78 THE STONES OF VENICE

the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth.

§ 9. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark’s, without leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark’s arrests the eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested by the obscurities of chronology.

§ 10. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark’s Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral.¹ Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with

¹ [The English Cathedral has on some grounds been identified with Canterbury, and on some with Salisbury; there are other details which would suggest other cathedrals. It is clear, however, that the description is, and was meant to be, generic. So also with the reference in the author’s note on the next page to Sir Gilbert Scott’s work of restoration upon many cathedrals. Salisbury underwent complete restoration in 1862 and following years, and sixty new statues were erected in the niches of the west front. Compare the comparison in The Seven Lamps, between Salisbury and Florence (Vol. VIII. p. 188).]

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