+name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the
+sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the
+dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth
+conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of
+her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her
+palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend
+the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of
+Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble
+ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with
+the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the
+strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the
+pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been
+closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of
+their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls,
+amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of
+the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that
+ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
+
+  THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT,
+  AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ST. MARK'S.
+
+
+SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as
+the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
+entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
+hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
+Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
+work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he
+have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be
+represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so
+often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he
+himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye
+with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in
+repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!
+
+SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the
+ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it
+was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose
+him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that
+before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was
+thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I
+believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of
+St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader
+who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie
+Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by
+him.] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and
+embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church
+of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the
+"Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice,
+1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia
+well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before
+setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a
+small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some
+houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being
+driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark,
+snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace
+be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to
+foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne piu veduta Citta;" but the
+fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.
+
+SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not,
+St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be
+considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue,
+standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the
+opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said
+to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and
+the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not
+to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early
+time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St.
+Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and
+on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to
+say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the
+bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a
+small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between
+the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza,
+of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
+
+SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
+removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the
+present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My
+authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the
+Ducal Palace.] gave a very different character to the Square of St.
+Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint,
+and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed,
+occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor.
+St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed,
+to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal
+Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the
+Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."]
+
+SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the
+Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was
+partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and
+with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on
+under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building
+being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
+considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,
+[Footnote: "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the
+Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the
+reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have
+consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church
+itself:
+
+  "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
+  Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
+
+is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
+probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
+Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
+according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
+being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
+supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
+though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
+But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
+consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
+1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
+probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter
+the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of
+any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above
+the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
+Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the
+pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the
+exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and
+tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance
+school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret
+substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the
+Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed
+Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.] happily, though with no good
+will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they
+destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter;
+meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of
+periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible.
+
+SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
+stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
+fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
+difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
+Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how
+long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
+additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily
+distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely
+executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of
+evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another
+over the northern door of the facade; the first representing the
+interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church.
+
+SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
+consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
+that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what
+appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful
+impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body
+of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976;
+but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion
+excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The
+following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by
+the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.
+
+"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
+the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so
+that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
+venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
+Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
+confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
+and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now
+depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed,
+and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the
+people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers
+for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a
+slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the
+altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
+exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which
+the body of the Evangelist was laid."
+
+SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They
+were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as,
+for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark
+extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers,
+which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint
+and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall
+not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian
+Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means
+effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved
+mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after
+the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of
+the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior
+of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer,
+then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the
+Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet
+embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux"
+over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most
+other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely
+represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in
+order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of
+picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand
+things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or
+two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague
+background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might
+get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some
+useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with
+the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence
+too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day,
+and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole
+church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment
+still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the
+other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
+being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics
+had been executed at that period, and their absence in the
+representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in
+order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such
+works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St.
+Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not
+appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the
+northern door; [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right,
+however.)] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other
+piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the
+building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the
+bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And
+this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence
+respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we
+have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet
+here is one of the most important exterior decorations assuredly
+retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style
+would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric.
+However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to
+remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh,
+twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions
+to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the
+fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the
+seventeenth.
+
+SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I
+may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
+leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
+by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
+seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to
+the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
+building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary,
+direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with
+anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects
+the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
+influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
+therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested
+by the obscurities of chronology.
+
+SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St.
+Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
+cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
+us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can
+see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray
+gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the
+centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes
+in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter,
+and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails,
+before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim
+houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there,
+and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and
+small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little,
+crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side;
+and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of
+red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show
+here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister
+arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid
+out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not
+uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are
+walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the
+grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there
+stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark
+places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where
+the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which
+has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth,
+perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up
+to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades,
+shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking
+fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape,
+and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen,
+melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above
+that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though
+they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black
+points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into
+invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
+birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so
+harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast
+between the cliffs and sea.
+
+SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of
+all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
+secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense
+and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
+cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
+have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and
+on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or
+catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the
+city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the
+river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land
+at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moise, which may be considered
+as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English
+cathedral gateway.
+
+SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide
+where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
+salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
+brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high
+houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an
+inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and
+chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows
+with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here
+and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some
+inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high
+over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be,
+occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about
+eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is
+narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable
+shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in
+those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares
+laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases
+entering at the front only,--and fading away in a few feet from the
+threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but
+which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back
+of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious
+shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a
+penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a
+little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded
+flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at
+the fruiterer's, where the dark-green watermelons are heaped upon the
+counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel
+leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is
+nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded
+patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next
+comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a
+very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over
+certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be denned or
+enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop of the
+calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the Madonna
+is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of
+three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
+Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
+gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they
+have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
+
+SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black
+Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble,
+deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of
+vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its
+side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence
+to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza,
+(mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first
+by the frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another
+time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near
+the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of
+lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them
+into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and
+then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great
+light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of
+St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
+chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
+themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
+that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
+into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
+broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
+sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.
+
+SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of
+ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great
+square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
+far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long
+low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold,
+and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
+vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
+alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
+and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
+and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
+together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
+of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
+leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
+the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
+interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
+branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
+round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
+stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
+flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
+sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
+it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
+as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
+interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
+acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
+Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
+language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
+men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
+another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
+with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
+of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden
+strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with
+stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break
+into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes
+and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore
+had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid
+them with coral and amethyst.
+
+Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
+is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
+restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
+upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among
+the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living
+plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely,
+that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
+
+SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath
+it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway
+of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a
+countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian,
+rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of
+the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
+the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them
+that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and
+caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
+almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the
+middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
+Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
+jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the
+sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will,
+would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of
+the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
+unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
+unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
+desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with
+cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
+clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church
+porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it
+continually.
+
+That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
+let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
+passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
+d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there.
+The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the
+turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
+
+SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
+with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
+in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
+figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
+glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
+the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that
+it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed;
+for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and
+curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the
+pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might
+be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain
+back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that
+gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon
+his breast.
+
+The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
+right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower:
+the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest
+of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp,
+perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines;
+but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
+countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
+stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is
+a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of
+flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in
+summer.
+
+It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
+Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
+died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe
+half of what we know of her former fortunes.
+
+SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it
+is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its
+walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with
+age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
+altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
+beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands
+and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its
+translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the
+color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light
+fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye
+can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of
+Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and
+there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the
+"Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has
+expressed the ancient division in the single massy line,
+
+  "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
+
+and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
+the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
+every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
+running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
+fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
+not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
+verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the
+choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the
+grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence
+of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall.
+Venice has made her choice.
+
+SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
+another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he
+and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his
+lips.
+
+Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
+rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper
+twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
+the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a
+vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy
+aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters
+only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray
+or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts
+a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall
+in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is
+from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of
+the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered
+with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
+to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints
+flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under
+foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one
+picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and
+terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of
+prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running
+fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures
+of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption;
+for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at
+last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every
+stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes
+with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its
+feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the
+church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of
+the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when
+the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
+traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes
+raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is
+not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and
+always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow
+of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised
+in power, or returning in judgment.
+
+SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
+people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
+various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
+places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and,
+for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
+number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their
+appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the
+step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of
+St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
+which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
+porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
+then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss
+and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
+lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if
+comforted.
+
+SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
+characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
+devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
+their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
+there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
+than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
+the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
+architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
+embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
+on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
+of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
+Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
+comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter,
+which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named,
+must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient
+causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether
+to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence
+which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind,
+and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in
+the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of
+building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained
+with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness;
+preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close
+air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious
+services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular
+legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition,
+which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end
+of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally
+civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the
+true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as
+far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the
+Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed
+Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be
+regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered
+ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at
+Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger
+number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that
+is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
+Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
+northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
+the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all
+the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of
+the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has
+retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole
+church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with
+silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.]
+
+SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
+were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
+employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the
+torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye
+traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole
+residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I
+never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any
+feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their
+understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the
+English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services
+for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many
+of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now
+surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no
+prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in
+vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the
+ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive
+attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries.
+The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is
+forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long
+been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those
+to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
+than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
+English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
+and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
+shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
+tombs in the desecrated cloister.
+
+SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
+present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
+meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
+be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
+abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
+present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
+Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
+relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
+influencing the feelings of a civilized community.
+
+The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
+carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
+architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
+should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
+construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
+art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
+expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
+merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
+its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
+in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
+retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
+domes appear to have lost for ever.
+
+SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
+respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
+in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
+possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
+Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
+nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
+general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
+soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
+exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
+and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
+enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
+with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
+ages.
+
+SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
+the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
+confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the
+great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
+incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
+before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
+reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
+influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
+school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
+massive materials.
+
+It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
+find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
+setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
+outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
+cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
+London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide
+"Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to
+have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different
+species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties
+which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the
+reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of
+the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are
+varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance,
+in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with
+marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of
+the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built
+of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and
+exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes
+the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in
+the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of
+buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the
+forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as
+in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman
+and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one
+internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on
+this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
+
+SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
+chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
+incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
+now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
+builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
+is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
+masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
+acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
+builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
+facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
+the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
+contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
+of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
+life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
+Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
+of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
+knight.
+
+These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
+be our business to develop.
+
+SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
+to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
+quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the
+mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely
+with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances,
+in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on
+the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as
+great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the
+natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as
+possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the
+limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by
+cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many
+marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There
+would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone
+as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if
+the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins
+of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out
+of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a
+quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and
+partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the
+island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his
+edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious
+marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the
+sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the
+observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the
+colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole
+surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular
+enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a
+view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any
+regular service in the support of the building.
+
+An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
+for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
+alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
+to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
+cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
+and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
+have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
+every relic with which he was entrusted.
+
+SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
+Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
+under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
+other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
+twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
+porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
+freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
+instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
+been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
+admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
+inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
+practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
+of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
+practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
+prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
+departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
+ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant
+vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a
+shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than
+the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
+emotion.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
+this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its
+erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method,
+considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
+
+In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
+find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood,
+that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme
+ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another,
+namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the
+Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of
+the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any
+perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift
+just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an
+ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St.
+Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever
+set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it
+is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that
+the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf
+man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
+orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
+discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
+common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
+manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
+the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
+the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
+bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
+St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
+took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
+which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
+barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
+of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
+palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
+had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
+this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
+foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
+beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
+frescoes of Giorgione.
+
+SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
+protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
+church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
+remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
+which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and
+let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the
+architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to
+be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
+thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
+of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of
+brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
+marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
+or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
+will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.
+
+SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding
+the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at
+least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even
+when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed
+parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the
+wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to
+cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface,
+but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
+string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
+aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
+the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary
+that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
+proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
+work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
+the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
+the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
+incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.
+
+SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As
+the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
+incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
+of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
+mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
+less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
+delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
+depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
+source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
+therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
+whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
+thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
+the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
+otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.
+
+SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
+smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
+structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
+left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
+appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
+becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only
+does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
+labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
+than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
+size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
+rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
+themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
+any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
+the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
+and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
+to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
+support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
+tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
+allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
+direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the
+structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his
+pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial
+in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may
+be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
+lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
+quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
+said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with
+color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there
+is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the
+procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from
+this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but
+in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his
+walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the
+portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in
+this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the
+walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of
+the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his
+eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the
+mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to
+bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of
+all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
+wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
+the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,
+[Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza
+che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the
+verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of
+natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will
+be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work
+of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of
+precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and
+brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk
+required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons,
+and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be,
+without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the
+attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like
+that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of
+joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a
+single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the
+spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the
+structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
+construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the
+shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
+sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
+bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
+of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
+in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to
+its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not
+blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of
+hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being
+dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief
+part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and
+tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard
+work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we
+perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be
+crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in
+the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the
+best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or
+crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real
+size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either
+inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value;
+that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore
+ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are
+even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of
+materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to
+see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set
+in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and
+where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon
+their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among
+the mazes of their azure veins.
+
+SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since
+the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
+diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
+diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
+must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the
+series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that,
+on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind
+of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been
+sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the
+rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of
+smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained
+under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing
+of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The
+stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do
+so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily
+measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between
+them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same
+proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the
+quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the
+facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to
+select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however,
+often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very
+fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has
+neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one
+column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he
+obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts
+fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he
+cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for
+available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his
+ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from
+immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does
+not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
+obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
+to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
+often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
+important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
+admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
+must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
+varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
+altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
+complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
+its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
+and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
+Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
+smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
+for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens
+that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so
+great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone,
+not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the
+disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates
+successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges
+in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will
+enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins.
+And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the
+alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double
+good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation
+of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a
+farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever
+similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that
+they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to
+disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the
+building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the
+whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any
+one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is
+perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of
+the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical
+patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly
+deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in
+reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that
+in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to
+accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and
+the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
+subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
+inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those
+of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
+ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
+themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort,
+as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
+lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
+knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it
+is discovered, into deeper truths.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in
+cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is
+evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based
+on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there
+can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not
+admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever
+ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch
+deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences
+which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of
+the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which
+may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black
+recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque
+projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any
+form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with
+robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous
+goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable
+shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the
+sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as
+he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the
+design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble,
+where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender
+pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must
+not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind
+be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine
+discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is
+to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the
+features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions
+of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes
+rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out,
+until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences
+of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental
+designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the
+Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
+builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
+exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss
+which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear
+bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such
+conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of
+the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation,
+rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced
+to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more
+intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory
+rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body.
+This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of
+creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations,
+Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so
+concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the
+rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism;
+secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often
+colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the
+treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase,
+or shallow hieroglyphic.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
+animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
+iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds
+to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
+practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find
+artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their
+elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would
+be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human
+and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general
+importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we
+constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges
+of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent
+of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must
+expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and
+diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the
+manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic
+ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been
+directly derived.
+
+SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
+must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
+to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
+architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
+relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation
+of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
+intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
+worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
+to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is
+sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted,
+and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may
+anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and
+that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the
+feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern
+cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the
+neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that
+fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care
+little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to
+contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the
+incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or
+thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
+involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
+originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace
+of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a
+line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting
+which could be added with advantage.
+
+SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
+thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force,
+and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow,
+there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and
+obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without
+danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like
+glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with
+holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the
+light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this
+artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an
+effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it
+will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still
+totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that
+the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden
+points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other
+portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps
+inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be
+wearied by the lightness of the general handling.
+
+SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
+force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color
+as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that
+the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
+decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
+system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
+understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
+nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
+Southern nations.
+
+SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
+never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
+has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
+believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
+that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
+in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.
+
+Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
+better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
+and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
+that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
+builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
+could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
+any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
+all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
+prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
+Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
+think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
+Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
+Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
+color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
+ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
+color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
+in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
+is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
+builders, which we have finally to examine.
+
+SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
+that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the
+porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it;
+but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
+namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred
+it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could.
+The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He
+had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded
+the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be
+painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and
+green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of
+abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his
+hawthorn blue.
+
+SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
+definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
+the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
+of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a
+matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees
+green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far
+more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
+mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
+abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development
+of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous
+depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
+compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to
+be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more
+delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes
+very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved
+by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the
+flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they
+appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented
+exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage;
+breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the
+lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and
+pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in
+nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be
+colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality.
+Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect
+bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in
+portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be
+definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere
+labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and
+there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might
+be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other
+manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the
+necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready
+to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in
+the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best
+means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones
+are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means,
+for they are all permanent.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
+chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit
+of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the
+_naivete_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed
+to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and
+internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in
+pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a
+temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast
+illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded
+with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without
+in letters of enamel and gold.
+
+SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is
+not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final
+consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this
+time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his
+attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of
+color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All
+these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent
+with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of
+color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have
+seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth,
+and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft
+tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none
+of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and
+therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even
+desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind
+addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is
+altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague
+impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be
+disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the
+building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for
+the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting
+up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us
+like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with
+our hand.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
+will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
+architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
+him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
+familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
+were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
+exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
+developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
+nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression
+of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
+exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning,
+except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal
+reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all
+other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture
+faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible
+to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient
+for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or
+the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no
+faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume
+as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so
+rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of
+architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all
+good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the
+effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar
+confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of
+decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the
+result of distance, together with perfect expression of the
+peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable
+artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness,
+neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the
+subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any
+pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates,
+and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two
+buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St.
+Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them
+the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the
+endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new
+Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it
+is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a
+noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was
+hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
+most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
+eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
+inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent
+alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
+illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and
+pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest,
+with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's.
+The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the
+opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate
+the impossibility of illustration.
+
+SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger
+scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp
+folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness.
+The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more
+than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more
+than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same
+depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with
+close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially
+necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow
+sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds
+is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces,
+like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the
+Plate.
+
+The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
+between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
+illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
+alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
+pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale
+green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch
+square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be
+satisfied. [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are
+exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the
+blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the
+effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color
+of a fruit piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an
+azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in
+the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small
+circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each
+only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the
+outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue
+crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled
+hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate
+conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the
+engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers,
+the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine
+architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's
+alone.
+
+From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
+imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection
+to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we
+may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
+vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars
+upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder
+remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky:
+and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are
+everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that
+church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler
+things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who
+delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the
+reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the
+streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what
+there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the
+men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity,
+and let him judge between us.
+
+SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
+especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
+ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following
+chapter. [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION
+XXXIII above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large
+jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I
+must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the
+inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it,
+as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the
+churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the
+first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of
+ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament
+of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character.
+
+SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
+endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to
+be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of
+offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately
+expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church,
+as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its
+purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to
+deal with briefly and candidly.
+
+The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
+presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
+ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our
+own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a
+cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a
+preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation
+was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral.
+
+SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
+modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier
+architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous.
+But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely
+uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work
+beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate
+ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget
+that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and
+beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was
+rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which
+fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that
+what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was
+then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city,
+of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and
+streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a
+peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most
+elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meetinghouse has by his
+white-washed walls and square-cut casements. [Footnote: See the farther
+notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV. Stones of Venice.]
+
+SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and
+then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a
+kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because,
+while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat
+ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our
+abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for
+every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal
+baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not
+because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the
+revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof
+was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our
+cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and
+then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the
+fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those
+churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all
+the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what
+it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know,
+if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they
+take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily
+to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and
+sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or
+furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in
+modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and
+much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost
+exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have
+not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were
+deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly
+promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is
+now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good
+architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from
+which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe
+it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit
+itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to
+ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly
+to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and
+lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
+dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle
+was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when
+the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave.
+There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in
+pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches
+were larger than in most other buildings, because they had to hold more
+people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they
+were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional
+offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and
+religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and
+familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn
+the facade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of
+every house in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches
+of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the
+Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the
+dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the
+distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that
+the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of
+profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be
+drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church
+architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least
+one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house.
+
+SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I
+must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately
+marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that
+every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as
+exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that
+they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as
+beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of
+style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely
+more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the
+confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse,
+not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the
+quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic
+service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the
+fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced
+oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which
+were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks
+and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting,
+buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere
+size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples
+elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the
+adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing
+intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the
+forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when
+they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely
+to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more
+richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the
+carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible:
+all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical
+buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were
+built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna,
+or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door,
+and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the
+grotesques of the brackets and the gables.
+
+SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question
+respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally
+different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So
+long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest
+continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of
+inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question
+whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving
+beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active
+life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and
+color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the
+curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they
+are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say,
+may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if
+once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see
+in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest
+services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire
+to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house
+of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb
+instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask
+whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should
+worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim
+whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters,
+must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray.
+
+SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the
+ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is
+evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the
+permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be
+dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow
+that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical.
+It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the
+church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable
+to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the
+dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as
+there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's
+opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles
+which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice,
+so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience
+may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use,
+which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church
+service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear
+daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style
+for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes
+them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and
+this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for
+houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is
+essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us
+convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of
+convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style it
+tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the
+Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore
+less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for
+both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were
+used for both.
+
+SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which,
+according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as
+either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I
+mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have
+already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural
+features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or
+sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure
+Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by
+features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please,
+altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered
+impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and
+entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and
+interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which
+becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by
+representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore,
+the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in
+modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion
+has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the
+art of the mosaicist?
+
+SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I
+have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is
+likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion.
+One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of
+others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly
+set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could
+pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I
+have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but
+in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts
+with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange
+distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves
+would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I
+do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler
+than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in
+the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for
+that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose
+hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort
+to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general
+fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether
+right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when
+casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what
+class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is
+by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I
+believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most
+influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are
+Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as
+he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by
+religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great
+religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear
+on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture
+illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it
+of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the
+time.
+
+SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the
+chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been
+hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in
+some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind
+is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable
+of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the
+heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it,
+which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power
+of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a
+Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the
+first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and
+would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving
+themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or
+gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the
+figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and
+pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand
+ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly
+sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the
+men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it
+from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who
+read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the
+painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be
+taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more
+popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the
+subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul
+and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan
+hag.
+
+SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
+capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
+suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
+coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
+impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
+the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
+association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
+it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
+conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity,
+and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration
+for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would
+otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of
+emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed
+represent a fact! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill
+told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little
+of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the
+child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is
+Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a
+strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests
+with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the
+grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and
+whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not
+always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one,
+and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but
+always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into
+sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of
+accredited truth.
+
+SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the
+truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no
+longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an
+idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in
+the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the
+representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or
+that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this
+or that, painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in
+the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of
+tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his
+Iconographie Chretienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'etonnait de re
+trouver a la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait
+dessine dans le baptistere de St. Marc, a Venise. Le costume des
+personnages est partout et en tout temps le meme, non-seulement pour la
+forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le
+nombre et l'epaisseur des plis."] We do not severely criticise the
+manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh
+investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern
+religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment
+uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and
+this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the
+worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more
+especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so
+also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly
+religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more
+faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it
+was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of
+both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have
+been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end
+of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in
+modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be
+methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world
+remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be
+education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid
+invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural
+powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society
+lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts
+especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for
+the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy
+studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and
+knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do
+not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt
+to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy,
+and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is
+utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are
+many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who
+have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be
+used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what
+is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a
+village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other
+histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and
+set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having.
+But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work
+when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing
+stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth
+square stones, and consider ourselves wise.
+
+SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but
+I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who
+suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be
+utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be
+granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they
+were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole
+church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its
+illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their
+Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though
+far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no
+other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_
+have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with
+printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they
+could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily
+became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the
+walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the
+Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the
+reader to examine the connection and subjects of these mosaics; but in
+the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any
+sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in
+permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored
+portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are
+they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman
+empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the
+expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies
+always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which
+are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to
+represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so,
+even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early
+Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement,
+but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course
+one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects
+between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind,
+which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the
+nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro
+cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by
+which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance
+and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them
+barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever,
+these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand
+exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images
+which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the
+great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art
+itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor
+can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however
+influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of
+consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a
+Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is
+screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large
+family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is
+reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare
+it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all
+Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the
+word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the
+fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts
+are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of
+Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been
+worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant
+persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works.
+Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the
+mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place
+of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del
+Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious
+influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of
+Europe they have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of
+the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any
+other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for
+human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I
+believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous
+idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other.
+It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as,
+since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in
+glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings;
+partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which,
+in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because
+imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it.
+
+SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the
+inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented
+in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting
+could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions,
+and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern
+book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth
+naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great
+importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural
+effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the
+common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning
+of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often
+of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth
+and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches
+with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their
+size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color
+attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations;
+neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such
+as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before
+the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast
+shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of
+spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of
+receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not
+acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances
+and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of
+Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of
+the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look
+down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa.
+
+SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to
+discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind
+of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow
+out the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to
+fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the
+feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was
+built.
+
+Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct
+the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between
+ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with
+writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be
+large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to
+decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that
+every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would
+rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and
+that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We
+must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all
+that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of
+the builder or of his times.
+
+SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the
+church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and
+new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these
+persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old
+Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of
+Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the
+subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern
+churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order
+to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for
+salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are
+dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna
+was the type.
+
+SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the
+church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of
+Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other,
+in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open
+upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN
+ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds
+the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE,
+ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of
+the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of
+Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE
+REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU
+CONSIDER."
+
+Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen
+when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was
+supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance
+into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance
+into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book
+which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the
+same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the
+invisible Church of God.
+
+SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the
+head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that
+door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy
+Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the
+Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the
+Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second
+and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar
+offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of
+fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented
+standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are
+pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each
+separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at
+Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the
+four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each
+bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the
+tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that
+of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being
+thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are
+continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the
+gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His
+Church:
+
+    "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH:
+       HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY.
+         HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST:
+  BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD."
+
+And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the
+outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_.
+It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to
+sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels
+celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this
+holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels
+for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that
+the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive
+forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity,
+as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is
+vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended
+into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault
+between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and
+resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate
+scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with
+thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre,
+and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is
+the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the
+subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is
+represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and
+throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the
+twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna,
+and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at
+the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are
+inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
+heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so
+come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice."
+
+SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of
+the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the
+crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with
+Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the
+cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our
+assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath
+their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which
+they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison,
+Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.
+
+SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the
+witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its
+centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
+little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship,
+and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124,
+note.] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of
+the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once
+fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor
+lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of
+New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the
+Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of
+Revelation; [Footnote: The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished,
+and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but
+if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching
+a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an
+ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the
+altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated
+dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange
+contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon
+it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like
+wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning
+palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter
+Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon
+the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that
+opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence
+of warning,--"Christ shall come."
+
+SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look
+with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry
+of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts
+of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at
+once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written
+word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all
+glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of
+the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether
+honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither
+the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that,
+as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be
+of jasper, [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished
+with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the
+World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of
+it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all
+riches"? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long
+perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing
+domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of
+it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there
+from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above
+the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or
+thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple,
+attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would
+forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy
+without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and
+the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain
+ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those
+marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the
+colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that
+once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults,
+that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do
+judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as
+she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten
+this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without
+excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the
+North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused
+and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of
+the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the
+Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other
+cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from
+religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the
+grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street,
+there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify,
+we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace
+or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls
+on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of
+marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined
+the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all
+shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled
+with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin
+was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God,
+burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their
+laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not
+unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of
+gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had
+uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things
+God will bring thee into judgment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DUCAL PALACE.
+
+
+SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter
+that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal
+Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices
+which were raised for half a century after its completion, their
+characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly
+copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of
+Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination,
+employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in
+its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a
+remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds
+of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of
+Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more
+daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause
+to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of
+innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it
+thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon
+an image more attractive.
+
+SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural
+invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in
+self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building
+thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it
+doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is
+actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian
+antiquaries, whether the main facade of the palace be of the fourteenth
+or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course
+necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of
+the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the
+entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I
+trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not
+be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of
+the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into
+the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be
+thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal
+parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much
+as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do
+what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him
+the necessary topographical knowledge:
+
+Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place;
+and the following references will clearly explain their relative
+positions:
+
+A. St. Mark's Place.
+B. Piazzetta.
+P. V. Procuratie Vecchie.
+P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove.
+P. L. Libreria Vecchia.
+I. Piazzetta de' Leoni.
+T. Tower of St. Mark.
+F F. Great Facade of St. Mark's Church.
+M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the
+    separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had
+    been marked, which would have confused the whole.)
+D D D. Ducal Palace.         g s. Giant's stair.
+C. Court of Ducal Palace.    J. Judgement angle.
+c. Porta della Carta.        a. Fig-tree angle.
+p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw).
+S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs).
+R R. Riva de' Schiavoni.
+
+
+[Illustration: FIG. I. The Ducal Palace--Ground Plan.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. II. The Ducal Palace--Bird's eye View.]
+
+
+The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in
+the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B,
+and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on
+the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the
+Church of St. Mark.
+
+Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three
+sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively
+called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Facade;" that towards
+the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Facade;" and that towards the Rio del
+Palazzo, the "Rio Facade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by
+the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes
+under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal
+thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy,
+in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and
+Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar
+was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely
+resemble each other in form.
+
+SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the
+appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement
+will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and
+fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a
+general view of the Sea Facade and Rio Facade (the latter in very steep
+perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly
+represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to
+avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the
+two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is
+the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the
+regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the
+Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland
+used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above
+this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Facade and Rio Facade,
+will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a
+sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called
+the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall
+of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen
+in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the
+Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two
+which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated,
+the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its
+interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and
+fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's
+Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left.
+
+SECTION V. The great facade which fronts the spectator looks southward.
+Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of
+the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern
+Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at
+the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della
+Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the
+"Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark
+side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long
+four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is
+entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no
+accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we
+shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our
+present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older
+palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows,
+refittings of the brickwork, etc.
+
+SECTION VI. It will be observed that the facade is composed of a smooth
+mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other.
+The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at
+once by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken
+right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of
+the Sea Facade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both
+in the inner court and on the Facade, which carry the main walls;
+_b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C
+are the three stories of the interior of the palace.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. III.]
+
+The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple,
+and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed,
+there would be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls,
+carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable.
+
+The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused
+ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient
+masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I
+have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the
+removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the
+subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader;
+but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important.
+
+SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed
+that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the
+facade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable
+instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience,
+which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the
+Gothic schools.
+
+The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall
+find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain
+the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we
+shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning
+of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent
+chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the
+side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was
+no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height
+was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just
+harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question
+how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or
+above them.
+
+The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the
+best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the
+light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of
+illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce
+light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern
+architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would
+have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would
+have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and
+have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper
+story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued
+along the facade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the
+paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He
+unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with
+reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external
+appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather
+gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces
+of wall above and below the windows.
+
+SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows,
+which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is
+painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be
+hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise."
+
+In nearly the centre of the Sea Facade, and between the first and second
+windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace,
+and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony."
+
+The facade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the
+Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when
+people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all
+on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber,
+one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the
+other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea,
+light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of
+Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta
+della Carta.
+
+SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography
+of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its
+history.
+
+We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian
+architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.
+
+The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
+successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
+Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
+superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are
+all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and
+the existing building is formed by the union of the two.
+
+We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader
+will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed
+books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The
+numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given
+with the quotations.
+  Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663.
+  Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829.
+  Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780.
+  Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838.
+  Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811.
+  Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837.
+  Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.]
+
+1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
+
+In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined
+to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of
+their state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina
+Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo
+Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar
+la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi,
+vol. vi. chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or
+Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement
+of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the
+future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the
+banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build
+wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built
+the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace
+now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.
+[Footnote: "Amplio la citta, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d'
+Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la capella di S.
+Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that
+piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the
+nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare
+also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si e che il suddetto
+Agnello lo incommincio da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di
+S. Marco."]
+
+The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of
+Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
+representation of her power.
+
+SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio
+little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte
+della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio;
+that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Facade; but this
+was merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the
+Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great
+water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to
+distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the
+Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio,
+stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the
+boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the
+Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which
+the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are:
+"Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et
+rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was
+built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure
+esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted,
+says: "in the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say on
+the Piazzetta."]
+
+We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the
+existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the
+Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at
+one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some
+magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by
+the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The
+chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the
+palace;" [Footnote: "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino,
+quoted by Cadorin and Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express
+pride in the buildings being worthy of an emperor's examination. This
+was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against
+Candiano IV., [Footnote: There is an interesting account of this revolt
+in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been
+destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important
+restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and
+Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii
+hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are
+usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but
+the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber,
+speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many
+miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with
+ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way
+somewhat startling to the state, by absconding with a French priest to
+St. Michael's in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs,
+therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be
+undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named.] and just repaired, and
+richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as
+having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with
+ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum
+aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_] There can be no doubt
+whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the
+other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi,
+&c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it
+was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color.
+
+SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by
+fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse
+parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these
+fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another
+emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial
+praise. [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis
+sequitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted
+by Cadorin.]
+
+Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again
+repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says
+that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every
+direction;" [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi
+per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle
+for account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace
+seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the
+commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace
+were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time
+when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by
+Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and
+this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly
+clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year
+1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half
+remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani."
+[Footnote: "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M.
+Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro
+Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as
+"molto particolare, e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p.
+593.--It terminates in the year 1422.]
+
+So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.
+
+SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects
+that the important change in the Venetian government which gave
+stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,
+[Footnote: See Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge
+Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and
+prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who
+laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by
+the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government."
+
+We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their
+importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to
+be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism
+of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world.
+[Footnote: Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the
+reign of Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure
+establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the
+people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental
+in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity.
+
+The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain
+limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever
+before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of
+the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement,
+or decoration of the chamber in which they sat.
+
+We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another
+saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge
+Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council
+first sat in it_." [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year,
+therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice
+was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval
+with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation,
+coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal
+representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace
+is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles.
+
+SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian
+historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del
+Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of
+the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in
+expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for
+the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is
+_now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa
+parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu
+fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_,
+quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the
+Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill
+written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del
+1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se
+adoperava a far e pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin
+1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great
+importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the
+meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122
+years."--_Cod. Ven._ tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from
+1253 to 1454.
+
+Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New
+proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the
+Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and
+its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace:
+but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the
+commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the
+first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the
+Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then
+begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole
+period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings
+consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and
+when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being
+continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they
+reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and
+pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the
+junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent,
+which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws.
+
+SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay
+the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built
+by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and
+the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent
+will soon become visible to us.
+
+The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Facade, behind the
+present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on
+the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low
+or high, but probably on a first story. The great facade of the Ziani
+Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as
+far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being
+obviously the points first considered.
+
+SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions
+to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most
+significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction
+of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the
+_Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi
+era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi
+Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle
+in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It
+appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in
+question.]
+
+Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain
+apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the
+Rio Facade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the
+old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments
+at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for
+prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote:
+Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice
+that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose,
+in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made
+against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to
+prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the
+Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported,
+small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable
+rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated.
+[Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen
+them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them
+know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof
+of the palace the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine
+where it is greatest."] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being
+built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio
+in the year 1309.
+
+SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had
+no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed
+by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of
+that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge
+Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of
+Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say
+by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only
+one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo.
+There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his
+reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on
+whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be
+compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is
+recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate
+built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue
+kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St.
+Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se
+al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in
+zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S.
+Marco."--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120.]
+
+SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed
+their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than
+that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This
+door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which
+are fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not
+examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I
+take the passages quoted.] in the following terms:--
+
+"1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St.
+Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates....
+[Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."--Cadorin, 189, I.]
+for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the
+palace."
+
+"1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making
+gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace
+stairs."
+
+The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the
+reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced
+by the Porta della Carta.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered
+for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber
+inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion,
+began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be
+built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was
+probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as
+well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio.
+The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under
+these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven.,
+No. CXLI. p. 365.]
+
+"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
+Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine
+where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the
+Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected
+two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty
+ducats a year."
+
+It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
+Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the
+commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their
+report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the
+commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote:
+Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree:
+"For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not
+capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio
+parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal
+Grande."--P. 324.]
+
+_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building
+involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
+present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
+prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not
+mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it
+has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls
+rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still
+stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as
+shown in Figure II. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can
+be known respecting the design of the Sea Facade, must be gleaned out of
+the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.
+
+Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
+time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
+1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
+discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
+1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
+and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
+be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342
+is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while
+Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the
+Council Chamber as only begun in 1345.]
+
+The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
+conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.
+[Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed
+in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as
+that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls;
+[Footnote: "II primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365
+vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino_.] so that
+the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its
+decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the
+paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi
+1400 vi fece il ciclo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle,
+ch'era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. viii.] They
+represented the heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi
+si messe in oro il ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il
+pergole del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e
+l'altro di stelle, eh' erano la insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_,
+lib. xiii. Compare also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the
+bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this
+time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial
+bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an
+important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two
+square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window
+towards the sea:
+
+  "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI
+  HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT."
+
+And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that
+window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I
+think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out
+and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final
+decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council
+sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the
+Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it,
+the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the
+central one of her life.
+
+SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two,
+in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of
+the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been
+proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three
+years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the
+gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately
+symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which
+it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the
+fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of
+the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new
+Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as
+the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and
+more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the
+building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the
+"Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the
+Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix I.,
+Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in
+Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
+towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva
+dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Facade as important as that to
+the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the
+water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and
+interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the
+nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered
+the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and
+then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity
+of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta
+with the same splendor as the Sea Facade. But no such sweeping measure of
+renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the
+plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a
+gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary
+additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of
+the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon
+the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast
+additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful
+of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own
+enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some
+strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger.
+It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt,
+but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the
+desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and
+the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it.
+
+SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own
+weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under
+the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own
+enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a
+thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be
+for the good of the state.
+
+Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire
+which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's,
+and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I
+shall relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No.
+cxxv. in the Marcian Library, p. 568.]
+
+SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care
+to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's
+house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge_
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] _to restore it in the form in which it
+was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better
+manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was
+forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any
+one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to
+rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was
+magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the
+city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then
+proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the
+late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his
+own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this
+occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they
+ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the
+greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and
+that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish
+interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole
+course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done
+anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but
+in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the
+advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as
+far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this
+accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything
+in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and
+that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never
+endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as
+his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took
+in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very
+old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life
+before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore
+they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building
+for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its
+Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his
+successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to
+observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which
+had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that
+he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that
+he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes
+on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the
+Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses
+of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work;
+and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at
+present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended
+his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but
+hardly even begun."
+
+SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts
+which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the
+whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember,
+that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred
+years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat
+in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to
+destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should
+propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of
+Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once
+be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we
+now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in
+the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were
+in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices
+of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower
+of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one;
+and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
+allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
+most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and
+rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
+Council Chamber, of which the whole facade to the Sea consisted, never
+entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
+connected with the Ducal residence.
+
+I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
+forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422
+[Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild
+the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari
+was elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according
+to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but
+previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari
+enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber
+was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate
+as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle;
+[Footnote: "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran
+Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno
+che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua
+creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is
+probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum;
+[Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto
+Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran
+Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation fo
+fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c.,
+p. 426.]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first
+hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare
+Appendix I. Vol. III.]
+
+SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly
+called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of
+Venice,--and of Venice herself.
+
+The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I
+dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of
+Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been
+called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this
+instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had
+forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces
+might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take
+the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her
+unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her
+fortunes, the city never flourished again.
+
+SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate
+details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued
+under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I
+am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the
+architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the
+following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing facade to the
+Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most
+particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back
+from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta
+della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge
+Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogade
+del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131.] the interior buildings
+connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro, (the Othello
+of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This identification has been accomplished, and
+I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all
+the leisure which, during the last twenty years his manifold office of
+kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in
+discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which
+bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take
+advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will
+shortly be made public.] in 1462.
+
+SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we
+have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was
+close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council
+Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still
+left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more
+probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire
+of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever
+buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion
+of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479,
+together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon
+of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it
+became necessary to reconstruct the entire facades of the portion of the
+palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal.
+This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close
+of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci
+executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum
+of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work
+must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century.
+The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by
+fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and
+the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point
+marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure II on the Rio Facade.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this
+finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire,
+burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious
+pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the
+Sea Facade, and most of those on the Rio Facade, leaving the building a
+mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the
+Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an
+entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading
+architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or
+the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given
+in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbe Cadorin, in
+the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most
+important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace.
+
+I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental
+resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was
+first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others,
+especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute
+designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his
+immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for
+the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and
+Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise
+of Guariento had withered before the flames.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were
+however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier
+work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was
+the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to
+the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of
+Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The
+completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form;
+with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases
+among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and
+defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I
+suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy.
+
+SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the
+details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I
+shall not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here,
+because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this
+volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to
+us in the art of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the
+third volume, Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large
+figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable
+every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that
+the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether
+wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to such
+points of interest as can be explained in the text.
+
+SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning
+of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very
+nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance
+were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should
+be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness
+of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the
+pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other
+four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been
+attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some
+modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of
+buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be
+noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly
+Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks
+of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by
+buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare,
+which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural
+dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large
+surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal
+Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite
+concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of
+Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise
+decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the
+sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane
+surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions
+only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its
+north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner
+angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly
+made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which
+I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence
+will always be distinctly traceable in them.
+
+SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its
+completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The
+central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was
+entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the
+Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the
+principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle
+sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the
+two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and
+their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject;
+above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is
+introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more
+figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel
+holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their
+crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the
+seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the
+ground to the top of the angle.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the
+palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's,
+and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated,
+only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the
+Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according
+to the arrangement just explained,--
+
+First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade).
+
+Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade).
+
+Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade).
+
+Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade).
+
+Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their
+order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the
+reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the
+great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner
+stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most
+important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the
+builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he
+built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson
+which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it
+is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they
+themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their
+city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly
+inscribed.
+
+SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong
+to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the
+Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is
+the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the
+Renaissance spirit.
+
+The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of
+all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank
+confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the
+results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that
+the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence
+in its own wisdom.
+
+Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves.
+
+The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called
+the angle of the Fig-tree:
+
+Its subject is the FALL OF MAN.
+
+The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine:
+
+Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH.
+
+The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle:
+
+Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
+
+It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration,
+the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been
+built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the
+sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two
+schools.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
+principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
+turns to the Piazetta (the facade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw
+above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital,
+which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than
+the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preeminence
+of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was
+first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in
+execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather
+suppose it to have been the earliest completed.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness,
+the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the
+sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary
+adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of
+the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching
+out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for
+several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or
+superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad
+leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight,
+beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate
+plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone
+hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the
+undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine
+angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having
+tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits
+of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have
+been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the
+sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so
+interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the
+subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of this
+chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to
+be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the
+composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses,
+there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending
+leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to
+prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this
+Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it
+is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther
+than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of
+the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty
+joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only
+half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several
+cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned
+boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon
+them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of
+the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous
+veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the
+sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in
+order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the
+eye.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the
+figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many
+respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that
+they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth
+century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the
+Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of
+far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal
+Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the
+head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of
+that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is
+represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp,
+the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and
+majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant
+wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of
+design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body,
+carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily
+expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of
+technical skill. This monument bears date 1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI--NOIE
+AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen,
+in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c.]
+and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name:
+
+  "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS,
+      LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS."
+
+SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently
+worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing
+hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins
+on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being
+evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in
+those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of
+this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret
+and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three
+brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of
+the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not
+with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet,
+on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital.
+
+SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the
+group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are
+protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle
+and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in
+nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to
+1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred
+yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge
+Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354.
+
+SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the
+Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are
+better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the
+tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more
+nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.
+
+The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has
+very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk
+between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his
+hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those
+of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it
+always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it
+is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the
+tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the
+fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to
+nature; they are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges,
+and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled
+drapery.
+
+SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade,
+the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their
+positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate
+XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right.
+A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his
+hand a scroll with this inscription:
+
+  EFICE Q
+  SOFRE
+  TUR AFA
+  EL REVE
+  RENDE
+  QUIETU
+
+i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote:
+"Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The
+peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to
+tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir
+Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is
+represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded
+me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising
+of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well known tale of the Fisherman
+and St. Mark's ring.] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll
+borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much
+the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has
+only in its hand the Annunciation lily.
+
+SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating
+the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression
+of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence
+upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general
+purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I
+imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in
+which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just
+touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of
+divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the
+great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace;
+and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the
+eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men
+in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade
+at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse.
+
+SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their
+order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.)
+that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower
+story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then
+the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first,
+which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine
+angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and
+the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle.
+
+SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are
+octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in
+every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the
+angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on
+the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding
+forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the
+groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have
+given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope
+to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them
+here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the
+expression of the figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower
+leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left
+dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In
+referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the
+outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side;
+and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of
+course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up
+after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left
+visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western
+sides of each.
+
+SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle.
+
+In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its
+wings expanded, covering his breast.
+
+On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves.
+
+On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other,
+a pair of scissors.
+
+It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the facade,
+should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can
+hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I
+will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical
+meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it
+would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb
+introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but
+generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the
+hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are
+very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small.
+
+SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are
+left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one
+web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its
+jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming
+itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far
+the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds.
+
+THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads,
+large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned.
+
+FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one
+in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in
+its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the
+nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds.
+
+The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has
+luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing
+hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling
+hair, deep cut with drill holes.
+
+This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only
+with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought
+expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of
+the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads
+are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with
+sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not
+a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features
+small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and
+great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull
+smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of
+their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as
+the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed
+coxcombs.
+
+FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length
+statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription.
+In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief
+embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the
+abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR"
+(contracted IPAT.).
+
+On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand,
+and sceptre in left.
+
+On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away.
+He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a
+sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He
+has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much
+injured, but has once been very noble in expression.
+
+SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard,
+and bad.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which
+is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it
+and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues.
+
+_First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from
+the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he
+pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there
+is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is,
+"LARGITAS ME ONORAT."
+
+In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of
+showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a
+plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct
+imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always
+injuries.
+
+This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur
+in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a
+leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients.
+
+SECTION XLIX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An
+armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL
+TIMENS."
+
+This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets
+as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a
+woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in
+the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a
+very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by
+his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the
+Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be
+well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the
+man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name."
+
+SECTION L. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but
+needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA
+SUM, DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like
+person with a veil.
+
+She is the Ate of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the
+fourth book:
+
+  "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,
+   With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;
+   And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,
+   That nought but gall and venim comprehended,
+   And wicked wordes that God and man offended:
+   Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,
+   And both the parts did speake, and both contended;
+   And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,
+   That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided."
+
+Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity
+we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for
+the other sense of the word.
+
+SECTION LI. _Fourth side_. Patience. A female figure, very
+expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
+left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
+
+She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
+masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in
+the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags
+who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
+Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
+Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
+hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
+Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
+smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."
+
+SECTION LII. _Fifth side_. Despair. A female figure thrusting a
+dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down
+among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest
+figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MOS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In
+the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears,
+instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each
+side.
+
+This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented
+as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's
+vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that
+this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the
+attention of Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+SECTION LIII. _Sixth side_. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek,
+but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind
+legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI *
+*;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like
+"A'ONOEXIBEO."
+
+I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and
+that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo."
+
+This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems;
+represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the
+finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head
+of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay,
+vol. ii. p. 226.]
+
+Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her
+above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood.
+
+SECTION LIV. _Seventh side_. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a
+small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription
+nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI,
+CERO," remain.
+
+By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the
+helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is
+covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, _is
+bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her
+hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet.
+
+In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,--
+
+      "Full large of limbe and every joint
+  He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
+
+For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the
+Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III.
+
+SECTION LV. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the
+Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA
+ROBUOBTINEO."
+
+I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of
+Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood,
+but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in
+the second book:
+
+  "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew,
+   Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight:
+   Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+   And ever and anone with rosy red
+   The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye,
+   That her became, as polisht yvory
+   Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd
+   With fayre vermilion or pure castory."
+
+SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects
+are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of
+the degradation of human instincts.
+
+_First side_. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap
+ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious
+twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but
+still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque.
+His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back.
+
+_Second side_. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a
+bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It
+plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow.
+
+_Third side_. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head,
+founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap
+made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand.
+
+_Fourth side_. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise.
+It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it
+wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg.
+
+_Fifth side_. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a
+curved sword.
+
+_Sixth side_. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a
+chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a
+two-edged sword.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round
+helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with
+a top like a fir-cone.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand,
+ending below in a fish.
+
+SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Faith. She has her left
+hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA
+IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her
+left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic
+books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia)
+is still more spiritual and noble:
+
+  "She was araied all in lilly white,
+  And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
+  With wine and water fild up to the hight,
+  In which a serpent did himselfe enfold,
+  That horrour made to all that did behold;
+  But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood:
+  And in her other hand she fast did hold
+  A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood;
+  Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood."
+
+SECTION LVIII. _Second side_. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?]
+tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat
+vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than
+Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM
+VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as
+merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue
+having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian
+symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given
+generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin,
+knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing
+back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and
+slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is
+square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above
+her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins
+deeply infixed.
+
+Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt,
+however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere
+manliness or courage.
+
+SECTION LIX. _Third side_. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water
+and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy
+nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat
+vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards
+continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College)
+temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or
+gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the
+moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who
+has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of
+which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed
+among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the
+Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much
+sternness:
+
+  "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
+   That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
+   His carriage was full comely and upright;
+   His countenance demure and temperate;
+   But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
+   That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
+
+The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
+of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
+inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
+opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
+is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
+most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
+[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
+intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
+image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
+of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
+crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
+to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
+throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
+laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
+virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
+opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
+Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
+find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
+a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
+forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
+first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
+Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
+
+  "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
+   Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
+   That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
+
+The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser,
+for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
+philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.
+
+SECTION LX. _Fourth side_. Humility; with a veil upon her head,
+carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN
+ME."
+
+This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized
+in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in
+early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to
+imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an
+exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek
+youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish
+systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation.
+
+SECTION LXI. _Fifth side_. Charity. A woman with her lap full of
+loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it
+across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital.
+
+Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In
+the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by
+having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is
+crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and
+fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears
+above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of
+beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth.
+
+The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in
+the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always
+represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in
+Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and,
+with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear
+fire, she could not have been discerned.
+
+Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea
+afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and
+sculptors.
+
+SECTION LXII. _Sixth side_. Justice. Crowned, and with sword.
+Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE."
+
+This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good
+capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has
+also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue,
+representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding
+scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing
+that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws,
+but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands.
+In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an
+angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been
+working at a desk or table.
+
+Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons
+riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music.
+
+Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the
+betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity.
+
+SECTION LXIII. _Seventh side_. Prudence. A man with a book and a
+pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the
+shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so
+frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of
+men occupied in any civil capacity.
+
+This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees
+of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being
+opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find,
+in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive
+character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto
+expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things
+by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with
+compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of
+looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or
+anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural
+capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never
+enough considered or symbolized.
+
+The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
+Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.
+
+SECTION LXIV. _Eighth side_. Hope. A figure full of devotional
+expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand
+which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy
+this hand does not appear.
+
+Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
+not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
+others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
+which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
+for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
+even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
+for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
+air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
+was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
+symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
+are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
+characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is
+aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the
+Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
+beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
+
+  "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
+   An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."
+
+SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Luxury (the opposite of
+chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
+forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
+drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."
+
+These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
+those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His
+Luxury rides upon a goat:
+
+  "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
+   Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
+   And in his hand a burning heart he bare."
+
+But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is
+the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more
+indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediaeval and
+the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented.
+
+I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the
+thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central
+year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be
+gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most
+touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by
+the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters;
+namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now,
+therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's
+still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for
+the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents
+Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan
+and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and
+fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii.
+letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of
+Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as
+furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the
+mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of
+a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of
+the Graces, but full of terror:
+
+  "With that the darts which his right hand did straine
+   Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,
+   And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine,
+   That all his many it afraide did make."
+
+His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is.
+Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope,
+Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty.
+After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame,
+
+  "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,
+   Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
+   Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,
+   Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread
+   Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity,
+   Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy."
+
+Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the
+Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in
+every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our
+literature, and our minds.
+
+SECTION LXVI. _Second side_. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a
+jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird,
+which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM."
+
+Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine:
+
+  "His belly was upblownt with luxury,
+   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
+   And like a crane his necke was long and fyne,
+   Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast,
+   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne."
+
+He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of
+ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance.
+
+SECTION LXVII. _Third side_. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and
+stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with
+ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his
+helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA."
+
+Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it
+as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep
+under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a
+feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle
+called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a
+team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her
+palace she is thus described:
+
+  "So proud she shyned in her princely state,
+   Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne;
+   And sitting high, for lowly she did hate:
+   Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne
+   A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne;
+   And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,
+   Wherein her face she often vewed fayne."
+
+The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and
+Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father
+and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.)
+
+Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride
+which vents itself in insult to others.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. _Fourth side_. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at
+her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance Copy
+it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME."
+
+Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest
+of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides
+upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood.
+Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me
+very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any
+representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the
+most terrible; both of them make him violent.
+
+SECTION LXIX. _Fifth side_. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over
+her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous
+for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny
+channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by
+famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring
+and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the
+Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR."
+
+Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god
+Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power.
+Note the position of the house of Richesse:
+
+  "Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
+  That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide."
+
+It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness,
+although they are vices totally different in their operation on the
+human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of
+Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of
+the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that
+is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus
+destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in
+heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is
+not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly
+proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be
+consistent with much charity; not so avarice.
+
+SECTION LXX. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken
+away, having had its arms round two branches of trees.
+
+I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless,
+in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as
+desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice
+especially upon the clergy,--
+
+  "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde,
+  Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin,
+  Like to an holy monck, the service to begin.
+  And in his hand his portesse still he bare,
+  That much was worne, but therein little redd."
+
+And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices:
+
+  "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd,
+  When such an one had guiding of the way."
+
+Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse,
+indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly
+characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
+
+SECTION LXXI. _Seventh side_. Vanity. She is smiling complacently
+as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with
+roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
+
+There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in
+the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas
+generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it
+in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity
+shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the
+thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this
+sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal,
+of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a
+feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser,
+I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria,
+more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however,
+entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+
+SECTION LXXII. _Eighth side_. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of
+expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a
+serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle
+of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.
+
+Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as
+having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with
+an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping;
+a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the
+eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames
+consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of
+Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not
+suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer,
+joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of
+corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole
+mind:
+
+                      "Malicious Envy rode
+  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
+  Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
+  That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+  _And in a kirtle of discolourd say
+  He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_,
+  And in his bosome secretly there lay
+  An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
+  In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
+
+He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in
+the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
+
+SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight
+birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which,
+however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all
+varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description.
+
+SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is
+grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and
+the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that
+it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance
+series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
+
+_First side_. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a
+child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his
+own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."
+
+The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no
+means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a
+parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as
+in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next
+in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating
+human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante
+placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have
+been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser--
+
+         "All in sable sorrowfully clad,
+  Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A pair of pincers in his hand he had,
+  With which he pinched people to the heart."
+
+He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth
+canto of the fourth book:
+
+  "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade,
+   That neither day nor night from working spared;
+   But to small purpose yron wedges made:
+   Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade.
+
+   Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent,
+   Ne better had he, ne for better cared;
+   With blistered hands among the cinders brent."
+
+It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure
+is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a
+very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as
+"Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the
+companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is
+intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred
+Sorrow.
+
+SECTION LXXV. _Second side_. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing
+hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as
+singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS."
+
+We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by
+Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy,
+"ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully
+developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from
+them in the earlier capitals.
+
+SECTION LXXVI. _Third side_. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find
+it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a
+man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English
+residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a
+feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with
+one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and
+bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb."
+
+SECTION LXXVII. _Fourth side_. Destroyed, all but a book, which
+identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy;
+there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent
+life with the pursuit of literature?).
+
+Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all
+his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the
+convent, but of wedded life.
+
+SECTION LXXVIII. _Fifth side_. Only a scroll is left; but, from the
+copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM
+DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the
+virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only.
+
+The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite
+character in the "Faerie Queen."
+
+SECTION LXXIX. _Sixth side_. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a
+crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The
+Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly
+conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits.
+In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect,
+
+  "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red,
+   Purfled with gold and pearle;...
+   Her wanton palfrey all was overspred.
+   With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
+   Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave."
+
+Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the
+description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted.
+
+SECTION LXXX. _Seventh side_. Injustice. An armed figure holding a
+halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the
+particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented
+at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while
+various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia"
+is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger.
+
+_Eighth side_. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child,
+who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is
+inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?"
+
+SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round,
+coarsely cut.
+
+FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its
+haunches. Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired
+with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair
+projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks,
+hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness.
+
+SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is
+thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade.
+
+The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me
+later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is
+embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe
+Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general
+illustration of Idleness.
+
+_First side_. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated,
+and fastened by a buckle.
+
+_Second side_. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand.
+
+_Third side_. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds
+by the haunches.
+
+_Fourth side_. A man with a parrot.
+
+_Fifth side_. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and
+dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand,
+her right on her breast.
+
+_Sixth side_. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand
+upon the leaves of the capital.
+
+_Seventh side_. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand.
+
+_Eighth side_. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right
+laid on his breast.
+
+SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large
+heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that
+these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins,
+Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians.
+Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to
+note them.] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth
+side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a
+portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in
+every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and,
+therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list
+given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the
+superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations.
+Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation
+of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in
+which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches.
+
+SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the
+sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of
+the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part
+of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the
+wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the
+orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus,
+the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining
+are the following:
+
+_First side_. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated
+with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS."
+
+_Second side_. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a
+long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters
+"GRAMMATIC" remain.
+
+_Third side_. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double
+beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his
+back.
+
+_Fourth side_. Destroyed.
+
+_Fifth side_. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on
+it.
+
+_Sixth side_. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *"
+
+_Seventh side_. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle
+wrought into a lion's head.
+
+_Eighth side_. Destroyed.
+
+SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most
+interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and
+the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers
+as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they
+are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was
+laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are
+now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty
+because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its
+expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the
+signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the
+fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually
+stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of
+interrogation), and then as I would read them.
+
+SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the
+houses of the planets are thus arranged:
+
+The house of the Sun,      is Leo.
+      "          Moon,     "  Cancer.
+      "          Mars,     "  Aries and Scorpio.
+      "          Venus,    "  Taurus and Libra.
+      "          Mercury,  "  Gemini and Virgo.
+      "          Jupiter,  "  Sagittarius and Pisces.
+      "          Saturn,   "  Capricorn.
+      "          Herschel, "  Aquarius.
+
+The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we
+have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and
+Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn
+at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is
+grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel
+planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of
+Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the
+angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from
+which I shall not depart.
+
+SECTION LXXXVII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea,
+has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure
+beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the
+leaves of the capital. His inscription is:
+
+"ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE."
+
+SECTION LXXXVIII. _Second side_. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius
+and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in
+radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast,
+ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the
+drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot
+forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable
+characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand
+over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two
+thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been
+broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group
+is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on
+the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is:
+
+"INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA."
+[Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform
+mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the
+same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked on the stone.]
+
+Or,
+  "Inde Jovis dona
+   Pisces simul atque Chirona."
+
+Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of
+Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron."
+
+SECTION LXXXIX. _Third side_. Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio.
+Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the
+ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left
+hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for
+it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright
+line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a
+shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon
+his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It
+should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_
+Latin for "I am of iron."
+
+SECTION XC. _Fourth side_. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented
+under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from
+his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription:
+
+"TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI."
+
+I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a
+letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum
+"signe" stands for.
+
+SECTION XCI. _Fifth side_. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra.
+The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is
+deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a
+mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very
+nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is
+exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs:
+
+"LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*."
+
+SECTION XCII. _Sixth side_. Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent
+cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining
+attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot
+understand the inscription, though more than usually legible.
+
+"OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE."
+
+SECTION XCIII. _Seventh side_. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This
+sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most
+picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat,
+upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her
+left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I
+believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather
+think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express
+the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the
+lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat,
+may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by
+the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on
+this capital, as well as on the rest of the facade, are disposed in
+severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the
+moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest
+the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is
+highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five
+hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such,
+far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this
+intention. The inscription is:
+
+"LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
+
+SECTION XCIV. _Eighth side_. God creating Man. Represented as a
+throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the
+head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The
+inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of
+"formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble,
+before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely
+ascertained the rest.
+
+"DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
+
+Or
+
+   "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
+  From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
+
+I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the
+old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of
+the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire
+subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as
+determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in
+fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
+
+Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only
+consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble
+Christianity.
+
+In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the
+whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole
+strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian
+casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself
+cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give
+drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work.
+
+SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting
+from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the
+Fig-tree angle the first.
+
+It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of
+dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in
+some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its
+figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar
+significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and
+architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far
+too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one
+capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the
+architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying,
+and of the value of color generally in his own art.
+
+SECTION XCVI. _First side_. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A
+figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green
+serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital.
+The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up
+open, with the palm outwards.
+
+_Second side_. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a
+small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is
+highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at
+the Vine angle. Inscription effaced.
+
+_Third side_. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work
+on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark
+red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form
+of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth
+century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without
+any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the
+Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the
+fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO."
+
+_Fourth side_. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has
+been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST.
+E(N?)AS."
+
+_Fifth side_. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a
+kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble.
+
+_Sixth side_. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed
+_on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses
+set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich
+cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us
+of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been
+universal in the early fourteenth century.
+
+There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is
+working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups
+of the time.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth
+century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals,
+see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted
+marble.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a
+delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered
+with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red
+marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * *
+ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two
+of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front,
+two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned
+workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult
+our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the
+mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more
+interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work
+was undertaken at this time.
+
+SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals,
+and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its
+effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in
+the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio
+work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with
+great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute
+chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered
+bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong
+simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are
+also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side
+of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series,
+though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable
+hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman,
+better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become
+in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but
+he could not have composed them more skilfully.
+
+SECTION XCVIII. _First side_. A lion with a stag's haunch in his
+mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the
+peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or
+furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the
+Ducal Palace, to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment
+we reach the Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed
+simply, "LEO."
+
+_Second side_. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body
+wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers
+are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed
+"LUPUS."
+
+_Third side_. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth,
+its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across
+the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other
+side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS."
+
+_Fourth side_. Entirely broken away.
+
+_Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at
+least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone.
+
+_Sixth side_. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed
+species of dog, with ugly flap ears.
+
+_Seventh side_. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth.
+
+_Eighth side_. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees.
+
+SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior
+professions.
+
+_First side_. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very
+expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer.
+Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM."
+
+_Second side_. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl
+or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is
+gone.
+
+_Third side_. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for
+cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable.
+
+_Fourth side_. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on
+two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Fifth side_. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very
+carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of
+cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The
+inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"?
+
+_Sixth side_. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which
+lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but
+according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA."
+
+_Seventh side_. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll
+which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Eighth side_. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a
+large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is
+inscribed "FABER SUM."
+
+SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of
+the planets on human life.
+
+_First side_. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according
+to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been
+prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or
+other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then
+forgotten to return to it.
+
+_Second side_. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on
+it. The legend above is
+
+"MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X."
+
+Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.)
+"Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years."
+
+_Third side_. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken.
+Inscribed
+
+"ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII."
+
+Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the
+lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note
+the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o;
+showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same
+kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained,
+and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded
+to a Roman ear.
+
+_Fourth side_. A youth with a hawk on his fist.
+
+"IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX."
+The sue governs youth for nineteen years.
+
+_Fifth side_. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder.
+Inscribed
+
+"SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV."
+Mars governs manhood for fifteen years.
+
+_Sixth side_. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap,
+reading.
+
+"SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII."
+Jupiter governs age for twelve years.
+
+_Seventh side_. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.
+
+"DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.)
+Saturn governs decrepitude until death.
+
+_Eighth side_. The dead body lying on a mattress.
+
+"ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI."
+Last comes death, the penalty of sin.
+
+SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression
+of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its
+devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that
+devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been
+restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.
+
+SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft
+which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The
+shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is
+coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It
+represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress
+at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the
+bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to
+examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by
+the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian
+guard-house.
+
+SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the
+months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are,
+however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series.
+
+_First side_. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the
+beginning of the year.
+
+_Second side_. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather
+fan in her hand.
+
+_Third side_. June. Carrying cherries in a basket.
+
+I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter,
+because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called
+"the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the
+conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I.
+
+The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and
+large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon
+the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut.
+
+_Fourth side_. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the
+straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite,
+beats (the grain?) in a basket.
+
+_Fifth side_. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a
+branch of vine. Very beautiful.
+
+_Sixth side_. October and November. I could not make out their
+occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire.
+
+_Seventh side_. December. Killing pigs, as usual.
+
+_Eighth side_. January warming his feet, and February frying fish.
+This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter
+as the cherries are of the Venetian summer.
+
+The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and
+there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS.
+
+This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or
+twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth
+century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has
+nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with
+their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the
+Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources.
+This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of
+the last capital, which are both fine.
+
+I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of
+these capitals, as they are not worth description.
+
+SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely
+changing the succession of the figures.
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the
+old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all
+events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight
+different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given,
+and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are
+inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as
+much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art,
+namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA.
+Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter,
+whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common
+gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like
+a bottle compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long
+water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to
+this day.
+
+SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh.
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth.
+
+THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as
+having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the
+"Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm
+face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The
+inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?).
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth.
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures
+laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads,
+or chins, or on the leaves around them.
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth.
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh.
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in
+features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta
+facade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is
+copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the
+part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has
+merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be
+always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and
+indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied,
+very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work,
+though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to
+that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or
+first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven
+other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures
+of lawgivers, in the following order:
+
+_Second side_. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed:
+
+"ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE."
+Aristotle who declares laws.
+
+_Third side_. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari
+call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of
+the fifth side for the word Isidore?]
+
+_Fourth side_. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed:
+
+"SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE."
+Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares
+laws.
+
+Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead
+of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this
+sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery.
+
+_Fifth side_. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed:
+
+"ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE."
+
+A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated
+Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away.
+
+_Sixth side_. Numa Pompilius building churches.
+
+"NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE."
+
+Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in
+Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier
+capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery.
+
+_Seventh side_. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed:
+
+"QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE."
+
+Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with
+clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and
+quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes
+out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch,
+with the stone tablets between.
+
+_Eighth side_. Trajan doing justice to the Widow.
+
+"TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA."
+
+He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling
+before his horse.
+
+SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar
+interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character
+of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that
+government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of
+its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the
+foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith
+may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in
+common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the
+political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the
+speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the
+interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.]
+nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may
+easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the
+main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not
+believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose
+portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and
+everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much
+capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no
+meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the
+peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or
+_wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to
+make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of
+an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the
+fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to
+all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time
+undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had
+become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the
+interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps,
+better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own
+government is carried on, and the occasional difference between
+parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the
+Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and
+criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession
+of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more
+probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of
+violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in
+the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably
+desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to
+the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine,
+with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of
+Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place,
+that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables:
+in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been
+guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in
+being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their
+political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
+Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
+government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
+
+SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which
+contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The
+capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their
+character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight
+leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the
+flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not
+without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I
+possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear
+to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones;
+others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly
+wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully
+treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth,
+in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the
+corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which
+extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster
+which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples
+of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and
+distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art;
+and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculpture of the four
+winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante,
+the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is
+always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the
+sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand:
+Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana,
+the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be
+carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater
+distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:
+
+            "Thwart of these, as fierce,
+  Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
+  Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
+  Sirocco and Libecchio."
+
+I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on
+the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the
+fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all
+carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier
+which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say,
+the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the
+pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower
+arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but
+they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the
+upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the
+time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with
+its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the
+Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and
+the other of the fifteenth century.
+
+SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the
+spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of
+junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in
+the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on
+which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from
+the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is
+a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked
+in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the
+Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the
+natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great
+ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that
+of fig. 14.
+
+SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig.
+14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should
+not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14
+gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness
+and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared
+on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses
+of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line
+engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore,
+abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important
+mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a
+few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the
+inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for
+themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness,
+elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble
+symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or
+experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is
+always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or
+redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength,
+freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the
+undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer
+winds, as the sands are by the sea.
+
+SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents
+the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period,
+i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and
+by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this
+investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces
+us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered
+it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject.
+
+SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid
+farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our
+examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper
+arcade there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the
+third order on the Rio Facade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting
+the original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further
+details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary
+confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix
+I., Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them
+into the text.] I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the
+facade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and
+I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain
+their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must
+have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to
+render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present
+mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The
+traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as
+the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are
+still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner
+mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the facade, the
+parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their
+original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is
+nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice;
+still less in the large central windows on each facade which are
+entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these
+portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and
+masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and
+calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression.
+
+SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes
+of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the
+severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by
+the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case,
+though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least
+intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls
+of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the
+men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of
+priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its
+being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by
+piece being destroyed for ever.
+
+SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate
+subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
+destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
+be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art
+in Europe.
+
+The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
+Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
+valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have
+no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
+persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
+pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
+they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
+judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
+filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
+garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
+partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
+generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
+in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
+without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good
+ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it
+little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are
+so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with
+the beauties which they have heard attributed to it.
+
+SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for
+the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly
+or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being
+placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of
+ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the
+fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they
+should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient
+destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting
+over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery
+pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or
+other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the
+estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and
+more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst,
+the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time,
+in reality, of very small value indeed.
+
+SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble
+painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat
+of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was
+little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom
+there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best
+things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of
+accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a
+camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been
+short, and circumstances disadvantageous.
+
+SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of
+their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places
+where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast
+and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the
+present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected,
+whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the
+walls, piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is
+an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not
+often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however
+ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real
+thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest
+treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old
+plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and
+which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim
+canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape
+of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an
+exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode,
+looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his
+accomplished duty.
+
+SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the
+Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
+reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
+altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention
+of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens,
+that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture,
+will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There
+are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
+conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
+and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
+over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
+and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the
+roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
+recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
+there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same
+time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value
+in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world),
+curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were
+set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch
+the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling;
+while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid
+on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the
+re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end
+of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common
+house-painter's vessel of paint.
+
+This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
+continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
+manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
+Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in
+Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in
+tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most
+wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world.
+
+SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
+patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
+regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to
+bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of
+stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior
+of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the
+"Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the
+Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were
+full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as
+precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of
+majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the
+great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen
+rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe
+in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God
+had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the
+mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its
+burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher
+than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of
+purple flower and shadowy pine.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
+important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
+references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
+republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
+photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my
+own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of
+this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
+separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
+cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
+old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures
+in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace facade
+was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it
+is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater
+part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry,"
+will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its
+original wood-blocks.
+
+But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
+St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for
+ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in
+sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I
+have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of
+these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in
+the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St.
+Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for
+their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me,
+in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what
+pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen,
+Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
+
+Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
+Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
+giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
+already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue
+work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
+entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
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+Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+#7 in our series by John Ruskin
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+Title: Stones of Venice [introductions]
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9804]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 19, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STONES OF VENICE [INTRODUCTIONS] ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anne Soulard, Keren Vergon,
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: John Ruskin.]
+
+STONES OF VENICE
+
+BY JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE:
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES
+(PRINTED SEPARATELY)
+FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA.
+
+
+BY
+JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the
+purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form,
+those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a
+permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at
+first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the
+principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been
+modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and
+present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of
+plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of
+other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader
+shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the
+publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of
+forwardness.
+
+The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter
+out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index,
+abridged and corrected.
+
+BRANTWOOD,
+
+_3rd May_, 1879.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. The Quarry
+
+II. The Throne
+
+III. Torcello
+
+IV. St. Mark's
+
+V. The Ducal Palace
+
+
+
+
+THE STONES OF VENICE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+[FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE QUARRY.
+
+
+SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean,
+three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands:
+the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great
+powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third,
+which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led
+through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
+
+The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
+for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
+of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
+lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
+the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
+forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
+the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
+
+Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
+endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
+period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
+quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
+as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
+was the City, and which the Shadow.
+
+I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
+lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
+be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
+passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
+
+SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons
+which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this
+strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of
+countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred
+with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean,
+where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries
+in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but
+their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as
+they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind
+than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may,
+perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to
+form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of
+Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest
+which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have
+gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
+
+SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so
+during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including
+the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing
+severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the
+change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in
+great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was
+composed.
+
+The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
+the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
+Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment
+when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the
+Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and
+Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were
+passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially
+to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive
+appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist.
+des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each
+of the principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix
+III., "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was
+continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy,
+her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
+independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
+gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
+prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
+magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
+king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
+fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
+
+SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the
+Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine
+hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked
+by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final
+and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
+establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
+the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
+doge on the other.
+
+Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
+interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
+and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
+noblest man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo
+trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti
+buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino_,)
+Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader,
+with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him,
+out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing
+its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among
+the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually
+organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body.
+
+This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
+and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
+European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
+we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
+Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
+
+SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the
+most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
+life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
+by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
+Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
+distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
+period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
+Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
+
+I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
+Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the _visible_
+commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the
+Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari
+followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large
+acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in
+Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the
+battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454,
+Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the
+Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State,
+[Footnote: Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the
+discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.]
+and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious
+form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish
+invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the
+league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement
+of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by
+their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509,
+and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their
+territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the
+fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the
+diminution of her internal strength.
+
+SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between
+the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
+diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
+at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
+determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
+question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
+individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
+Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
+itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
+enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
+Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
+of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
+people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
+disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
+nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
+three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
+call was heard.
+
+SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at
+many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism;
+and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
+sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
+the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
+powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
+masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
+impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
+the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
+prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
+sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of
+their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)]
+
+SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be
+fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double
+interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the
+evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be
+both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political
+prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual
+religion.
+
+I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
+wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
+Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
+deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
+fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
+last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
+aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
+interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
+enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
+but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
+conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
+The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
+and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
+reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
+princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
+which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
+devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
+its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
+of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By
+directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru,
+liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion.
+
+SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall
+be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
+feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
+could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
+of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
+and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great
+Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
+instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
+the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
+where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust
+that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any
+more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III.
+against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of
+their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence
+of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest
+councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has
+time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are
+sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection
+of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the
+almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire
+was enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular
+circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other
+city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But
+the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of
+her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church,
+[Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size
+and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian
+group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the
+greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it
+less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice,
+next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to
+national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks,
+supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the
+mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also,
+in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.] who now rests
+beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not
+satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed
+around his tomb.
+
+SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which
+we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
+Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual
+religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
+greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
+immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
+even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
+simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
+a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
+religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
+conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
+serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
+a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
+motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
+spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
+its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
+it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
+demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
+presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
+short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
+national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
+several characteristics of the temper of our present English
+legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
+interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my
+present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of
+which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able
+to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the
+policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a
+Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely,
+the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
+temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
+survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
+to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
+the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote:
+                    "In that temple porch,
+  (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
+  Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
+  And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
+  Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
+  For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
+  On his stony pillow."
+
+I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
+believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries,
+and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the
+spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all
+else that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's
+thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true
+that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her
+prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus
+rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more
+than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V.,
+which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
+Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great
+tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or
+the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted
+out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics
+from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her
+knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it.
+
+To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
+will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.
+[Footnote: At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The
+Papal Power in Venice."]
+
+The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
+of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
+that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
+themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
+theirs to avoid.
+
+SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the
+Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing
+it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when
+contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the
+restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the
+annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be
+ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of
+law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was
+subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears
+usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every
+instance in which private passion sought its gratification through
+public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the
+public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence,
+that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless
+forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than
+that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only
+[Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax
+e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy
+were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked
+battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank
+under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed
+with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of
+lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are
+no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
+They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack
+of a foreign enemy.]
+
+SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief
+general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I
+would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which
+the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which
+the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true
+connection with the history of the state.
+
+1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
+
+It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
+as far back as 1418.
+
+Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
+and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
+sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
+animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
+Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
+sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
+larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
+rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
+subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
+Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection
+between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
+surround her.
+
+Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
+Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
+school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
+artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
+natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
+in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
+vital religion of Venice had expired.
+
+SECTION XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward
+observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were
+painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna
+or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of
+the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the
+ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there
+is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of
+one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal.
+The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of
+Venice was in her wars, not in her worship.
+
+The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
+Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
+which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
+principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
+subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
+portraiture.
+
+The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
+Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
+had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
+
+SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of
+Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must
+here give a general idea of its heads.
+
+Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
+
+"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
+l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
+grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
+gallees y passent à travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux
+ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
+en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
+maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
+anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
+ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de
+la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
+devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais veue et qui
+plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
+saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus
+sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
+faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
+portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Mémoires de Commynes, liv.
+vii. ch. xviii.]
+
+SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons.
+Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of
+Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with
+some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real
+life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
+instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
+palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
+their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
+and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
+fronts."
+
+On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
+which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6,
+"Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction.
+There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the
+fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we
+English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes
+to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of
+architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand
+this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the
+connection of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
+Europe, from its origin forwards.
+
+SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is
+derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the
+East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the
+various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once
+for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all
+the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many
+beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all
+Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and
+what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic,
+Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks
+gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the
+arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture,
+are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from
+Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
+
+SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his
+shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier
+derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he
+should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the
+shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if
+the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three
+families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest
+architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the
+sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the
+spiritualization of both.
+
+SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are
+the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
+orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
+more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
+those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
+other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
+Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
+form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
+both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
+grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote:
+Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."]
+
+SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
+clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result,
+until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service;
+except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it,
+and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often
+very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity:
+seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it;
+invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
+over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest
+at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman
+Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of
+the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many
+respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of
+imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores
+of the Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
+gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
+Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange,
+gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so
+would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has
+been undisturbed. [Footnote: The reader will find the _weak_ points of
+Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
+opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,--
+Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained.
+
+Section XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into
+two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other
+at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque,
+properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative
+perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But
+I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art
+together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the
+same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of
+the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the
+fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be
+found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may
+be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an
+architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the
+degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to
+higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter
+forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
+branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects
+more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of
+government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of
+the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed,
+losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived
+of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change.
+
+SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While
+in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
+influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
+refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
+inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
+this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
+empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
+and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
+was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
+borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The
+reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
+broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
+languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
+imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
+organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
+nominal extent.
+
+SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not
+susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps,
+appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with
+the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with
+which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual
+character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its
+influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to
+the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the
+influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two
+nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of
+derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs
+of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and
+idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid
+asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both
+horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over
+its golden paralysis.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system
+to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the
+Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of
+worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the
+sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.
+[Footnote: Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all
+imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their
+minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and
+mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the
+North, and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they
+met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very
+centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of
+the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck,
+is VENICE.
+
+The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
+proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
+the world.
+
+SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
+importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
+the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
+the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
+expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
+necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
+
+SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to
+mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures
+were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
+distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
+Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
+well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
+mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
+with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
+sacred symbols.
+
+The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
+Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
+introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
+and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
+writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
+and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
+it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
+it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
+of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
+dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
+
+SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious
+still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its
+decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of
+that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first,
+an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas.
+Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader
+will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two
+aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was
+separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above,
+large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming
+the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a
+gabled wooden roof.
+
+These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
+wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
+horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
+pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9,
+"Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily
+thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square
+pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and
+civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone;
+but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been
+made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the
+nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
+great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
+In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
+and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
+Pavia.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
+walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
+Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
+first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
+the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
+the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
+in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
+Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
+described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
+added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
+superstitions.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one
+of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
+without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
+their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
+ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
+Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
+spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
+buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
+Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
+themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
+the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
+brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
+Arab.
+
+SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great
+European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession
+of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
+character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
+that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
+contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
+the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
+Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
+settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
+mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
+beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
+while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
+was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
+workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
+church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
+the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
+the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
+very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
+islands.
+
+SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
+body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
+first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
+destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
+obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
+architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
+is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote:
+Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether
+the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen
+being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by
+their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever
+other parts of the world they were employed.
+
+To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such
+vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first
+division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist
+of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part
+of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
+
+SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
+much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
+arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
+not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
+mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for
+the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
+dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
+mosque for Christian churches.
+
+I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
+in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
+position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
+elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
+two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
+Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
+almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
+division of the following essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in
+art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But
+their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long
+prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people
+had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the
+practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very
+primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical
+architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab
+forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would
+probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab
+school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it
+will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those
+which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The
+churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the
+Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it.
+But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans
+introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture,
+already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and
+Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited
+in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect
+the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the
+Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian
+artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the
+city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an
+ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole
+peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of
+certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and
+entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence
+of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the
+engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the
+Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the
+_distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the
+churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the
+ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal
+Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third
+division of the essay.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic)
+style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is
+transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from
+the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century;
+that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the
+central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year
+1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first
+marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe
+de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St.
+Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly
+supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of
+every art she has since practised.
+
+SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality
+in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps,"
+chap. ii.)
+
+All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at
+once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
+extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
+strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
+main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
+the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
+Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
+Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
+architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
+the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
+Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
+brought about the Reformation.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
+adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
+and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
+destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
+heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
+injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
+of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
+may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
+been a consequence of this error.
+
+The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
+rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
+return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
+Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
+Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
+Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a
+flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then
+perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the
+representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous
+under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs
+without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity,
+gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic
+affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and
+lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of
+landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually
+usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into
+prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the
+confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and
+Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of
+besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and
+ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect,
+and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the
+fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in
+England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of
+George II.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done
+anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
+painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
+as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
+and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
+serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
+works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
+slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
+mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
+Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
+magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
+men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
+Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
+influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
+are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard
+it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture,
+and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does
+not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in
+buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should
+lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor
+is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to
+regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly
+the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern
+times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying
+the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools
+and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through
+them.
+
+Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
+corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
+of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
+the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
+the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
+the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
+and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
+than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
+grave.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that
+effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance.
+Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere
+else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay.
+I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader
+with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of
+the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features
+with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and
+pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as
+I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon
+two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
+particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
+builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
+bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
+in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
+the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
+be immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above
+indicated for the commencement of decline.
+
+SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above
+attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The
+tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of
+the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the
+period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical
+element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is
+as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is
+a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a
+faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without
+painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and
+bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are
+simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large,
+but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have
+looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
+thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
+skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
+eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
+light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
+all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
+stern angles of the cheek and brow.
+
+This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
+most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
+respecting Venetian art.
+
+    "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non
+    bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo.
+    It may be called one of the last links which connect the
+    declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance,
+    which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the
+    defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides,
+    which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will
+    we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above
+    the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age
+    and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with
+    reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote:
+    Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.]
+
+It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
+been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
+mortality.
+
+SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is
+another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478,
+after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of
+Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks,
+carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced
+by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the
+blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly
+tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs.
+
+SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of
+one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence
+beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian
+superlative by translation.
+
+    "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
+    proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo
+    sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l'
+    opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti
+    intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il
+    predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi
+    con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un
+    fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi
+    lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge;
+    capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc.
+
+There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
+above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of
+the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering
+this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested
+in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
+unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
+and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico).
+
+    "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
+    scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian
+    arts attained by ministry of the chisel."
+
+To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
+attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
+ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
+keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
+feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
+off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
+Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
+finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
+veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
+far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
+us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
+it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
+joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
+it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
+wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the
+inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
+monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
+elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
+chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
+distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
+imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
+is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
+work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
+
+SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do
+not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
+regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
+not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous
+mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such
+utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of
+intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast,
+could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's
+countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the
+solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend
+of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much
+the zecchin.
+
+I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
+talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
+base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
+of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
+pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
+chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
+on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
+by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
+lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
+Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
+its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
+Venice for forgery_ in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.]
+
+SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter;
+but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting
+piece of evidence, which I promised.
+
+The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the
+other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
+seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
+part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
+the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
+age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
+examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
+examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
+document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
+referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
+
+SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from
+the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
+stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
+with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."
+[Footnote: The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
+quality.] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the
+seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series
+of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the
+others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe,
+reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della
+Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside
+whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning
+of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This
+is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of
+which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible:
+for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower
+shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and
+lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade
+being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena
+Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is
+Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at
+the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the
+statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the
+reader.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424
+(remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to
+follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit
+to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied
+the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade,
+eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by
+thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right
+to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that
+next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I
+thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the
+18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace;
+and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated,
+the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire
+series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers
+above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it,
+fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
+
+Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
+from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d,
+from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
+inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly
+designed.
+
+SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
+the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
+described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
+the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
+with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
+Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
+Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
+somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
+every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
+(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
+arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
+open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
+the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
+from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
+Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
+in Deo."
+
+SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect
+chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have
+lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got
+Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems
+are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but
+she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone_.
+
+Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
+become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
+He gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the
+Reformation on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
+literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
+
+SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I
+shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the
+Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself
+is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the
+Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very
+forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps,"
+in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's:
+"Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the
+Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the
+difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a
+subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume
+that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not
+understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they
+simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at
+present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with
+rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with
+obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but
+never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of
+votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear
+conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good
+architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad;
+that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly
+visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about
+the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating
+about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured
+that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must
+enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble
+and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it
+must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or
+Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all
+foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and
+that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural
+inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a
+law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty,
+and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad;
+and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for
+the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries
+and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the
+reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the
+foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were
+looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture,
+the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form,
+as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask
+the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first,
+and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might
+together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though
+perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have
+therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which
+I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and
+simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of
+architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them
+will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a
+simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From
+that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very
+singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether
+unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to
+dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done;
+for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion
+of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture,
+and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than
+dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair
+trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and
+be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I
+shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent
+reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary
+preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of
+Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble,
+poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal;
+and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of
+architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries
+been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be
+serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have
+hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the
+arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done
+meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why
+could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came
+it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose
+no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully
+conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? [Footnote:
+Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find that
+Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself
+capable of a single great conception since the separation of
+Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole
+vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance.
+Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist
+merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate
+itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became
+themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was
+turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of
+both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's
+people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and
+died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been
+borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of
+faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was
+borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony
+or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an
+intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further
+use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship
+the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come,
+then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us
+know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed
+to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look
+upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her
+palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the
+sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we
+shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on
+which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should
+efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished
+it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+[FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+THE THRONE.
+
+
+SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in
+which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that
+toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the
+countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of
+the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had
+surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest,
+scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the
+long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for
+the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
+sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of
+the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men,
+an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to
+be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive
+halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder,
+there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly
+cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe
+in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as
+his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but
+that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some
+slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are
+far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy;
+but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than
+atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the
+midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the
+mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast
+sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the
+north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the
+east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black
+weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal,
+under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the
+ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue,
+soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps
+beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our
+own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and
+changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun
+declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly
+named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city,
+the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one
+long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and
+willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua
+rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage
+of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended
+themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the
+craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole
+horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing
+through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back
+into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away
+eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty
+fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of
+evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea,
+until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer
+burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it
+magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the
+gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were
+reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not
+through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two
+rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight
+opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat
+moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet,
+upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of
+rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the
+shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the
+palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so
+adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent;
+when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the
+gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's
+Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the
+mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of
+the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the
+boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of
+silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its
+sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,
+[Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that
+the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene
+so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its
+history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her
+existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the
+fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the
+mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that
+all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as
+the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to
+destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which
+seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well
+as of the sea.
+
+SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with
+change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their
+influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the
+noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only
+by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and
+though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated
+ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried
+traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has
+been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin,
+and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are
+little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the
+imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the
+importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and
+disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so
+surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there
+must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent
+feeling of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may
+indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which
+they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from
+the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their
+own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are
+in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the
+objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern
+fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of
+decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into
+dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow
+deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the
+centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever
+saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless
+interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his
+great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty
+years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city
+have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries,
+that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their
+tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the
+Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the
+novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of
+the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot
+of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the
+great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs
+had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of
+_their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the
+delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court,
+and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have
+sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail
+over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth,
+and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous
+a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the
+day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built
+by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of
+nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped
+by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the
+true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and
+trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long
+denied her dominion.
+
+SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no
+feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange
+sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and
+enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain
+upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the
+distribution of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and
+sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the
+plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here
+and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm
+substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which
+descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern
+slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain
+bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks
+out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain
+washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of
+the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky
+barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which
+continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of
+the ruins of ages.
+
+SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by
+insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which
+appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually;
+the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the
+Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment
+to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly
+expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part
+of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of
+brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these
+same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to
+check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The
+finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the
+rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however
+pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of
+the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before
+they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown
+down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the
+eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds
+forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a
+tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid
+change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is
+built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE.
+
+SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this
+great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place
+to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the
+Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of
+from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided
+into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank
+and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and
+other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the
+neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most
+places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at
+low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding
+channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to
+the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets,
+consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to
+be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the
+contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low
+water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of
+seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance
+by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the
+openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a
+clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which
+appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different
+periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their
+size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and
+churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and
+encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the
+metropolis.
+
+SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet
+(varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides
+of Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause
+continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a
+reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land
+is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the
+form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages:
+there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the
+mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy
+breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic,
+but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's
+having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its
+true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of
+piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in
+spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the
+quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance
+before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But
+the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty
+inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and
+at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark
+plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches
+of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of
+the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the
+fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five
+feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow
+the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea
+water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes
+upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed
+that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to
+and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is
+often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher
+ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what
+it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the
+windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the
+melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of
+the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls
+and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright
+investiture and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the
+waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness
+beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor
+and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the
+tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a
+questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the
+horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for
+his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the
+sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children
+were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and
+yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let
+it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things
+which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole
+existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or
+compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the
+sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would
+again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had
+stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of
+the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and
+bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other
+parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have
+become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the
+tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the
+water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible:
+even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in
+landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the
+highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance
+halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood
+and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water,
+a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of
+water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily
+intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city
+would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the
+peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed.
+
+SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast
+between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the
+romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he
+have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the
+instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the
+wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been
+permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers
+into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of
+the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have
+understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the
+void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand!
+How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us
+most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then
+in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how
+little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy
+margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among
+their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation
+possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden
+clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white
+scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather
+and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the
+East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+[SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.]
+
+TORCELLO.
+
+
+SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which
+near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a
+higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass,
+raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow
+creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for
+some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds
+whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool
+beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On
+this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic
+type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder
+us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we
+may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of
+ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
+ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
+purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
+sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
+hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
+mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
+space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
+level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north
+and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
+and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched
+with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at
+momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the
+south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and
+pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and
+almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we
+gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
+cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry),
+the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than
+the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable
+church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see
+little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the
+sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and
+gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor
+any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
+company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
+
+SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches
+of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
+there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
+shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
+southern sky.
+
+Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
+and VENICE.
+
+Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this
+day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
+of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
+mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
+mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
+rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
+people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
+paths of the sea.
+
+The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
+left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
+the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
+up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
+temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
+of meadow land.
+
+SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile
+is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
+broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of
+the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the
+Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present
+some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly
+larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each
+side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow
+field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable
+footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the
+form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth
+being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and
+that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that
+they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the
+first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of
+the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the
+fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is
+far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the
+pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and
+their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the
+arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a
+cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator
+receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been
+which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could
+not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished
+as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of
+building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight
+and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."]
+who sought in the hurried erection of their Island church such a shelter
+for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not
+attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the
+other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the
+churches which they had seen destroyed.
+
+There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some
+of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God
+by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation
+prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of
+luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely
+devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance
+and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and
+architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy
+stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which
+answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole
+building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the
+cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of
+the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last
+Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are
+raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space
+between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the
+semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at
+once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home
+left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted
+but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed."
+
+SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible
+that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may
+have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series
+of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not,
+however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am
+rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the
+building was originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics
+representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and
+Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the
+significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with
+imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in
+the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
+political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
+satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
+mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural
+or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one
+should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not
+appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great
+facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of
+Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That
+Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable
+through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the
+figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of
+intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder,
+but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the
+faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of
+founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but
+only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite
+mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead
+which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in
+them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the
+wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
+
+SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in
+the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of
+all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish
+and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
+actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure.
+The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the
+best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for
+their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
+exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most
+conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the
+six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose
+a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the
+singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The
+bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two
+face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description,
+though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or
+pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of
+the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this
+screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was
+constructed.
+
+SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of
+its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked
+at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of
+the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the
+staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in
+the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase
+being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich,
+but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those
+which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the
+mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the
+proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of
+the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the
+original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
+procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
+crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
+sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
+surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
+course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
+the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
+is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
+sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
+always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
+chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
+always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
+thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
+to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
+the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
+became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
+dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
+little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
+it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
+bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection,
+that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
+price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
+fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
+overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
+art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
+is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
+which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
+treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
+the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
+already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament
+is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of
+their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for
+architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract
+perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so
+easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no
+remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so
+slight an effort.
+
+SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance,
+whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect
+would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the
+rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that
+its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious
+spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the
+building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts;
+itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the
+nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of
+the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to
+the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved
+front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a
+narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern
+pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper
+surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid
+upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by
+instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in
+any way moving beneath the preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather
+almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of
+the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe
+and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so
+that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are
+firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in
+venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval
+cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches.
+It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of
+decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service,
+and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature
+of a church be the best possible. [Footnote: Appendix V., "Modern
+Pulpits."]
+
+SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves
+about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I
+believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to
+listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
+unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place
+appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the
+same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression,
+irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the
+first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the
+speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a
+very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest
+of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I
+have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are
+peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
+rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
+erection in other parts of the building:--and though this may often be
+done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
+than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
+think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
+preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
+sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
+hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
+encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the
+delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for
+when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of
+work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade
+by them.
+
+SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
+clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
+employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease
+of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as
+a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as
+the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care
+and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we
+shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
+delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
+golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
+sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
+cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly
+come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
+prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
+restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that
+duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in
+happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be
+necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his
+faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life
+or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge
+over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an
+hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor
+to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage
+on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days
+together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been
+forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and
+to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by
+this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary
+with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and
+languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts
+of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame
+them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by
+this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the
+Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the
+openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth
+her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead
+in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with
+changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from
+which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes
+upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains
+recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener
+alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear
+with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of
+oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may
+be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he
+speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have
+gathered in their thirst.
+
+SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello
+is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
+occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls
+to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which
+lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps
+or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
+intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
+the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access
+intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
+arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort
+(for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not
+for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more
+conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no
+furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well
+worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative
+of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was
+never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter
+absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
+
+SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to
+remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the
+episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the
+minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently
+symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot.
+Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of
+men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the
+midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the
+eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man
+had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who
+saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like
+an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the
+Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which
+they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as
+the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and
+have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His
+name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the
+sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the
+dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth
+conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of
+her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her
+palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend
+the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of
+Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble
+ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with
+the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the
+strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the
+pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been
+closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of
+their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls,
+amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of
+the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that
+ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
+
+  THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT,
+  AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ST. MARK'S.
+
+
+SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as
+the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had
+entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his
+hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of
+Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the
+work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he
+have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be
+represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so
+often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he
+himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye
+with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in
+repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!
+
+SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the
+ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it
+was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose
+him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that
+before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was
+thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I
+believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of
+St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader
+who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie
+Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by
+him.] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and
+embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church
+of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the
+"Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice,
+1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia
+well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before
+setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a
+small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some
+houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being
+driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark,
+snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace
+be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to
+foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta Città;" but the
+fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.
+
+SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not,
+St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be
+considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue,
+standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the
+opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said
+to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and
+the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not
+to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early
+time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St.
+Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and
+on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to
+say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the
+bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a
+small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between
+the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza,
+of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.
+
+SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally
+removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the
+present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My
+authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the
+Ducal Palace.] gave a very different character to the Square of St.
+Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint,
+and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed,
+occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor.
+St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed,
+to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal
+Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the
+Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."]
+
+SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the
+Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was
+partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and
+with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on
+under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building
+being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
+considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,
+[Footnote: "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the
+Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the
+reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have
+consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church
+itself:
+
+  "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno
+  Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo,"
+
+is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much
+probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to
+Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094
+according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years
+being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the
+supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085,
+though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier.
+But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great
+consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in
+1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was
+probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter
+the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of
+any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above
+the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the
+Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the
+pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the
+exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and
+tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance
+school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret
+substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the
+Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed
+Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.] happily, though with no good
+will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they
+destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter;
+meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of
+periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible.
+
+SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly
+stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the
+fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no
+difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the
+Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how
+long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
+additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily
+distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely
+executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of
+evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another
+over the northern door of the façade; the first representing the
+interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church.
+
+SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was
+consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to
+that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what
+appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful
+impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body
+of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976;
+but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion
+excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The
+following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by
+the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.
+
+"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
+the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so
+that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
+venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
+Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
+confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
+and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now
+depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed,
+and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the
+people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers
+for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a
+slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the
+altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
+exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which
+the body of the Evangelist was laid."
+
+SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They
+were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as,
+for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark
+extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers,
+which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint
+and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall
+not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian
+Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means
+effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved
+mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after
+the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of
+the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior
+of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer,
+then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the
+Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet
+embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux"
+over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most
+other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely
+represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in
+order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of
+picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand
+things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or
+two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague
+background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might
+get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some
+useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with
+the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence
+too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day,
+and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole
+church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment
+still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the
+other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their
+being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics
+had been executed at that period, and their absence in the
+representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in
+order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such
+works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St.
+Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not
+appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the
+northern door; [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right,
+however.)] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other
+piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the
+building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the
+bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And
+this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence
+respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we
+have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet
+here is one of the most important exterior decorations assuredly
+retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style
+would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric.
+However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to
+remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh,
+twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions
+to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the
+fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the
+seventeenth.
+
+SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I
+may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without
+leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated
+by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the
+seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to
+the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine
+building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary,
+direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with
+anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects
+the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine
+influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not
+therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested
+by the obscurities of chronology.
+
+SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St.
+Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English
+cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let
+us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can
+see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray
+gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the
+centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes
+in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter,
+and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails,
+before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim
+houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there,
+and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and
+small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little,
+crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side;
+and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of
+red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show
+here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister
+arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid
+out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not
+uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are
+walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the
+grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there
+stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark
+places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where
+the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which
+has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth,
+perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up
+to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades,
+shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking
+fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape,
+and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen,
+melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above
+that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though
+they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black
+points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into
+invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
+birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so
+harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast
+between the cliffs and sea.
+
+SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of
+all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its
+secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense
+and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the
+cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who
+have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and
+on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or
+catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the
+city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the
+river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land
+at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered
+as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English
+cathedral gateway.
+
+SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide
+where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant
+salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of
+brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high
+houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an
+inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and
+chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows
+with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here
+and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some
+inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high
+over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be,
+occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about
+eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is
+narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable
+shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in
+those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares
+laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases
+entering at the front only,--and fading away in a few feet from the
+threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but
+which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back
+of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious
+shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a
+penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a
+little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded
+flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at
+the fruiterer's, where the dark-green watermelons are heaped upon the
+counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel
+leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is
+nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded
+patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next
+comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a
+very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over
+certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be denned or
+enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop of the
+calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the Madonna
+is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of
+three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of
+Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the
+gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they
+have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier.
+
+SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black
+Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble,
+deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of
+vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its
+side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence
+to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza,
+(mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first
+by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another
+time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near
+the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of
+lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them
+into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and
+then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great
+light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of
+St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of
+chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
+themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
+that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
+into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
+broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
+sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.
+
+SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of
+ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great
+square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
+far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long
+low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold,
+and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
+vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
+alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
+and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
+and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
+together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
+of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
+leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
+the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
+interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
+branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
+round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
+stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
+flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
+sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
+it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
+as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
+interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
+acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
+Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
+language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
+men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
+another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
+with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
+of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden
+strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with
+stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break
+into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes
+and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore
+had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid
+them with coral and amethyst.
+
+Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There
+is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the
+restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak
+upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among
+the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living
+plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely,
+that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years.
+
+SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath
+it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway
+of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a
+countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian,
+rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of
+the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay,
+the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them
+that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and
+caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
+almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the
+middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
+Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
+jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the
+sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will,
+would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of
+the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
+unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
+unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
+desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with
+cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
+clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church
+porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it
+continually.
+
+That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this,
+let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and
+passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
+d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there.
+The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the
+turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it.
+
+SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
+with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
+in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small
+figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that
+glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in
+the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that
+it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed;
+for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and
+curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the
+pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might
+be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain
+back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that
+gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon
+his breast.
+
+The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
+right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower:
+the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest
+of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp,
+perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines;
+but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole
+countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with
+stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is
+a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of
+flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in
+summer.
+
+It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of
+Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he
+died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe
+half of what we know of her former fortunes.
+
+SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it
+is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its
+walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with
+age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away
+altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all
+beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands
+and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its
+translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the
+color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light
+fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye
+can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of
+Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and
+there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the
+"Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has
+expressed the ancient division in the single massy line,
+
+  "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,"
+
+and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon
+the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in
+every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan
+running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a
+fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth
+not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes,
+verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the
+choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the
+grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence
+of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall.
+Venice has made her choice.
+
+SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her
+another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he
+and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his
+lips.
+
+Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his
+rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper
+twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before
+the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a
+vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy
+aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters
+only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray
+or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts
+a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall
+in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is
+from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of
+the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered
+with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
+to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints
+flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under
+foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one
+picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and
+terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of
+prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running
+fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures
+of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption;
+for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at
+last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every
+stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes
+with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its
+feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the
+church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of
+the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when
+the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure
+traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes
+raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is
+not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and
+always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow
+of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised
+in power, or returning in judgment.
+
+SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the
+people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the
+various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark
+places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and,
+for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
+number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their
+appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the
+step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of
+St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in
+which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian
+porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and
+then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss
+and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
+lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if
+comforted.
+
+SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler
+characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a
+devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to
+their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever
+there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more
+than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of
+the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its
+architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories
+embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight,
+on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number
+of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the
+Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left
+comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter,
+which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named,
+must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient
+causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether
+to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence
+which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind,
+and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in
+the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of
+building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained
+with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness;
+preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close
+air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious
+services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular
+legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition,
+which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end
+of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally
+civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the
+true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as
+far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the
+Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed
+Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be
+regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered
+ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at
+Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger
+number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that
+is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich
+Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the
+northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of
+the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all
+the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of
+the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has
+retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole
+church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with
+silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.]
+
+SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion
+were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not
+employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the
+torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye
+traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole
+residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I
+never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any
+feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their
+understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the
+English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services
+for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many
+of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now
+surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no
+prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in
+vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the
+ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive
+attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries.
+The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is
+forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long
+been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those
+to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
+than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
+English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
+and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
+shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
+tombs in the desecrated cloister.
+
+SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
+present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
+meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
+be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
+abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
+present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
+Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
+relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
+influencing the feelings of a civilized community.
+
+The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
+carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
+architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
+should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
+construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
+art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
+expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
+merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
+its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
+in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
+retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
+domes appear to have lost for ever.
+
+SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted
+respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings
+in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as
+possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in
+Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the
+nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements
+general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native
+soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles
+exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features
+and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to
+enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared
+with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle
+ages.
+
+SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and
+the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its
+confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the
+great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the
+incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary
+before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the
+reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have
+influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a
+school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in
+massive materials.
+
+It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may
+find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere
+setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the
+outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick
+cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in
+London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide
+"Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to
+have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different
+species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties
+which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the
+reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of
+the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are
+varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance,
+in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with
+marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of
+the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built
+of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and
+exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes
+the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in
+the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of
+buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the
+forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as
+in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman
+and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one
+internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on
+this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's.
+
+SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In
+chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this
+incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so
+now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern
+builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he
+is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of
+masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets
+acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern
+builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of
+facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that
+the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the
+contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain
+of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
+life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
+Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
+of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
+knight.
+
+These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
+be our business to develop.
+
+SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise
+to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any
+quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the
+mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely
+with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances,
+in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on
+the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as
+great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the
+natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as
+possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the
+limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by
+cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many
+marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There
+would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone
+as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if
+the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins
+of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out
+of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a
+quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and
+partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the
+island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his
+edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious
+marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the
+sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the
+observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the
+colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole
+surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular
+enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a
+view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any
+regular service in the support of the building.
+
+An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect
+for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former
+alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order
+to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who
+cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others',
+and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would
+have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved
+every relic with which he was entrusted.
+
+SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the
+Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might,
+under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with
+other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or
+twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with
+porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in
+freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an
+instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had
+been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in
+admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of
+inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that
+practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm
+of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The
+practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was
+prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of
+departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The
+ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant
+vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a
+shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than
+the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious
+emotion.
+
+SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of
+this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its
+erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method,
+considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds.
+
+In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will
+find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood,
+that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme
+ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another,
+namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the
+Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of
+the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any
+perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift
+just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an
+ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St.
+Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever
+set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it
+is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that
+the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf
+man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full
+orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to
+discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in
+common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the
+manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as
+the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with
+the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to
+bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of
+St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly
+took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of
+which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and
+barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles
+of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their
+palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters
+had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even
+this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose
+foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs
+beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the
+frescoes of Giorgione.
+
+SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must
+protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this
+church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him
+remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in
+which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and
+let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the
+architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to
+be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this
+thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength
+of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of
+brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the
+marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales
+or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure
+will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order.
+
+SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding
+the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at
+least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even
+when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed
+parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the
+wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to
+cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface,
+but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and
+string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support,
+aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for
+the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary
+that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such
+proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard
+work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for
+the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of
+the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly
+incapable of severer work than that assigned to them.
+
+SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As
+the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively
+incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression
+of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its
+mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the
+less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by
+delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to
+depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief
+source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work,
+therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and
+whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be
+thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to
+the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might
+otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within.
+
+SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the
+smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted
+structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be
+left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever
+appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it
+becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only
+does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the
+labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater
+than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever
+size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the
+rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear
+themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in
+any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this
+the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls
+and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him
+to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite
+support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a
+tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is
+allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every
+direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the
+structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his
+pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial
+in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may
+be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined
+lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the
+quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have
+said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with
+color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there
+is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the
+procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from
+this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but
+in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his
+walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the
+portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in
+this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the
+walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of
+the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his
+eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the
+mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to
+bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of
+all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their
+wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in
+the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,
+[Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza
+che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the
+verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of
+natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will
+be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work
+of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of
+precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and
+brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk
+required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons,
+and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be,
+without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the
+attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like
+that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of
+joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a
+single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the
+spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the
+structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the
+construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the
+shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a
+sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract
+bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception
+of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things
+in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to
+its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not
+blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of
+hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being
+dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief
+part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and
+tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard
+work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we
+perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be
+crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in
+the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the
+best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or
+crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real
+size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either
+inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value;
+that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore
+ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are
+even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of
+materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to
+see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set
+in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and
+where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon
+their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among
+the mazes of their azure veins.
+
+SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since
+the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the
+diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself
+diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we
+must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the
+series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that,
+on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind
+of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been
+sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the
+rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of
+smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained
+under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing
+of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The
+stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do
+so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily
+measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between
+them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same
+proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the
+quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the
+facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to
+select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however,
+often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very
+fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has
+neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one
+column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he
+obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts
+fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he
+cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for
+available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his
+ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from
+immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does
+not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of
+obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses
+to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him
+often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an
+important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and
+admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we
+must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually
+varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never
+altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange
+complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in
+its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled
+and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or
+Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the
+smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason
+for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens
+that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so
+great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone,
+not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the
+disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates
+successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges
+in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will
+enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins.
+And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the
+alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double
+good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation
+of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a
+farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever
+similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that
+they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to
+disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the
+building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the
+whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any
+one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is
+perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of
+the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical
+patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly
+deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in
+reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that
+in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to
+accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and
+the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if
+subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead
+inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those
+of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or
+ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding
+themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort,
+as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper
+lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and
+knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it
+is discovered, into deeper truths.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in
+cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is
+evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based
+on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there
+can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not
+admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever
+ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch
+deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences
+which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of
+the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which
+may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black
+recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque
+projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any
+form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with
+robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous
+goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable
+shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the
+sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as
+he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the
+design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble,
+where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender
+pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must
+not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind
+be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine
+discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is
+to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the
+features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions
+of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes
+rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out,
+until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences
+of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental
+designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the
+Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the
+builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since
+exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss
+which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear
+bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such
+conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of
+the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation,
+rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced
+to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more
+intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory
+rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body.
+This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of
+creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations,
+Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so
+concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the
+rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism;
+secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often
+colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the
+treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase,
+or shallow hieroglyphic.
+
+SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of
+animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and
+iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds
+to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished
+practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find
+artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their
+elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would
+be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human
+and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general
+importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we
+constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges
+of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent
+of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must
+expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and
+diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the
+manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic
+ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been
+directly derived.
+
+SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject
+must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor
+to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to
+architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold
+relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation
+of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and
+intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a
+worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality
+to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is
+sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted,
+and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may
+anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and
+that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the
+feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern
+cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the
+neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that
+fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care
+little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to
+contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the
+incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or
+thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the
+involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which
+originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace
+of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a
+line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting
+which could be added with advantage.
+
+SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will
+thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force,
+and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow,
+there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and
+obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without
+danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like
+glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with
+holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the
+light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this
+artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an
+effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it
+will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still
+totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that
+the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden
+points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other
+portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps
+inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be
+wearied by the lightness of the general handling.
+
+SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the
+force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color
+as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that
+the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color
+decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true
+system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to
+understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the
+nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and
+Southern nations.
+
+SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has
+never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It
+has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I
+believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art,
+that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death
+in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color.
+
+Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are
+better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature
+and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but
+that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the
+builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they
+could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe,
+any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted
+all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its
+prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval
+Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever
+think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the
+Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the
+Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of
+color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on
+ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the
+color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did,
+in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It
+is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern
+builders, which we have finally to examine.
+
+SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed
+that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the
+porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it;
+but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed,
+namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred
+it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could.
+The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He
+had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded
+the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be
+painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and
+green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of
+abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his
+hawthorn blue.
+
+SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was
+definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of
+the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means
+of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a
+matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees
+green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far
+more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the
+mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more
+abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development
+of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous
+depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye,
+compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to
+be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more
+delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes
+very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved
+by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the
+flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they
+appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented
+exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage;
+breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the
+lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and
+pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in
+nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be
+colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality.
+Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect
+bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in
+portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be
+definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere
+labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and
+there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might
+be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other
+manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the
+necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready
+to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in
+the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best
+means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones
+are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means,
+for they are all permanent.
+
+SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of
+chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit
+of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the
+_naïveté_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed
+to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and
+internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in
+pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a
+temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast
+illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded
+with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without
+in letters of enamel and gold.
+
+SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is
+not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final
+consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this
+time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his
+attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of
+color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All
+these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent
+with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of
+color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have
+seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth,
+and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft
+tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none
+of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and
+therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even
+desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind
+addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is
+altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague
+impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be
+disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the
+building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for
+the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting
+up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us
+like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with
+our hand.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated
+will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the
+architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for
+him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by
+familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it
+were in my power to lay also before the general reader some
+exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are
+developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the
+nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression
+of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is
+exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning,
+except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal
+reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all
+other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture
+faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible
+to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient
+for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or
+the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no
+faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume
+as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so
+rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of
+architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all
+good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the
+effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar
+confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of
+decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the
+result of distance, together with perfect expression of the
+peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable
+artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness,
+neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the
+subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any
+pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates,
+and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two
+buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St.
+Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them
+the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the
+endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new
+Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it
+is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a
+noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was
+hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the
+most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated,
+eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable,
+inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent
+alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to
+illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and
+pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest,
+with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's.
+The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the
+opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate
+the impossibility of illustration.
+
+SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger
+scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp
+folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness.
+The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more
+than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more
+than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same
+depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with
+close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially
+necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow
+sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds
+is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces,
+like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the
+Plate.
+
+The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
+between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
+illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
+alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
+pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale
+green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch
+square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be
+satisfied. [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are
+exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the
+blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the
+effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color
+of a fruit piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an
+azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in
+the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small
+circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each
+only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the
+outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue
+crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled
+hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate
+conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the
+engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers,
+the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine
+architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's
+alone.
+
+From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
+imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection
+to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we
+may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
+vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars
+upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder
+remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky:
+and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are
+everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that
+church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler
+things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who
+delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the
+reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the
+streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what
+there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the
+men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity,
+and let him judge between us.
+
+SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
+especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
+ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following
+chapter. [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION
+XXXIII above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large
+jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I
+must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the
+inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it,
+as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the
+churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the
+first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of
+ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament
+of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character.
+
+SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
+endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to
+be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of
+offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately
+expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church,
+as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its
+purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to
+deal with briefly and candidly.
+
+The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
+presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
+ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our
+own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a
+cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a
+preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation
+was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral.
+
+SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
+modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier
+architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous.
+But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely
+uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work
+beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate
+ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget
+that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and
+beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was
+rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which
+fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that
+what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was
+then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city,
+of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and
+streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a
+peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most
+elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meetinghouse has by his
+white-washed walls and square-cut casements. [Footnote: See the farther
+notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV. Stones of Venice.]
+
+SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and
+then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a
+kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because,
+while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat
+ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our
+abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for
+every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal
+baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not
+because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the
+revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof
+was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our
+cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and
+then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the
+fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those
+churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all
+the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what
+it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know,
+if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they
+take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily
+to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and
+sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or
+furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in
+modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and
+much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost
+exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have
+not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were
+deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly
+promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is
+now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good
+architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from
+which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe
+it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit
+itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to
+ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly
+to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and
+lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
+dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch
+was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle
+was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when
+the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave.
+There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in
+pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches
+were larger than in most other buildings, because they had to hold more
+people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they
+were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional
+offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and
+religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and
+familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn
+the façade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of
+every house in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches
+of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the
+Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the
+dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the
+distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that
+the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of
+profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be
+drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church
+architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least
+one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house.
+
+SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I
+must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately
+marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that
+every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as
+exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that
+they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as
+beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of
+style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely
+more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the
+confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse,
+not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the
+quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic
+service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the
+fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced
+oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which
+were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks
+and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting,
+buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere
+size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples
+elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the
+adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing
+intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the
+forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when
+they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely
+to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more
+richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the
+carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible:
+all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical
+buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were
+built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna,
+or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door,
+and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the
+grotesques of the brackets and the gables.
+
+SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question
+respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally
+different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So
+long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest
+continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of
+inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question
+whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving
+beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active
+life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and
+color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the
+curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they
+are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say,
+may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if
+once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see
+in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest
+services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire
+to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house
+of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb
+instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask
+whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should
+worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim
+whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters,
+must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray.
+
+SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the
+ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is
+evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the
+permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be
+dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow
+that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical.
+It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the
+church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable
+to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the
+dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as
+there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's
+opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles
+which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice,
+so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience
+may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use,
+which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church
+service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear
+daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style
+for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes
+them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and
+this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for
+houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is
+essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us
+convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of
+convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style it
+tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the
+Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore
+less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for
+both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were
+used for both.
+
+SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which,
+according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as
+either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I
+mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have
+already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural
+features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or
+sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure
+Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by
+features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please,
+altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered
+impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and
+entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and
+interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which
+becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by
+representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore,
+the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in
+modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion
+has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the
+art of the mosaicist?
+
+SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I
+have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is
+likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion.
+One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of
+others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly
+set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could
+pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I
+have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but
+in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts
+with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange
+distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves
+would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I
+do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler
+than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in
+the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for
+that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose
+hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort
+to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general
+fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether
+right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when
+casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what
+class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is
+by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I
+believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most
+influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are
+Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as
+he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by
+religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great
+religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear
+on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture
+illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it
+of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the
+time.
+
+SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the
+chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been
+hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in
+some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind
+is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable
+of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the
+heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it,
+which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power
+of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a
+Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the
+first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and
+would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving
+themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or
+gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the
+figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and
+pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand
+ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly
+sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the
+men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it
+from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who
+read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the
+painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be
+taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more
+popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the
+subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul
+and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan
+hag.
+
+SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is
+capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest
+suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is
+coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into
+impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and
+the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by
+association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to
+it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual
+conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity,
+and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration
+for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would
+otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of
+emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed
+represent a fact! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill
+told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little
+of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the
+child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is
+Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a
+strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests
+with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the
+grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and
+whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not
+always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one,
+and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but
+always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into
+sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of
+accredited truth.
+
+SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the
+truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no
+longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an
+idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in
+the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the
+representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or
+that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this
+or that, painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in
+the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of
+tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his
+Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'étonnait de re
+trouver à la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait
+dessiné dans le baptistère de St. Marc, à Venise. Le costume des
+personnages est partout et en tout temps le même, non-seulement pour la
+forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le
+nombre et l'épaisseur des plis."] We do not severely criticise the
+manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh
+investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern
+religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment
+uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and
+this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the
+worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more
+especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so
+also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly
+religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more
+faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it
+was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of
+both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have
+been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end
+of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in
+modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be
+methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world
+remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be
+education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid
+invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural
+powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society
+lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts
+especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for
+the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy
+studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and
+knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do
+not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt
+to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy,
+and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is
+utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are
+many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who
+have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be
+used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what
+is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a
+village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other
+histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and
+set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having.
+But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work
+when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing
+stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth
+square stones, and consider ourselves wise.
+
+SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but
+I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who
+suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be
+utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be
+granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they
+were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole
+church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its
+illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their
+Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though
+far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no
+other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_
+have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with
+printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they
+could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily
+became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the
+walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the
+Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the
+reader to examine the connection and subjects of these mosaics; but in
+the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any
+sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in
+permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored
+portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are
+they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman
+empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the
+expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies
+always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which
+are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to
+represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so,
+even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early
+Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement,
+but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course
+one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects
+between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind,
+which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the
+nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro
+cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by
+which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance
+and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them
+barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever,
+these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand
+exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images
+which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the
+great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art
+itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor
+can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however
+influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of
+consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a
+Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is
+screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large
+family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is
+reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare
+it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all
+Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the
+word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the
+fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts
+are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of
+Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been
+worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant
+persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works.
+Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the
+mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place
+of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del
+Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious
+influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of
+Europe they have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of
+the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any
+other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for
+human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I
+believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous
+idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other.
+It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as,
+since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in
+glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings;
+partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which,
+in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because
+imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it.
+
+SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the
+inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented
+in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting
+could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions,
+and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern
+book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth
+naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great
+importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural
+effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the
+common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning
+of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often
+of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth
+and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches
+with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their
+size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color
+attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations;
+neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such
+as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before
+the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast
+shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of
+spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of
+receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not
+acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances
+and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of
+Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of
+the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look
+down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa.
+
+SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to
+discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind
+of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow
+out the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to
+fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the
+feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was
+built.
+
+Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct
+the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between
+ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with
+writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be
+large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to
+decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that
+every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would
+rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and
+that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We
+must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all
+that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of
+the builder or of his times.
+
+SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the
+church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and
+new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these
+persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old
+Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of
+Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the
+subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern
+churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order
+to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for
+salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are
+dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna
+was the type.
+
+SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the
+church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of
+Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other,
+in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open
+upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN
+ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds
+the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE,
+ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of
+the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of
+Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE
+REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU
+CONSIDER."
+
+Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen
+when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was
+supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance
+into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance
+into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book
+which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the
+same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the
+invisible Church of God.
+
+SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the
+head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that
+door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy
+Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the
+Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the
+Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second
+and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar
+offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of
+fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented
+standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are
+pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each
+separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at
+Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the
+four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each
+bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the
+tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that
+of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being
+thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are
+continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the
+gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His
+Church:
+
+    "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH:
+       HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY.
+         HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST:
+  BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD."
+
+And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the
+outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_.
+It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to
+sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels
+celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this
+holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels
+for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that
+the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive
+forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity,
+as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is
+vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended
+into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault
+between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and
+resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate
+scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with
+thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre,
+and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is
+the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the
+subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is
+represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and
+throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the
+twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna,
+and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at
+the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are
+inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
+heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so
+come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice."
+
+SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of
+the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the
+crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with
+Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the
+cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our
+assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath
+their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which
+they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison,
+Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates.
+
+SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the
+witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its
+centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
+little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship,
+and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124,
+note.] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of
+the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once
+fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor
+lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of
+New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the
+Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of
+Revelation; [Footnote: The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished,
+and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but
+if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching
+a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an
+ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the
+altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated
+dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange
+contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon
+it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is
+risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like
+wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning
+palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter
+Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon
+the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that
+opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence
+of warning,--"Christ shall come."
+
+SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look
+with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry
+of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts
+of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at
+once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written
+word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all
+glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of
+the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether
+honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither
+the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that,
+as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be
+of jasper, [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished
+with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the
+World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of
+it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all
+riches"? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long
+perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing
+domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of
+it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there
+from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above
+the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or
+thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple,
+attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would
+forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy
+without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and
+the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain
+ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those
+marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the
+colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that
+once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults,
+that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do
+judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as
+she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten
+this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without
+excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the
+North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused
+and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of
+the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the
+Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other
+cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from
+religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the
+grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street,
+there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify,
+we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace
+or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls
+on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of
+marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined
+the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all
+shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled
+with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin
+was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God,
+burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their
+laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not
+unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of
+gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had
+uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things
+God will bring thee into judgment."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DUCAL PALACE.
+
+
+SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter
+that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal
+Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices
+which were raised for half a century after its completion, their
+characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly
+copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of
+Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination,
+employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in
+its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a
+remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds
+of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of
+Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more
+daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause
+to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of
+innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it
+thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon
+an image more attractive.
+
+SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural
+invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in
+self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building
+thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it
+doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is
+actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian
+antiquaries, whether the main façade of the palace be of the fourteenth
+or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course
+necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of
+the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the
+entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I
+trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not
+be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of
+the Venetian character.
+
+SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into
+the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be
+thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal
+parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much
+as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do
+what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him
+the necessary topographical knowledge:
+
+Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place;
+and the following references will clearly explain their relative
+positions:
+
+A. St. Mark's Place.
+B. Piazzetta.
+P. V. Procuratie Vecchie.
+P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove.
+P. L. Libreria Vecchia.
+I. Piazzetta de' Leoni.
+T. Tower of St. Mark.
+F F. Great Façade of St. Mark's Church.
+M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the
+    separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had
+    been marked, which would have confused the whole.)
+D D D. Ducal Palace.         g s. Giant's stair.
+C. Court of Ducal Palace.    J. Judgement angle.
+c. Porta della Carta.        a. Fig-tree angle.
+p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw).
+S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs).
+R R. Riva de' Schiavoni.
+
+
+[Illustration: FIG. I. The Ducal Palace--Ground Plan.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. II. The Ducal Palace--Bird's eye View.]
+
+
+The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in
+the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B,
+and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on
+the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the
+Church of St. Mark.
+
+Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three
+sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively
+called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Façade;" that towards
+the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Façade;" and that towards the Rio del
+Palazzo, the "Rio Façade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by
+the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes
+under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal
+thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy,
+in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and
+Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar
+was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely
+resemble each other in form.
+
+SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the
+appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement
+will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and
+fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a
+general view of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade (the latter in very steep
+perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly
+represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to
+avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the
+two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is
+the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the
+regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the
+Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland
+used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above
+this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade,
+will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a
+sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called
+the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall
+of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen
+in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the
+Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two
+which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated,
+the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its
+interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and
+fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's
+Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left.
+
+SECTION V. The great façade which fronts the spectator looks southward.
+Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of
+the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern
+Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at
+the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della
+Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the
+"Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark
+side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long
+four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is
+entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no
+accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we
+shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our
+present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older
+palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows,
+refittings of the brickwork, etc.
+
+SECTION VI. It will be observed that the façade is composed of a smooth
+mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other.
+The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at
+once by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken
+right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of
+the Sea Façade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both
+in the inner court and on the Façade, which carry the main walls;
+_b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C
+are the three stories of the interior of the palace.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. III.]
+
+The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple,
+and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed,
+there would be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls,
+carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable.
+
+The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused
+ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient
+masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I
+have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the
+removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the
+subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader;
+but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important.
+
+SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed
+that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the
+façade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable
+instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience,
+which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the
+Gothic schools.
+
+The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall
+find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain
+the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we
+shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning
+of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent
+chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the
+side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was
+no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height
+was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just
+harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question
+how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or
+above them.
+
+The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the
+best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the
+light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of
+illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce
+light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern
+architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would
+have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would
+have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and
+have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper
+story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued
+along the façade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the
+paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He
+unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with
+reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external
+appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather
+gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces
+of wall above and below the windows.
+
+SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows,
+which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is
+painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be
+hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise."
+
+In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second
+windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground,
+opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace,
+and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony."
+
+The façade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the
+Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when
+people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all
+on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber,
+one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the
+other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea,
+light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of
+Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta
+della Carta.
+
+SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography
+of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its
+history.
+
+We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian
+architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance.
+
+The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built
+successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a
+Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second
+superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are
+all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and
+the existing building is formed by the union of the two.
+
+We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader
+will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed
+books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The
+numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given
+with the quotations.
+  Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663.
+  Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829.
+  Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780.
+  Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838.
+  Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811.
+  Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837.
+  Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.]
+
+1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE.
+
+In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined
+to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of
+their state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina
+Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo
+Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar
+la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi,
+vol. vi. chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or
+Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement
+of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the
+future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the
+banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build
+wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built
+the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace
+now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.
+[Footnote: "Ampliò la città, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d'
+Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la capella di S.
+Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that
+piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the
+nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare
+also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si è che il suddetto
+Agnello lo incomminciò da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di
+S. Marco."]
+
+The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of
+Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last
+representation of her power.
+
+SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio
+little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte
+della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio;
+that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Façade; but this
+was merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the
+Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great
+water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to
+distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the
+Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio,
+stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the
+boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the
+Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which
+the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are:
+"Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et
+rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was
+built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure
+esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted,
+says: "in the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say on
+the Piazzetta."]
+
+We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the
+existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the
+Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at
+one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some
+magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by
+the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The
+chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the
+palace;" [Footnote: "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino,
+quoted by Cadorin and Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express
+pride in the buildings being worthy of an emperor's examination. This
+was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against
+Candiano IV., [Footnote: There is an interesting account of this revolt
+in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been
+destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important
+restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and
+Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii
+hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are
+usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but
+the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber,
+speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many
+miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with
+ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way
+somewhat startling to the state, by absconding with a French priest to
+St. Michael's in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs,
+therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be
+undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named.] and just repaired, and
+richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as
+having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with
+ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum
+aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_] There can be no doubt
+whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the
+other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi,
+&c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it
+was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color.
+
+SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by
+fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse
+parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these
+fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another
+emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial
+praise. [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis
+sequitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted
+by Cadorin.]
+
+Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again
+repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says
+that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every
+direction;" [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi
+per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle
+for account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace
+seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the
+commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace
+were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time
+when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by
+Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and
+this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly
+clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year
+1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half
+remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani."
+[Footnote: "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M.
+Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro
+Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as
+"molto particolare, e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p.
+593.--It terminates in the year 1422.]
+
+So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace.
+
+SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects
+that the important change in the Venetian government which gave
+stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,
+[Footnote: See Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge
+Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and
+prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who
+laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by
+the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government."
+
+We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their
+importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to
+be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism
+of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world.
+[Footnote: Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the
+reign of Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure
+establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the
+people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental
+in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity.
+
+The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain
+limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever
+before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of
+the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement,
+or decoration of the chamber in which they sat.
+
+We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another
+saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge
+Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council
+first sat in it_." [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year,
+therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice
+was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval
+with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation,
+coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal
+representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace
+is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles.
+
+SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian
+historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del
+Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of
+the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in
+expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for
+the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is
+_now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa
+parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu
+fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_,
+quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the
+Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill
+written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del
+1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se
+adoperava a far e pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin
+1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great
+importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the
+meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122
+years."--_Cod. Ven._ tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from
+1253 to 1454.
+
+Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New
+proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the
+Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and
+its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace:
+but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the
+commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the
+first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the
+Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then
+begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole
+period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings
+consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and
+when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being
+continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they
+reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and
+pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the
+junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent,
+which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws.
+
+SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay
+the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built
+by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and
+the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent
+will soon become visible to us.
+
+The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Façade, behind the
+present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on
+the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low
+or high, but probably on a first story. The great façade of the Ziani
+Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as
+far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being
+obviously the points first considered.
+
+SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions
+to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most
+significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction
+of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the
+_Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi
+era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi
+Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle
+in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It
+appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in
+question.]
+
+Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain
+apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the
+Rio Façade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the
+old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments
+at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for
+prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote:
+Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice
+that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose,
+in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made
+against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to
+prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the
+Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported,
+small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable
+rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated.
+[Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen
+them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them
+know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof
+of the palace the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine
+where it is greatest."] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being
+built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio
+in the year 1309.
+
+SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had
+no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed
+by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of
+that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge
+Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of
+Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say
+by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only
+one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo.
+There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his
+reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on
+whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be
+compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is
+recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate
+built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue
+kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St.
+Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se
+al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in
+zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S.
+Marco."--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120.]
+
+SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed
+their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than
+that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This
+door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which
+are fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not
+examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I
+take the passages quoted.] in the following terms:--
+
+"1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St.
+Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates....
+[Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."--Cadorin, 189, I.]
+for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the
+palace."
+
+"1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making
+gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace
+stairs."
+
+The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the
+reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced
+by the Porta della Carta.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered
+for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber
+inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion,
+began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be
+built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was
+probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as
+well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio.
+The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under
+these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven.,
+No. CXLI. p. 365.]
+
+"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco
+Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine
+where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the
+Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected
+two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty
+ducats a year."
+
+It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by
+Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the
+commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their
+report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the
+commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote:
+Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree:
+"For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not
+capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio
+parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal
+Grande."--P. 324.]
+
+_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building
+involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the
+present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all
+prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+
+SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not
+mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it
+has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls
+rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still
+stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as
+shown in Figure II. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can
+be known respecting the design of the Sea Façade, must be gleaned out of
+the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber.
+
+Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due
+time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of
+1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been
+discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in
+1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected
+and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall
+be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342
+is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while
+Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the
+Council Chamber as only begun in 1345.]
+
+The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the
+conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.
+[Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed
+in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as
+that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls;
+[Footnote: "II primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365
+vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino_.] so that
+the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its
+decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the
+paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi
+1400 vi fece il ciclo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle,
+ch'era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. viii.] They
+represented the heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi
+si messe in oro il ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il
+pergole del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e
+l'altro di stelle, eh' erano la insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_,
+lib. xiii. Compare also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the
+bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this
+time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial
+bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an
+important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two
+square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window
+towards the sea:
+
+  "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI
+  HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT."
+
+And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that
+window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I
+think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out
+and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final
+decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council
+sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the
+Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it,
+the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the
+central one of her life.
+
+SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two,
+in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of
+the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been
+proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three
+years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the
+gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately
+symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which
+it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the
+fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of
+the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new
+Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as
+the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and
+more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the
+building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the
+"Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the
+Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix I.,
+Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in
+Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it
+towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva
+dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to
+the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the
+water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and
+interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the
+nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered
+the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and
+then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity
+of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta
+with the same splendor as the Sea Façade. But no such sweeping measure of
+renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the
+plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a
+gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary
+additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of
+the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon
+the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast
+additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful
+of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own
+enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some
+strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger.
+It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt,
+but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the
+desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and
+the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it.
+
+SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own
+weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under
+the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own
+enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a
+thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be
+for the good of the state.
+
+Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire
+which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's,
+and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I
+shall relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No.
+cxxv. in the Marcian Library, p. 568.]
+
+SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care
+to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's
+house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge_
+[Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] _to restore it in the form in which it
+was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better
+manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was
+forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any
+one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to
+rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was
+magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the
+city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then
+proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the
+late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his
+own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this
+occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they
+ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the
+greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and
+that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish
+interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole
+course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done
+anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but
+in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the
+advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as
+far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this
+accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything
+in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and
+that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never
+endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as
+his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took
+in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very
+old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life
+before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore
+they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building
+for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its
+Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his
+successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to
+observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which
+had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that
+he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that
+he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes
+on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the
+Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses
+of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work;
+and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at
+present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended
+his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but
+hardly even begun."
+
+SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts
+which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the
+whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember,
+that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred
+years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat
+in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to
+destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should
+propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of
+Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_.
+
+SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once
+be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we
+now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in
+the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were
+in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices
+of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower
+of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one;
+and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an
+allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with
+most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and
+rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new
+Council Chamber, of which the whole façade to the Sea consisted, never
+entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily
+connected with the Ducal residence.
+
+I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought
+forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422
+[Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild
+the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari
+was elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according
+to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but
+previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari
+enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber
+was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate
+as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle;
+[Footnote: "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran
+Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno
+che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua
+creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is
+probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum;
+[Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto
+Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran
+Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation fo
+fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c.,
+p. 426.]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first
+hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare
+Appendix I. Vol. III.]
+
+SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly
+called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of
+Venice,--and of Venice herself.
+
+The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I
+dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of
+Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been
+called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this
+instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had
+forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces
+might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take
+the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her
+unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her
+fortunes, the city never flourished again.
+
+SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate
+details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued
+under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I
+am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the
+architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the
+following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the
+Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most
+particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back
+from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta
+della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge
+Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogade
+del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131.] the interior buildings
+connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro, (the Othello
+of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This identification has been accomplished, and
+I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all
+the leisure which, during the last twenty years his manifold office of
+kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in
+discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which
+bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take
+advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will
+shortly be made public.] in 1462.
+
+SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we
+have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was
+close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council
+Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still
+left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more
+probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire
+of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever
+buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion
+of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479,
+together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon
+of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it
+became necessary to reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the
+palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal.
+This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close
+of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci
+executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum
+of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work
+must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century.
+The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by
+fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and
+the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point
+marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure II on the Rio Façade.
+
+SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this
+finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire,
+burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious
+pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the
+Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a
+mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the
+Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an
+entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading
+architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or
+the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given
+in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbé Cadorin, in
+the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most
+important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace.
+
+I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental
+resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was
+first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others,
+especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute
+designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his
+immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for
+the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and
+Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise
+of Guariento had withered before the flames.
+
+SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were
+however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier
+work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was
+the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to
+the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of
+Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The
+completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form;
+with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases
+among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and
+defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I
+suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy.
+
+SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the
+details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I
+shall not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here,
+because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this
+volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to
+us in the art of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the
+third volume, Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large
+figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable
+every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that
+the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether
+wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to such
+points of interest as can be explained in the text.
+
+SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning
+of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very
+nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance
+were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should
+be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness
+of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the
+pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other
+four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been
+attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some
+modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of
+buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be
+noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly
+Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks
+of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by
+buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare,
+which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural
+dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large
+surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal
+Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite
+concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of
+Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise
+decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the
+sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane
+surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions
+only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its
+north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner
+angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly
+made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which
+I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence
+will always be distinctly traceable in them.
+
+SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its
+completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The
+central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was
+entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the
+Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the
+principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle
+sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the
+two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and
+their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject;
+above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is
+introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more
+figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel
+holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their
+crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the
+seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the
+ground to the top of the angle.
+
+SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the
+palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's,
+and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated,
+only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the
+Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according
+to the arrangement just explained,--
+
+First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade).
+
+Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade).
+
+Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade).
+
+Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade).
+
+Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches.
+
+SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their
+order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the
+reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the
+great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner
+stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most
+important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the
+builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he
+built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson
+which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it
+is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they
+themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their
+city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly
+inscribed.
+
+SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong
+to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the
+Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is
+the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the
+Renaissance spirit.
+
+The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of
+all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank
+confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the
+results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that
+the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence
+in its own wisdom.
+
+Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves.
+
+The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called
+the angle of the Fig-tree:
+
+Its subject is the FALL OF MAN.
+
+The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine:
+
+Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH.
+
+The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle:
+
+Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
+
+It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration,
+the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been
+built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the
+sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two
+schools.
+
+SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the
+principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it
+turns to the Piazetta (the façade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw
+above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital,
+which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than
+the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preëminence
+of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was
+first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in
+execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather
+suppose it to have been the earliest completed.
+
+SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness,
+the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the
+sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary
+adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of
+the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching
+out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for
+several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or
+superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad
+leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight,
+beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate
+plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone
+hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the
+undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine
+angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having
+tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits
+of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have
+been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the
+sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so
+interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the
+subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of this
+chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to
+be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the
+composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses,
+there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending
+leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to
+prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this
+Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it
+is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther
+than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of
+the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty
+joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only
+half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several
+cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned
+boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon
+them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of
+the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous
+veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the
+sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in
+order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the
+eye.
+
+SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the
+figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many
+respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that
+they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth
+century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the
+Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of
+far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal
+Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the
+head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of
+that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is
+represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp,
+the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and
+majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant
+wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of
+design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body,
+carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily
+expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of
+technical skill. This monument bears date 1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI--NOIE
+AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen,
+in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c.]
+and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name:
+
+  "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS,
+      LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS."
+
+SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently
+worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing
+hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins
+on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being
+evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in
+those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of
+this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret
+and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three
+brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of
+the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not
+with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet,
+on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital.
+
+SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the
+group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are
+protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle
+and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in
+nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to
+1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred
+yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge
+Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354.
+
+SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the
+Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are
+better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the
+tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more
+nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine.
+
+The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has
+very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk
+between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his
+hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those
+of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it
+always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it
+is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the
+tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the
+fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to
+nature; they are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges,
+and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled
+drapery.
+
+SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade,
+the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their
+positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate
+XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right.
+A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his
+hand a scroll with this inscription:
+
+  EFICE Q
+  SOFRE
+  TUR AFA
+  EL REVE
+  RENDE
+  QUIETU
+
+i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote:
+"Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The
+peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to
+tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir
+Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is
+represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded
+me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising
+of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well known tale of the Fisherman
+and St. Mark's ring.] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll
+borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much
+the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has
+only in its hand the Annunciation lily.
+
+SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating
+the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression
+of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence
+upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general
+purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I
+imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in
+which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just
+touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of
+divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the
+great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace;
+and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the
+eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men
+in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade
+at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse.
+
+SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their
+order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.)
+that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower
+story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then
+the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first,
+which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine
+angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and
+the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle.
+
+SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are
+octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in
+every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the
+angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on
+the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding
+forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the
+groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have
+given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope
+to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them
+here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the
+expression of the figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower
+leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left
+dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In
+referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the
+outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side;
+and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of
+course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up
+after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left
+visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western
+sides of each.
+
+SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle.
+
+In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its
+wings expanded, covering his breast.
+
+On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves.
+
+On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other,
+a pair of scissors.
+
+It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the façade,
+should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can
+hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I
+will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical
+meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it
+would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb
+introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but
+generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the
+hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are
+very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small.
+
+SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are
+left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one
+web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its
+jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming
+itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far
+the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds.
+
+THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads,
+large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned.
+
+FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one
+in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in
+its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the
+nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds.
+
+The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has
+luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing
+hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling
+hair, deep cut with drill holes.
+
+This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only
+with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought
+expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of
+the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads
+are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with
+sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not
+a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features
+small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and
+great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull
+smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of
+their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as
+the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed
+coxcombs.
+
+FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length
+statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription.
+In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief
+embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the
+abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR"
+(contracted IPAT.).
+
+On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand,
+and sceptre in left.
+
+On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away.
+He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a
+sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He
+has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much
+injured, but has once been very noble in expression.
+
+SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard,
+and bad.
+
+SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which
+is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it
+and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues.
+
+_First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from
+the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he
+pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there
+is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is,
+"LARGITAS ME ONORAT."
+
+In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of
+showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a
+plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct
+imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always
+injuries.
+
+This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur
+in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a
+leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients.
+
+SECTION XLIX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An
+armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL
+TIMENS."
+
+This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets
+as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a
+woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in
+the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a
+very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by
+his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the
+Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be
+well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the
+man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name."
+
+SECTION L. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but
+needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA
+SUM, DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like
+person with a veil.
+
+She is the Atë of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the
+fourth book:
+
+  "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,
+   With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;
+   And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,
+   That nought but gall and venim comprehended,
+   And wicked wordes that God and man offended:
+   Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,
+   And both the parts did speake, and both contended;
+   And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,
+   That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided."
+
+Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity
+we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for
+the other sense of the word.
+
+SECTION LI. _Fourth side_. Patience. A female figure, very
+expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
+left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
+
+She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
+masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in
+the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags
+who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
+Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
+Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
+hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
+Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
+smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."
+
+SECTION LII. _Fifth side_. Despair. A female figure thrusting a
+dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down
+among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest
+figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In
+the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears,
+instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each
+side.
+
+This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented
+as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's
+vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that
+this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the
+attention of Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+SECTION LIII. _Sixth side_. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek,
+but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind
+legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI *
+*;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like
+"A'ONOEXIBEO."
+
+I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and
+that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo."
+
+This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems;
+represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the
+finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head
+of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay,
+vol. ii. p. 226.]
+
+Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her
+above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood.
+
+SECTION LIV. _Seventh side_. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a
+small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription
+nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI,
+CERO," remain.
+
+By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the
+helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is
+covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, _is
+bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her
+hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet.
+
+In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,--
+
+      "Full large of limbe and every joint
+  He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
+
+For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the
+Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III.
+
+SECTION LV. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the
+Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA
+ROBUOBTINEO."
+
+I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of
+Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood,
+but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in
+the second book:
+
+  "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew,
+   Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight:
+   Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+   And ever and anone with rosy red
+   The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye,
+   That her became, as polisht yvory
+   Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd
+   With fayre vermilion or pure castory."
+
+SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects
+are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of
+the degradation of human instincts.
+
+_First side_. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap
+ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious
+twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but
+still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque.
+His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back.
+
+_Second side_. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a
+bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It
+plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow.
+
+_Third side_. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head,
+founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap
+made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand.
+
+_Fourth side_. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise.
+It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it
+wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg.
+
+_Fifth side_. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a
+curved sword.
+
+_Sixth side_. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a
+chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a
+two-edged sword.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round
+helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with
+a top like a fir-cone.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand,
+ending below in a fish.
+
+SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Faith. She has her left
+hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA
+IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her
+left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic
+books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia)
+is still more spiritual and noble:
+
+  "She was araied all in lilly white,
+  And in her right hand bore a cup of gold,
+  With wine and water fild up to the hight,
+  In which a serpent did himselfe enfold,
+  That horrour made to all that did behold;
+  But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood:
+  And in her other hand she fast did hold
+  A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood;
+  Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood."
+
+SECTION LVIII. _Second side_. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?]
+tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat
+vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than
+Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM
+VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as
+merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue
+having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian
+symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given
+generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin,
+knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing
+back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and
+slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is
+square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above
+her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins
+deeply infixed.
+
+Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt,
+however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere
+manliness or courage.
+
+SECTION LIX. _Third side_. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water
+and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy
+nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat
+vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards
+continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College)
+temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or
+gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the
+moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who
+has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of
+which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed
+among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the
+Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much
+sternness:
+
+  "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
+   That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
+   His carriage was full comely and upright;
+   His countenance demure and temperate;
+   But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
+   That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
+
+The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
+of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
+inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
+opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
+is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
+most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
+[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
+intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
+image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
+of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
+crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
+to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
+throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
+laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
+virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
+opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
+Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
+find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
+a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
+forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
+first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
+Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
+
+  "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
+   Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
+   That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
+
+The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser,
+for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
+philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.
+
+SECTION LX. _Fourth side_. Humility; with a veil upon her head,
+carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN
+ME."
+
+This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized
+in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in
+early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to
+imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an
+exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek
+youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish
+systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation.
+
+SECTION LXI. _Fifth side_. Charity. A woman with her lap full of
+loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it
+across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital.
+
+Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In
+the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by
+having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is
+crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and
+fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears
+above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of
+beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth.
+
+The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in
+the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always
+represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in
+Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and,
+with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear
+fire, she could not have been discerned.
+
+Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea
+afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and
+sculptors.
+
+SECTION LXII. _Sixth side_. Justice. Crowned, and with sword.
+Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE."
+
+This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good
+capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has
+also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue,
+representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding
+scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing
+that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws,
+but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands.
+In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an
+angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been
+working at a desk or table.
+
+Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons
+riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music.
+
+Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the
+betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity.
+
+SECTION LXIII. _Seventh side_. Prudence. A man with a book and a
+pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the
+shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so
+frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of
+men occupied in any civil capacity.
+
+This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees
+of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being
+opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find,
+in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive
+character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto
+expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things
+by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with
+compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of
+looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or
+anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural
+capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never
+enough considered or symbolized.
+
+The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
+Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.
+
+SECTION LXIV. _Eighth side_. Hope. A figure full of devotional
+expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand
+which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy
+this hand does not appear.
+
+Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
+not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
+others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
+which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
+for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
+even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
+for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
+air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
+was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
+symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
+are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
+characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is
+aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the
+Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
+beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:
+
+  "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
+   An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."
+
+SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Luxury (the opposite of
+chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
+forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
+drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."
+
+These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
+those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His
+Luxury rides upon a goat:
+
+  "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
+   Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
+   And in his hand a burning heart he bare."
+
+But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is
+the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more
+indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediaeval and
+the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented.
+
+I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the
+thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central
+year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be
+gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most
+touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by
+the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters;
+namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now,
+therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's
+still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for
+the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents
+Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan
+and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and
+fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii.
+letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of
+Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as
+furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the
+mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of
+a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of
+the Graces, but full of terror:
+
+  "With that the darts which his right hand did straine
+   Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,
+   And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine,
+   That all his many it afraide did make."
+
+His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is.
+Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope,
+Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty.
+After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame,
+
+  "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,
+   Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
+   Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,
+   Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread
+   Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity,
+   Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy."
+
+Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the
+Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in
+every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our
+literature, and our minds.
+
+SECTION LXVI. _Second side_. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a
+jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird,
+which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM."
+
+Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine:
+
+  "His belly was upblownt with luxury,
+   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
+   And like a crane his necke was long and fyne,
+   Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast,
+   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne."
+
+He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of
+ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance.
+
+SECTION LXVII. _Third side_. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and
+stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with
+ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his
+helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA."
+
+Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it
+as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep
+under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a
+feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle
+called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a
+team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her
+palace she is thus described:
+
+  "So proud she shyned in her princely state,
+   Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne;
+   And sitting high, for lowly she did hate:
+   Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne
+   A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne;
+   And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright,
+   Wherein her face she often vewed fayne."
+
+The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and
+Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father
+and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.)
+
+Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride
+which vents itself in insult to others.
+
+SECTION LXVIII. _Fourth side_. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at
+her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance Copy
+it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME."
+
+Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest
+of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides
+upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood.
+Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me
+very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any
+representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the
+most terrible; both of them make him violent.
+
+SECTION LXIX. _Fifth side_. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over
+her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous
+for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny
+channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by
+famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring
+and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the
+Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR."
+
+Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god
+Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power.
+Note the position of the house of Richesse:
+
+  "Betwixt them both was but a little stride,
+  That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide."
+
+It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness,
+although they are vices totally different in their operation on the
+human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of
+Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of
+the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that
+is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus
+destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in
+heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is
+not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly
+proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be
+consistent with much charity; not so avarice.
+
+SECTION LXX. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken
+away, having had its arms round two branches of trees.
+
+I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless,
+in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as
+desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice
+especially upon the clergy,--
+
+  "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde,
+  Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin,
+  Like to an holy monck, the service to begin.
+  And in his hand his portesse still he bare,
+  That much was worne, but therein little redd."
+
+And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices:
+
+  "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd,
+  When such an one had guiding of the way."
+
+Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse,
+indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly
+characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
+
+SECTION LXXI. _Seventh side_. Vanity. She is smiling complacently
+as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with
+roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
+
+There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in
+the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas
+generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it
+in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity
+shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the
+thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this
+sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal,
+of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a
+feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser,
+I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria,
+more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however,
+entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
+
+SECTION LXXII. _Eighth side_. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of
+expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a
+serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle
+of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.
+
+Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as
+having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with
+an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping;
+a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the
+eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames
+consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of
+Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not
+suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer,
+joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of
+corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole
+mind:
+
+                      "Malicious Envy rode
+  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
+  Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
+  That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+  _And in a kirtle of discolourd say
+  He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_,
+  And in his bosome secretly there lay
+  An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
+  In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
+
+He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in
+the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
+
+SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight
+birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which,
+however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all
+varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description.
+
+SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is
+grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and
+the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that
+it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance
+series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
+
+_First side_. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a
+child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his
+own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."
+
+The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no
+means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a
+parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as
+in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next
+in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating
+human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante
+placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have
+been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser--
+
+         "All in sable sorrowfully clad,
+  Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A pair of pincers in his hand he had,
+  With which he pinched people to the heart."
+
+He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth
+canto of the fourth book:
+
+  "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade,
+   That neither day nor night from working spared;
+   But to small purpose yron wedges made:
+   Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade.
+
+   Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent,
+   Ne better had he, ne for better cared;
+   With blistered hands among the cinders brent."
+
+It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure
+is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a
+very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as
+"Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the
+companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is
+intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred
+Sorrow.
+
+SECTION LXXV. _Second side_. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing
+hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as
+singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS."
+
+We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by
+Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy,
+"ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully
+developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from
+them in the earlier capitals.
+
+SECTION LXXVI. _Third side_. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find
+it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a
+man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English
+residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a
+feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with
+one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and
+bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb."
+
+SECTION LXXVII. _Fourth side_. Destroyed, all but a book, which
+identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy;
+there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent
+life with the pursuit of literature?).
+
+Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all
+his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the
+convent, but of wedded life.
+
+SECTION LXXVIII. _Fifth side_. Only a scroll is left; but, from the
+copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM
+DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the
+virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only.
+
+The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite
+character in the "Faerie Queen."
+
+SECTION LXXIX. _Sixth side_. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a
+crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The
+Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly
+conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits.
+In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect,
+
+  "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red,
+   Purfled with gold and pearle;...
+   Her wanton palfrey all was overspred.
+   With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
+   Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave."
+
+Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the
+description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted.
+
+SECTION LXXX. _Seventh side_. Injustice. An armed figure holding a
+halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the
+particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented
+at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while
+various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia"
+is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger.
+
+_Eighth side_. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child,
+who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is
+inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?"
+
+SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round,
+coarsely cut.
+
+FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its
+haunches. Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired
+with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair
+projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks,
+hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness.
+
+SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is
+thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade.
+
+The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me
+later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is
+embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe
+Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general
+illustration of Idleness.
+
+_First side_. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated,
+and fastened by a buckle.
+
+_Second side_. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand.
+
+_Third side_. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds
+by the haunches.
+
+_Fourth side_. A man with a parrot.
+
+_Fifth side_. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and
+dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand,
+her right on her breast.
+
+_Sixth side_. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand
+upon the leaves of the capital.
+
+_Seventh side_. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand.
+
+_Eighth side_. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right
+laid on his breast.
+
+SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large
+heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that
+these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins,
+Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians.
+Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to
+note them.] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth
+side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a
+portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in
+every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and,
+therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list
+given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the
+superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations.
+Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation
+of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in
+which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches.
+
+SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the
+sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of
+the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part
+of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the
+wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the
+orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus,
+the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining
+are the following:
+
+_First side_. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated
+with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS."
+
+_Second side_. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a
+long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters
+"GRAMMATIC" remain.
+
+_Third side_. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double
+beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his
+back.
+
+_Fourth side_. Destroyed.
+
+_Fifth side_. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on
+it.
+
+_Sixth side_. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *"
+
+_Seventh side_. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle
+wrought into a lion's head.
+
+_Eighth side_. Destroyed.
+
+SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most
+interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and
+the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers
+as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they
+are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was
+laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are
+now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty
+because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its
+expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the
+signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the
+fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually
+stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of
+interrogation), and then as I would read them.
+
+SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the
+houses of the planets are thus arranged:
+
+The house of the Sun,      is Leo.
+      "          Moon,     "  Cancer.
+      "          Mars,     "  Aries and Scorpio.
+      "          Venus,    "  Taurus and Libra.
+      "          Mercury,  "  Gemini and Virgo.
+      "          Jupiter,  "  Sagittarius and Pisces.
+      "          Saturn,   "  Capricorn.
+      "          Herschel, "  Aquarius.
+
+The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we
+have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and
+Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn
+at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is
+grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel
+planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of
+Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the
+angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from
+which I shall not depart.
+
+SECTION LXXXVII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea,
+has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure
+beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the
+leaves of the capital. His inscription is:
+
+"ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE."
+
+SECTION LXXXVIII. _Second side_. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius
+and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in
+radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast,
+ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the
+drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot
+forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable
+characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand
+over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two
+thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been
+broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group
+is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on
+the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is:
+
+"INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA."
+[Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform
+mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the
+same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked on the stone.]
+
+Or,
+  "Inde Jovis dona
+   Pisces simul atque Chirona."
+
+Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of
+Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron."
+
+SECTION LXXXIX. _Third side_. Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio.
+Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the
+ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left
+hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for
+it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright
+line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a
+shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon
+his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It
+should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_
+Latin for "I am of iron."
+
+SECTION XC. _Fourth side_. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented
+under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from
+his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription:
+
+"TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI."
+
+I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a
+letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum
+"signe" stands for.
+
+SECTION XCI. _Fifth side_. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra.
+The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is
+deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a
+mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very
+nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is
+exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs:
+
+"LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*."
+
+SECTION XCII. _Sixth side_. Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent
+cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining
+attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot
+understand the inscription, though more than usually legible.
+
+"OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE."
+
+SECTION XCIII. _Seventh side_. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This
+sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most
+picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat,
+upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her
+left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I
+believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather
+think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express
+the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the
+lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat,
+may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by
+the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on
+this capital, as well as on the rest of the façade, are disposed in
+severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the
+moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest
+the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is
+highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five
+hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such,
+far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this
+intention. The inscription is:
+
+"LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
+
+SECTION XCIV. _Eighth side_. God creating Man. Represented as a
+throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the
+head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The
+inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of
+"formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble,
+before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely
+ascertained the rest.
+
+"DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
+
+Or
+
+   "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
+  From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
+
+I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the
+old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of
+the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire
+subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as
+determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in
+fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
+
+Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only
+consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble
+Christianity.
+
+In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the
+whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole
+strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian
+casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself
+cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give
+drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work.
+
+SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting
+from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the
+Fig-tree angle the first.
+
+It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of
+dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in
+some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its
+figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar
+significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and
+architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far
+too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one
+capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the
+architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying,
+and of the value of color generally in his own art.
+
+SECTION XCVI. _First side_. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A
+figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green
+serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital.
+The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up
+open, with the palm outwards.
+
+_Second side_. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a
+small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is
+highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at
+the Vine angle. Inscription effaced.
+
+_Third side_. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work
+on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark
+red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form
+of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth
+century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without
+any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the
+Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the
+fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO."
+
+_Fourth side_. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has
+been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST.
+E(N?)AS."
+
+_Fifth side_. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a
+kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble.
+
+_Sixth side_. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed
+_on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses
+set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich
+cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us
+of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been
+universal in the early fourteenth century.
+
+There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is
+working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups
+of the time.
+
+_Seventh side_. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth
+century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals,
+see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted
+marble.
+
+_Eighth side_. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a
+delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered
+with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red
+marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * *
+ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two
+of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front,
+two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned
+workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult
+our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the
+mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more
+interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work
+was undertaken at this time.
+
+SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals,
+and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its
+effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in
+the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio
+work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with
+great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute
+chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered
+bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong
+simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are
+also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side
+of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series,
+though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable
+hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman,
+better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become
+in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but
+he could not have composed them more skilfully.
+
+SECTION XCVIII. _First side_. A lion with a stag's haunch in his
+mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the
+peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or
+furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the
+Ducal Palace, to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment
+we reach the Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed
+simply, "LEO."
+
+_Second side_. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body
+wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers
+are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed
+"LUPUS."
+
+_Third side_. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth,
+its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across
+the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other
+side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS."
+
+_Fourth side_. Entirely broken away.
+
+_Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at
+least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone.
+
+_Sixth side_. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed
+species of dog, with ugly flap ears.
+
+_Seventh side_. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth.
+
+_Eighth side_. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees.
+
+SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior
+professions.
+
+_First side_. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very
+expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer.
+Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM."
+
+_Second side_. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl
+or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is
+gone.
+
+_Third side_. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for
+cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable.
+
+_Fourth side_. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on
+two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Fifth side_. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very
+carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of
+cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The
+inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"?
+
+_Sixth side_. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which
+lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but
+according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA."
+
+_Seventh side_. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll
+which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM."
+
+_Eighth side_. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a
+large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is
+inscribed "FABER SUM."
+
+SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of
+the planets on human life.
+
+_First side_. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according
+to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been
+prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or
+other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then
+forgotten to return to it.
+
+_Second side_. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on
+it. The legend above is
+
+"MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X."
+
+Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.)
+"Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years."
+
+_Third side_. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken.
+Inscribed
+
+"ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII."
+
+Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the
+lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note
+the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o;
+showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same
+kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained,
+and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded
+to a Roman ear.
+
+_Fourth side_. A youth with a hawk on his fist.
+
+"IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX."
+The sue governs youth for nineteen years.
+
+_Fifth side_. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder.
+Inscribed
+
+"SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV."
+Mars governs manhood for fifteen years.
+
+_Sixth side_. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap,
+reading.
+
+"SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII."
+Jupiter governs age for twelve years.
+
+_Seventh side_. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.
+
+"DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.)
+Saturn governs decrepitude until death.
+
+_Eighth side_. The dead body lying on a mattress.
+
+"ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI."
+Last comes death, the penalty of sin.
+
+SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression
+of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its
+devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that
+devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been
+restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.
+
+SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft
+which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The
+shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is
+coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It
+represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress
+at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the
+bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to
+examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by
+the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian
+guard-house.
+
+SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the
+months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are,
+however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series.
+
+_First side_. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the
+beginning of the year.
+
+_Second side_. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather
+fan in her hand.
+
+_Third side_. June. Carrying cherries in a basket.
+
+I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter,
+because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called
+"the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the
+conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I.
+
+The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and
+large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon
+the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut.
+
+_Fourth side_. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the
+straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite,
+beats (the grain?) in a basket.
+
+_Fifth side_. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a
+branch of vine. Very beautiful.
+
+_Sixth side_. October and November. I could not make out their
+occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire.
+
+_Seventh side_. December. Killing pigs, as usual.
+
+_Eighth side_. January warming his feet, and February frying fish.
+This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter
+as the cherries are of the Venetian summer.
+
+The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and
+there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS.
+
+This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or
+twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth
+century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has
+nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with
+their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the
+Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources.
+This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of
+the last capital, which are both fine.
+
+I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of
+these capitals, as they are not worth description.
+
+SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely
+changing the succession of the figures.
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the
+old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all
+events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight
+different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given,
+and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are
+inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as
+much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art,
+namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA.
+Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter,
+whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common
+gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like
+a bottle compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long
+water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to
+this day.
+
+SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh.
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth.
+
+THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as
+having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the
+"Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm
+face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The
+inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?).
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth.
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures
+laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads,
+or chins, or on the leaves around them.
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth.
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh.
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in
+features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta
+façade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is
+copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the
+part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has
+merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be
+always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and
+indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied,
+very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work,
+though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to
+that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or
+first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven
+other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures
+of lawgivers, in the following order:
+
+_Second side_. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed:
+
+"ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE."
+Aristotle who declares laws.
+
+_Third side_. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari
+call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of
+the fifth side for the word Isidore?]
+
+_Fourth side_. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed:
+
+"SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE."
+Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares
+laws.
+
+Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead
+of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this
+sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery.
+
+_Fifth side_. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed:
+
+"ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE."
+
+A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated
+Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away.
+
+_Sixth side_. Numa Pompilius building churches.
+
+"NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE."
+
+Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in
+Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier
+capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery.
+
+_Seventh side_. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed:
+
+"QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE."
+
+Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with
+clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and
+quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes
+out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch,
+with the stone tablets between.
+
+_Eighth side_. Trajan doing justice to the Widow.
+
+"TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA."
+
+He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling
+before his horse.
+
+SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar
+interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character
+of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that
+government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of
+its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the
+foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith
+may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in
+common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the
+political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the
+speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the
+interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.]
+nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may
+easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the
+main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not
+believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose
+portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and
+everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much
+capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no
+meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the
+peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or
+_wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to
+make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of
+an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the
+fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to
+all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time
+undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had
+become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the
+interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps,
+better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own
+government is carried on, and the occasional difference between
+parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the
+Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and
+criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession
+of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more
+probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of
+violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in
+the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably
+desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to
+the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine,
+with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of
+Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place,
+that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables:
+in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been
+guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in
+being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their
+political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the
+Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its
+government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure.
+
+SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which
+contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The
+capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their
+character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight
+leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the
+flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not
+without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I
+possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear
+to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones;
+others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly
+wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully
+treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth,
+in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the
+corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which
+extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster
+which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples
+of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and
+distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art;
+and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculpture of the four
+winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante,
+the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is
+always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the
+sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand:
+Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana,
+the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be
+carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater
+distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton:
+
+            "Thwart of these, as fierce,
+  Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
+  Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise,
+  Sirocco and Libecchio."
+
+I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on
+the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the
+fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all
+carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier
+which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say,
+the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the
+pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower
+arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but
+they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the
+upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the
+time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with
+its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the
+Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and
+the other of the fifteenth century.
+
+SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the
+spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of
+junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in
+the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on
+which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from
+the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is
+a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked
+in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the
+Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the
+natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great
+ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that
+of fig. 14.
+
+SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig.
+14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should
+not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14
+gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness
+and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared
+on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses
+of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line
+engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore,
+abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important
+mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a
+few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the
+inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for
+themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness,
+elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble
+symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or
+experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is
+always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or
+redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength,
+freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the
+undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer
+winds, as the sands are by the sea.
+
+SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents
+the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period,
+i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and
+by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this
+investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces
+us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered
+it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject.
+
+SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid
+farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our
+examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper
+arcade there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the
+third order on the Rio Façade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting
+the original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further
+details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary
+confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix
+I., Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them
+into the text.] I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the
+façade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and
+I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain
+their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must
+have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to
+render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present
+mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The
+traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as
+the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are
+still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner
+mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the façade, the
+parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their
+original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is
+nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice;
+still less in the large central windows on each façade which are
+entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these
+portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and
+masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and
+calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression.
+
+SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes
+of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the
+severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by
+the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case,
+though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least
+intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls
+of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the
+men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of
+priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its
+being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by
+piece being destroyed for ever.
+
+SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate
+subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this
+destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can
+be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art
+in Europe.
+
+The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout
+Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of
+valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have
+no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many
+persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once
+pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that
+they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of
+judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the
+filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's
+garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident,
+partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and
+generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever,
+in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term,
+without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good
+ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it
+little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are
+so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with
+the beauties which they have heard attributed to it.
+
+SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for
+the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly
+or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being
+placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of
+ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the
+fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they
+should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient
+destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting
+over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery
+pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or
+other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the
+estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and
+more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst,
+the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time,
+in reality, of very small value indeed.
+
+SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble
+painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat
+of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was
+little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom
+there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best
+things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of
+accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a
+camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been
+short, and circumstances disadvantageous.
+
+SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of
+their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places
+where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast
+and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the
+present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected,
+whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the
+walls, piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is
+an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not
+often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however
+ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real
+thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest
+treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old
+plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and
+which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim
+canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape
+of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an
+exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode,
+looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his
+accomplished duty.
+
+SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the
+Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less
+reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not
+altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention
+of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens,
+that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture,
+will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There
+are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who
+conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch;
+and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential
+over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter
+and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the
+roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in
+recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846,
+there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same
+time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value
+in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world),
+curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were
+set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch
+the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling;
+while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid
+on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the
+re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end
+of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common
+house-painter's vessel of paint.
+
+This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
+continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
+manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
+Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in
+Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in
+tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most
+wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world.
+
+SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European
+patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and
+regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to
+bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of
+stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior
+of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the
+"Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the
+Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were
+full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as
+precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of
+majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the
+great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen
+rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe
+in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God
+had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the
+mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its
+burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher
+than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of
+purple flower and shadowy pine.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most
+important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its
+references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to
+republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent
+photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my
+own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of
+this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This
+separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will
+cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the
+old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures
+in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace façade
+was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it
+is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater
+part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry,"
+will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its
+original wood-blocks.
+
+But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the
+St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for
+ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in
+sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I
+have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of
+these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in
+the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St.
+Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for
+their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me,
+in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what
+pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen,
+Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent.
+
+Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from
+Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and
+giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have
+already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue
+work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must
+entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stones of Venice [introductions], by John Ruskin
+
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