indication of decline. When it occurs earlier, it is on fragments of true gabled architecture, as, for instance, on the porch of the Carmini.

In proportion to the unjustifiableness of its introduction was the extravagance of the form it assumed; becoming, sometimes, a tuft at the top of the ogee windows, half as high as the arch itself, and consisting, in the richest examples, of a human figure, half emergent out of a cup of leafage, as, for instance, in the small archway of the Campo San Zaccaria: while the crockets, as being at the side of the arch, and not so strictly connected with its balance and symmetry, appear to consider themselves at greater liberty even than the finials, and fling themselves, hither and thither, in the wildest contortions. Fig. 4. in Plate I, is the outline of one, carved in stone, from the later Gothic of St. Mark’s; fig. 3. a crocket from the fine Veronese Gothic; in order to enable the reader to discern the Renaissance character better by comparison with the examples of curvature above them, taken from the manuscripts. And not content with this exuberance in the external ornaments of the arch, the finial interferes with its traceries. The increased intricacy of these, as such, being a natural process in the developement of Gothic, would have been no evil; but they are corrupted by the enrichment of the finial at the point of the cusp,—corrupted, that is to say, in Venice: for at Verona the finial, in the form of a fleur-de-lis, appears long previously at the cusp point, with exquisite effect; and in our own best Northern Gothic it is often used beautifully in this place, as in the window from Salisbury, Plate XII. (Vol. II.), fig. 2. But in Venice, such a treatment of it was utterly contrary to the severe spirit of the ancient traceries; and the adoption of a leafy finial at the extremity of the cusps in the door of San Stefano, as opposed to the simple ball which terminates those of the Ducal Palace, is an unmistakable indication of a tendency to decline.

In like manner, the enrichment and complication of the jamb mouldings, which, in other schools, might and did take place in the healthiest periods, are, at Venice, signs of decline, owing to the entire inconsistency of such mouldings with the ancient love of the single square jamb and archivolt. The process of enrichment in them is shown by the successive examples given in Plate VII., below. They are numbered, and explained in the Appendix.

§ XV. The date at which this corrupt form of Gothic first prevailed over the early simplicity of the Venetian types can be determined in an instant, on the steps of the choir of the Church of St. John and Paul. On our left hand, as we enter, is the tomb of the Doge Marco Cornaro, who died in 1367. It is rich and fully developed Gothic, with crockets and finials, but not yet attaining any extravagant developement. Opposite to it is that of the Doge Andrea Morosini, who died in 1382. Its Gothic is voluptuous, and over-wrought; the crockets are bold and florid, and the enormous finial represents a statue of St. Michael. There is no excuse for the antiquaries who, having this tomb before them, could have attributed the severe architecture of the Ducal Palace to a later date; for every one of the Renaissance errors is here in complete developement, though not so grossly as entirely to destroy the loveliness of the Gothic forms. In the Porta della Carta, 1423, the vice reaches its climax.

§ XVI. Against this degraded Gothic, then, came up the Renaissance armies; and their first assault was in the requirement of universal perfection. For the first time since the destruction of Rome, the world had seen, in the work of the greatest artists of the fifteenth century,—in the painting of Ghirlandajo, Masaccio, Francia, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Bellini; in the sculpture of Mino da Fiesole, of Ghiberti, and Verrocchio,—a perfection of execution and fulness of knowledge which cast all previous art into the shade, and which, being in the work of those men united with all that was great in that of former days, did indeed justify the utmost enthusiasm with which their efforts were, or could be, regarded. But when this perfection had once been exhibited in anything, it was required in everything; the world could no longer be satisfied with less exquisite execution, or less disciplined knowledge. The first thing that it demanded in all work was, that it should be done in a consummate and learned way; and men altogether forgot that it was possible to consummate what was contemptible, and to know what was useless. Imperatively requiring dexterity of touch, they gradually forgot to look for tenderness of feeling; imperatively requiring accuracy of knowledge, they gradually forgot to ask for originality of thought. The thought and the feeling which they despised departed from them, and they were left to felicitate themselves on their small science and their neat fingering. This is the history of the first attack of the Renaissance upon the Gothic schools, and of its rapid results, more fatal and immediate in architecture than in any other art, because there the demand for perfection was less reasonable, and less consistent with the capabilities of the workman; being utterly opposed to that rudeness or savageness on which, as we saw above, the nobility of the elder schools in great part depends. But inasmuch as the innovations were founded on some of the most beautiful examples of art, and headed by some of the greatest men that the world ever saw, and as the Gothic with which they interfered was corrupt and valueless, the first appearance of the Renaissance feeling had the appearance of a healthy movement. A new energy replaced whatever weariness or dulness had affected the Gothic mind; an exquisite taste and refinement, aided by extended knowledge, furnished the first models of the new school; and over the whole of Italy a style arose, generally now known as cinque-cento, which in sculpture and painting, as I just stated, produced the noblest masters which the world ever saw, headed by Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo; but which failed of doing the same in architecture, because, as we have seen above, perfection is therein not possible, and failed more totally than it would otherwise have done, because the classical enthusiasm had destroyed the best types of architectural form.

§ XVII. For, observe here very carefully, the Renaissance principle, as it consisted in a demand for universal perfection, is quite distinct from the Renaissance principle as it consists in a demand for classical and Roman forms of perfection. And if I had space to follow out the subject as I should desire, I would first endeavor to ascertain what might have been the course of the art of Europe if no manuscripts of classical authors had been recovered, and no remains of classical architecture left, in the fifteenth century; so that the executive perfection to which the efforts of all great men had tended for five hundred years, and which now at last was reached, might have been allowed to develope itself in its own natural and proper form, in connexion with the architectural structure of earlier schools. This refinement and perfection had indeed its own perils, and the history of later Italy, as she sank into pleasure and thence into corruption, would probably have been the same whether she had ever learned again to write pure Latin or not. Still the