IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER 241

state of the nation’s heart. They are merely shapes of amphora, artful and decorative indeed; tempting to criticism or copy of their form, usefully recordant of different ages of the wine, and having occasionally, by the porousness or perfectness of their clay, effect also on its quality. But it is the grape-juice itself, and the changes in it, not in the forms of flask, that we have in reality to study.

Fortunately also, the dates of the great changes are easily remembered; they fall with felicitous precision at the beginning of centuries, and divide the story of the city, as the pillars of her Byzantine courts, the walls of it, with symmetric stability.

She shall also tell you, as I promised,¹ her own story, in her own handwriting, all through. Not a word shall I have to say in the matter; or aught to do, except to deepen the letters for you when they are indistinct, and sometimes to hold a blank space of her chart of life to the fire of your heart for a little while, until words, written secretly upon it, are seen;-if, at least, there is fire enough in your own heart to heat them.

43. And first, therefore, I must try what power of reading you have, when the letters are quite clear. We will take to-day, so please you, the same walk we did yesterday; but looking at other things, and reading a wider lesson.

As early as you can (in fact, to get the good of this walk, you must be up with the sun), any bright morning, when the streets are quiet, come with me to the front of St. Mark’s, to begin our lesson there.

You see that between the arches of its vaults, there are six oblong panels of bas-relief.

Two of these are the earliest pieces of real Venetian work I know of, to show you; but before beginning with them, you must see a piece done by her Greek masters.

Go round therefore to the side farthest from the sea, where, in the first broad arch, you will see a panel of like shape, set horizontally; the sculpture of which represents

¹ [See above, Preface, p. 203.]

XXIV. Q

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