170 THE STONES OF VENICE

colour, universal in St. Mark’s, was carried out in the sculptures of the private palaces, it is now impossible to say. The wrecks of them which remain, as above noticed, show few of their ornamental sculptures in their original position; and from those marbles which were employed in succeeding buildings, during the Gothic period, the fragments of their mosaic grounds would naturally rather have been removed than restored. Mosaic, while the most secure of all decorations if carefully watched and refastened when it loosens, may, if neglected and exposed to weather, in process of time disappear so as to leave no vestige of its existence. However this may have been, the assured facts are that both the shafts of the pillars and the facing of the whole building were of veined or variously coloured marble: the capitals and sculptures were either, as they now appear, of pure white marble, relieved upon the veined ground; or, which is infinitely the more probable, grounded in the richer palaces with mosaic of gold, in the inferior ones with blue colour, and only the leaves and edges of the sculpture gilded. These brighter hues were opposed by bands of deeper colour, generally alternate russet and green in the archivolts,-bands which still remain in the Casa Loredan and Fondaco de’ Turchi, and in a house in the Corte del Remer near the Rialto, as well as in St. Mark’s; and by circular disks of green serpentine and porphyry, which, together with the circular sculptures, appear to have been an ornament peculiarly grateful to the Eastern mind, derived probably in the first instance from the suspension of shields upon the wall, as in the majesty of ancient Tyre. “The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadims were in thy towers; they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect.”* The sweet and solemn harmony of purple with various green (the same, by-the-bye, to which the hills of Scotland owe their best loveliness) remained a favourite chord

* Ezek. xxvii. 11.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]