418 ST. MARK’S, VENICE

The bearing of this inscription on the relations of Antonio to Shylock may perhaps not be perceived by a public which now-consistently and naturally enough, but ominously- considers Shylock a victim to the support of the principles of legitimate trade, and Antonio a “speculator and sentimentalist.”

8. From the series of photographs of St. Mark’s itself, I cannot but think even the least attentive observer must receive one strong impression-that of the singular preservation of the minutest details in its sculpture. Observe, this is a quite separate question from the stability of the fabric. In our northern cathedrals the stone, for the most part, moulders away; and the restorer usually replaces it by fresh sculpture, on the faces of walls of which the mass is perfectly secure. here, at St. Mark’s, on the contrary, the only possible pretence for restoration has been, and is, the alleged insecurity of the masses of inner wall-the external sculptures remaining in faultless perfection, so far as unaffected by direct human violence. Both the Greek and Istrian marbles used at Venice are absolutely defiant of hypæthral influences, and the edges of their delicatest sculpture remain to this day more sharp than if they had been cut in steel-for then they would have rusted away. It is especially for example of this quality that I have painted the ornament of the St. Jean d’Acre pillars, No. 107, which the reader may at once compare with the daguerreotype (No. 108) beside it, which are exhibited, with the Prout and Hunt drawings, at the Fine Art Society’s rooms.* These pillars are known to be not later than the sixth century, yet wherever external violence has spared their decoration it is as sharp as a fresh-growing thistle.

* See the Notes on Prout and Hunt, p. 78. [Now Vol. XIV. p. 435.¹]

¹ [Ruskin painted this subject repeatedly, and it is not possible to be sure to which of his drawings he refers in various places. The phrase here, “I have painted,” seems to imply that the drawing was a recent one, perhaps the one which is now in the British Museum, and is reproduced as Plate XXI. in Vol. XIV. (p. 426). That drawing (which the editors believe to be of the year 1877) is in purple and blue, picked out with white, on purple paper, and the careful detail of the ornament

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