Chapter LXXXIX: 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.