II. TORCELLO 33

bones that they may live,¹ or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger; we shall wish that his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst.²

§ 15. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which occupy the curve of the apse.³ The arrangement at first somewhat recalls to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for the other), exactly as in an amphitheater the stairs for access intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this arrangement, and

¹ [Ezekiel xxxvii. 5.]

² [For an earlier reference by Ruskin to sermons and the duties of their hearers, see Letters to a College Friend and the lines from George Herbert there cited, Vol. I. p. 489; for a later reference to the present passage, with remarks on “the false eloquence of the pulpit,” see Præterita, ii. ch. viii. § 157 n.]

³ [The original arrangement remains, but the marbles have been restored. “Less than fifteen years since could be seen the old episcopal throne and semi-circular tiers of seats worn by generations of Christian pastors as they sat amid their clergy facing the people. But the seats have been rebuilt, and the throne partly restored with ill-fitting slabs of cheap Carrara marble. We remember visiting the cathedral shortly after the renewal with a young Italian architect, who, to our expression of pained surprise, replied, Ma signore, era in disordine (But, sir, it was so untidy). There is no disordine now in the scraped and restored interior. Many of the original marbles ... however still remain in the chancel; and in the facings of the pulpit stairs ... we may perhaps gaze on the very stones brought from the mainland at the time of the great migration under Bishop Paul” (T. Okey’s Venice, 1903, pp. 318-319). In connection with what Ruskin says in the next chapter (pp. 62, 63, 66) about the treatment of its ancient buildings by the Church, a note on the altar of Torcello may be added. In front of the bishop’s throne “must have stood a low communion table with a screen between the seats and staircase and the church at the sides. This is now replaced by an offensive seventeenth or eighteenth century theatrical altar, with cupids and posturing angels hiding the throne of the bishop and the seats of the clergy, which, being out of sight, have been pillaged of all the casing of Greek marble which covered the brick substructure, which now appears in a state of utter dilapidation” (Times, August 18, 1886). For the restoration, the State is responsible; for the neglect, the Church.]

X. C

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