186 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

angles of the châlet.¹ This was in some cases directly and without variation imitated in stone, as in the piers of the old bridge at Aarberg; ² and the practice obtained-partially in the German after-Gothic-universally, or nearly so, in Switzerland-of causing mouldings which met at an angle to appear to interpenetrate each other, both being truncated immediately beyond the point of intersection. The painfulness of this ill-judged adaptation was conquered by association-the eye became familiarized to uncouth forms of tracery-and a stiffness and meagreness, as of cast-iron, resulted in the mouldings of much of the ecclesiastical, and all the domestic Gothic of central Europe; the mouldings of casements intersecting so as to form a small hollow square at the angles, and the practice being further carried out into all modes of decoration-pinnacles inter-penetrating crockets, as in a peculiarly bold design of archway at Besançon. The influence at Venice has been less immediate and more fortunate; it is with peculiar grace that the majestic form of the Ducal Palace reminds us of the years of fear and endurance when the exiles of the Prima Venetia settled like homeless birds on the sea-sand, and that its quadrangular range of marble wall and painted chamber, raised upon multiplied columns of confused arcade,* presents but the exalted image of the first pile-supported hut that rose above the rippling of the lagoons.³

17. In the chapter on the “Influence of Habit and Religion,” of Mr. Hope’s Historical Essay,† the reader will find further instances of the same feeling, and, bearing immediately on our present purpose, a clear account of the

* The reader must remember that this arcade was originally quite open, the inner wall having been built after the fire, in 1574.

† An Historical Essay on Architecture, by the late Thomas Hope (Murray, 1835), chap. iv., pp. 23-31.4

¹ [This subject is discussed in Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 97, and compare Notes on Prout and Hunt.]

² [Aarberg on the Aar, between Soleure and Morat.]

³ [Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. i. (“The Throne”).]

⁴ [For other references to this book, see Vol. VIII. p. 63 n., Vol. X. p. 22 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]