224 ST. MARK’S REST

the Ducal Palace upper arcade. You will recognize, especially in those nearest the Ponte della Paglia (at least, if you have an eye in your head), the shape of your second block of Gruyère,-decorated, it is true, in manifold ways-but essentially shaped like your most cheaply cut block of cheese. Modern architects, in imitating these capitals, can reach as far as-imitating your Gruyère. Not being able to decorate the block when they have got it, they declare that decoration is “a superficial merit.”¹

Yes,-very superficial. Eyelashes and eyebrows-lips and nostrils-chin-dimples and curling hair, are all very superficial things, wherewith Heaven decorates the human skull; making the maid’s face of it, or the knight’s. Nevertheless, what I want you to notice now, is but the form of the block of Istrian stone, usually with a spiral, more or less elaborate, on each of its projecting angles. For there is infinitude of history in that solid angle, prevailing over the light Greek leaf.

That is related to our humps and clumps at Durham and Winchester. Here is, indeed, Norman temper, prevailing over Byzantine; and it means,-the outcome of that quarrel of Michael with the Greek emperor. It means-Western for Eastern life, in the mind of Venice. It means her fellowship with the Western chivalry; her triumph in the Crusades,-triumph over her own foster nurse, Byzantium.

22. Which significances of it, and many others with them, if we would follow, we must leave our stone-cutting for a little while, and map out the chart of Venetian history from its beginning into such masses as we may remember without confusion.

But, since this will take time, and we cannot quite tell how long it may be before we get back to the twelfth century again, and to our Piazzetta shafts, let me complete what I can tell you of these at once.

In the first place, the Lion of St. Mark is a splendid

¹ [For Ruskin’s counter-proposition that “ornamentation is the principal part of architecture,” and the objections of architects to it, see Vol. XII. pp. 83 seq.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]