impossible for any metal-work, so handled, to be poor, or igno ble in effect, as it is for cast metal-work to be otherwise.

§ XXIII. We have next to examine those features of the Gothic palaces in which the transitions of their architecture are most distinctly traceable; namely, the arches of the windows and doors.

It has already been repeatedly stated, that the Gothic style had formed itself completely on the mainland, while the Byzantines still retained their influence at Venice; and that the history of early Venetian Gothic is therefore not that of a school taking new forms independently of external influence, but the history of the struggle of the Byzantine manner with a contemporary style quite as perfectly organized as itself, and far more energetic. And this struggle is exhibited partly in the gradual change of the Byzantine architecture into other forms, and partly by isolated examples of genuine Gothic taken prisoner, as it were, in the contest; or rather entangled among the enemy's forces, and maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them. Let us first follow the steps of the gradual change, and then give some brief account of the various advanced guards and forlorn hopes of the Gothic attacking force.

§ XXIV. The uppermost shaded series of six forms of windows in Plate XIV. opposite, represents, at a glance, the modifications of this feature in Venetian palaces, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Fig. 1. is Byzantine, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; figs. 2 and 3. transitional, of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; figs. 4 and 5. pure Gothic, of the thirteenth, fourteenth and early fifteenth; and fig. 6. late Gothic, of the fifteenth century, distinguished by its added finial. Fig. 4. is the longest-lived of all these forms: it occurs first in the thirteenth century; and, sustaining modi. fications only in its mouldings, is found also in the middle of the fifteenth.

I shall call these the six orders* of Venetian windows, and when I speak of a window of the fourth, second, or sixth order, the reader will only have to refer to the numerals at the top of Plate XIV.

Then the series below shows the principal forms found in each period, belonging to each several order; except 1 b to 1 c, and the two lower series, numbered 7 to 16, which are types of Venetian doors.

§ xxv. We shall now be able, without any difficulty, to follow the course of transition, beginning with the first order, 1 and 1 a, in the second row. The horse-shoe arch, 1 b, is the door-head commonly associated with it, and the other three in the same row occur in St. Mark's exclusively; 1 c being used in the nave, in order to give a greater appearance of lightness to its great lateral arcades, which at first the spectator supposes to be round-arched, but he is struck by a peculiar grace and elasticity in the curves for which he is unable to account, until he ascends into the galleries whence the true form of the arch is discernible. The other two1 d, from the door of the southern transept, and 1 c, from that of the treasury,-sufficiently represent a group of fantastic forms derived from the Arabs, and of which the exquisite decoration is one of the most important features in St. Mark's. Their form is indeed permitted merely to obtain more fantasy

* I found it convenient in my own memoranda to express them simply as fourths, seconds, &c. But "order" is an excellent word for any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases, mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that it be not understood in any wise to imply preeminence or isolation in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; and so also we may rationally speak, for the sake of intelligibility, of the five orders of Greek pillars, provided only we understand that there may be five millions of orders, as good or better, of pillars not Greek.

in the curves of this decoration.* The reader can see in a moment, that, as pieces of masonry, or bearing arches, they are infirm or useless, and therefore never could be employed in any building in which dignity of structure was the primal object. It is just because structure is not the primal object in St. Mark's, because it has no severe weights to bear, and much loveliness of marble and sculpture to exhibit, that they are therein allowable. They are of course, like the rest of the building, built of brick and faced with marble, and their inner masonry, which must be very ingenious, is therefore not discernible. They have settled a little, as might have been expected, and the consequence is, that there is in every one of them, except the upright arch of the treasury, a small fissure across the marble of the flanks.

§ XXVI. Though, however, the Venetian builders adopted these Arabian forms of arch where grace of ornamentation was their only purpose, they saw that such arrangements were unfit for ordinary work; and there is no instance, I believe,

*Or in their own curves; as, on a small scale, in the balustrade Fig. 6 Plate XIII. above.

Gothic influence began to be felt, and the pointed arch forced itself upon them, their first concession to its attack was the adoption, in preference to the round arch, of the form 3 a (Plate XIV. above); the point of the Gothic arch forcing itself up, as it were, through the top of the semicircle which it was soon to supersede.

§ XXVII. The woodcut above, Fig. XXVI., represents the door and two of the lateral windows of a house in the Corte del Remer, facing the Grand Canal, in the parish of the Apos toli. It is remarkable as having its great entrance on the first floor, attained by a bold flight of steps, sustained on pure pointed arches wrought in brick. I cannot tell if these arches are contemporary with the building, though it must always have had an access of the kind. The rest of its aspect is Byzantine, except only that the rich sculptures of its archivolt show in combats of animals, beneath the soffit, a beginning of the Gothic fire and energy. The moulding of its plinth is of a Gothic profile,* and the windows are pointed, not with a reversed curve, but in a pure straight gable, very curiously contrasted with the delicate bending of the pieces of marble armor cut for the shoulders of each arch. There is a two-lighted window, such as that seen in the vignette, on each side of the door, sustained in the centre by a basket-worked Byzantine capital: the mode of covering the brick archivolt with marble, both in the windows and doorway, is precisely like that of the true Byzantine palaces.

Fig XXVII.

§ XXVIII. But as, even on a small scale, these arches are weak, if executed in brickwork, the appearance of this sharp

*For all details of this kind, the reader is referred to the final Appendix in Vol. III.

point in the outline was rapidly accompanied by a parallei change in the method of building; and instead of constructing the arch of brick and coating it with marble, the builders formed it of three pieces of hewn stone inserted in the wall, as in Fig. XXVII. Not, however, at first in this perfect form. The endeavor to reconcile the grace of the reversed arch with the strength of the round one, and still to build in brick, ended at first in conditions such as that represented at

a, Fig. XXVIII., which is a window in the Calle del Pistor, close to the church of the Apostoli, a very interesting and perfect example. Here, observe, the poor round arch is still kept to do all the hard work, and the fantastic ogee takes its pleasure above, in the form of a moulding merely, a chain of bricks cast to the required curve. And this condition, translated into stone-work, becomes a window of the second order (b, Fig. XXVIII., or 2. in Plate XIV.); a form perfectly strong and serviceable, and of immense importance in the transitional architecture of Venice.

§ XXIX. At b, Fig. XXVIII. as above, is given one of the earliest and simplest occurrences of the second order window (in a double group, exactly like the brick transitional form a), from a most important fragment of a defaced house in the