422 THE STONES OF VENICE

Seventh side. An old man in a skull-cap, praying.

“DECREPITE DNT SATN Q ADMOTE.” (Saturnus usque ad mortem.)

Saturn governs decrepitude until death.

Eighth side. The dead body lying on a mattress.

“ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI.”

Last comes death, the penalty of sin.

§ 122. Shakespeare’s Seven Ages¹ are of course merely the expression of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage.

TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads.²

§ 123. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the bridal, the birth and the death of a child.³ But I have not been able to examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian guard-house.⁴

§ 124. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the

¹ [As You Like It, act ii. sc. 7, 1. 143.]

² [Representatives of the eight nations, as on Capital 16, see p. 410 n; each nation is distinguished by name, type of face, and head-dress.]

³ [For the full sequence of subjects, see the table below, p. 459.]

⁴ [Ruskin had later some good words to say for the Austrian occupation (see Appendix 3 in the next volume), but he objected to its armaments, as appears from a letter to his father:-

“16th November [1851].-... I get very angry every time I pass the guns in St. Mark’s Place or the pontoons opposite it; and very much provoked-and indeed it is sufficiently tiresome-that there is now no ‘lonely isle’ in all the lagoons of Venice. Wherever you go, where once there were quiet little gardens among ruins of island churches, there is now a sentinel and a powder magazine, and there is no piece of unbroken character to be found anywhere. There is not a single shore, far or near, which has not in some part of it the look of fortification, or violent dismantling, or renewing for military purposes of some kind or another; and there is hardly

[Version 0.04: March 2008]