V. BYZANTINE PALACES 177

of laughter, characteristic of the Western mind: as a man on a journey must look to his steps always, and view things narrowly and quickly; while one at rest may command a wider view, though an unchanging one, from which the pleasure he receives must be one of contemplation, rather than of amusement or surprise. Wherever the pure Oriental spirit manifests itself definitely, I believe its work is serious; and the meeting of the influences of the Eastern and Western races is perhaps marked in Europe more by the dying away of the grotesque laughter of the Goth than by any other sign. I shall have more to say on this head in other places of this volume;¹ but the point I wish at present to impress upon the reader is, that the bright hues of the early architecture of Venice were no sign of gaiety of heart, and that the investiture with the mantle of many colours by which she is known above all other cities of Italy and of Europe, was not granted to her in the fever of her festivity, but in the solemnity of her early and earnest religion. She became in after times the revel of the earth, the masque of Italy;² and therefore is she now desolate; but her glorious robe of gold and purple was given her when first she rose a vestal from the sea, not when she became drunk with the wine of her fornication.³

§ 36. And we have never yet looked with enough reverence upon the separate gift which was thus bestowed upon her; we have never enough considered what an inheritance she has left us, in the works of those mighty painters who were the chief of her children. That inheritance is indeed less than it ought to have been, and other than it ought to have been; but before Titian and Tintoret arose,-the men in whom her work and her glory should have been together consummated,-she had already ceased to lead her sons in the way of truth and life,⁴ and they erred much, and

¹ [Ruskin intended to discuss this point in the present volume, but when he came to it, postponed the subject to the next volume; see below, ch. vi. § 72, p. 239.]

² [Childe Harold, iv. 3.]

³ [Revelation xvii. 2.]

⁴ [Much of the phraseology here, again, is Biblical; see, for instance, Proverbs x. 17; Matthew v. 13; vi. 19.]

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