on the later architecture of Venice, as such, by painting on its façades, than Landseer or Watts could confer merit on that of London by first whitewashing and then painting its brick streets from one end to the other.

§ XXXVI. Contemporarily with this change in the relative values of the color decoration and the stone-work, one equally important was taking place in the opposite direction, but of course in another group of buildings. For in proportion as the architect felt himself thrust aside or forgotten in one edifice, he endeavored to make himself principal in another; and, in retaliation for the painter’s entire usurpation of certain fields of design, succeeded in excluding him totally from those in which his own influence was predominant. Or, more accurately speaking, the architects began to be too proud to receive assistance from the colorists; and these latter sought for ground which the architect had abandoned, for the unrestrained display of their own skill. And thus, while one series of edifices is continually becoming feebler in design and richer in superimposed paintings, another, that of which we have so often spoken as the earliest or Byzantine Renaissance, fragment by fragment rejects the pictorial decoration; supplies its place first with marbles, and then, as the latter are felt by the architect, daily increasing in arrogance and deepening in coldness, to be too bright for his dignity, he casts even these aside one by one: and when the last porphyry circle has vanished from the façade, we find two palaces standing side by side, one built, so far as mere masonry goes, with consummate care and skill, but without the slightest vestige of color in any part of it; the other utterly without any claim to interest in its architectural form, but covered from top to bottom with paintings by Veronese. At this period, then, we bid farewell to color, leaving the painters to their own peculiar field; and only regretting that they waste their noblest work on walls, from which in a couple of centuries, if not before, the greater part of their labor must be effaced. On the other hand, the architecture whose decline we are tracing, has now assumed an entirely new condition, that of the Central or True Renaissance, whose nature we are to examine in the next chapter.

§ XXXVII. But before leaving these last palaces over which the Byzantine influence extended itself, there is one more lesson to be learned from them of much importance to us. Though in many respects debased in style, they are consummate in workmanship, and unstained in honor; there is no imperfection in them, and no dishonesty. That there is absolutely no imperfection, is indeed, as we have seen above, a proof of their being wanting in the highest qualities of architecture; but, as lessons in masonry, they have their value, and may well be studied for the excellence they display in methods of levelling stones, for the precision of their inlaying, and other such qualities, which in them are indeed too principal, yet very instructive in their particular way.

§ XXXVIII. For instance, in the inlaid design of the dove with the olive branch, from the Casa Trevisan (Vol. I. Plate XX. p. 369), it is impossible for anything to go beyond the precision with which the olive leaves are cut out of the white marble; and, in some wreaths of laurel below, the rippled edge of each leaf is as finely and easily drawn, as if by a delicate pencil. No Florentine table is more exquisitely finished than the façade of this entire palace; and as ideals of an executive perfection, which, though we must not turn aside from our main path to reach it, may yet with much advantage be kept in our sight and memory, these palaces are most notable amidst the architecture of Europe. The Rio Façade of the Ducal Palace, though very sparing in color, is yet, as an example of finished masonry in a vast building, one of the finest things, not only in Venice, but in the world. It differs from other work of the Byzantine Renaissance, in being on a very large scale; and it still retains one pure Gothic character, which adds not a little to its nobleness, that of perpetual variety. There is hardly one window of it, or one panel, that is like another; and this continual change so increases its apparent size by confusing the eye, that, though presenting no bold features, or striking masses of any kind, there are few things in Italy more impressive than the vision of it overhead, as the gondola glides from beneath the Bridge of Sighs. And lastly (unless we are to blame these buildings for some pieces of very childish perspective), they are magnificently honest, as well as perfect. I do not remember even any gilding upon them; all is pure marble, and of the finest kind.5

And therefore, in finally leaving the Ducal Palace,6 let us take with us one more lesson, the last which we shall receive from the Stones of Venice, except in the form of a warning.

§ XXXIX. The school of architecture which we have just been examining is, as we have seen above, redeemed from severe condemnation by its careful and noble use of inlaid marbles as a means of color. From that time forward, this art has been unknown, or despised; the frescoes of the swift and daring Venetian painters long contended with the inlaid marbles, outvying them with color, indeed more glorious than theirs, but fugitive as the hues of woods in autumn; and, at last, as the art itself of painting in this mighty manner failed from among men,7 the modern decorative system established itself, which united the meaninglessness of the veined marble with the evanescence of the fresco, and completed the harmony by falsehood.

§ XL. Since first, in the second chapter of the “Seven Lamps,” I endeavored to show the culpableness, as well as the baseness, of our common modes of decoration by painted imitation of various woods or marbles, the subject has been discussed in various architectural works, and is evidently becoming one of daily increasing interest. When it is considered how many persons there are whose means of livelihood consist altogether in these spurious arts, and how difficult it is, even for the most candid, to admit a conviction contrary both to their interests and to their inveterate habits of practice and thought, it is rather a matter of wonder, that the cause of Truth should have found even a few maintainers, than that it should have encountered a host of adversaries. It has, however, been defended repeatedly by architects themselves, and so successfully, that I believe, so far as the desirableness of this or that method of ornamentation is to be measured by the fact of its simple honesty or dishonesty, there is little need to add anything to what has been already urged upon the subject. But there are some points connected with the practice of imitating marble, which I have been unable to touch upon until now, and by the consideration of which we may be enabled to see something of the policy of honesty in this matter, without in the least abandoning the higher ground of principle.

§ XLI.