IV. ST. MARK’S 101

we have said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with colour, 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 honour 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,* the block of precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and brilliancy of colour, 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

* “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.¹ A remarkable piece of natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will be found in the second chapter of our third volume [§44], quoted from the work of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.

¹ [For other references to this church, see Vol. IX. ch. i. § 33, and in the next volume, Venetian Index, s. “Giacomo.” The last paragraph of the author’s note is omitted in the “Travellers’ Edition.”]

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