288 ST. MARK’S REST

At least, not living its own life-but under another life. It is under the power of the Queen of the Air; the power also that is over the Sea, and over the human mind. The first leaves I ever drew from St. Mark’s were those drifted under the breathing of it;* these on its uppermost cornice, far lovelier, are the final perfection of the Ionic spiral, and of the thought in the temple of the Winds.

But perfected under a new influence. I said there was nothing like them (that I knew) in European architecture. But there is, in Eastern. They are only the amplification of the cornice over the arches of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

102. I have been speaking hitherto of the front of the arch only. Underneath it, the sculpture is equally rich, and much more animated. It represents,-What think you, or what would you have, good reader, if you were yourself designing the central archivolt of your native city, to companion, and even partly to sustain, the stones on which those eight Patriarchs were carved-and Christ?

The great men of your city, I suppose,-or the good women of it? or the squires round about it, with the Master of the Hounds in the middle? or the Mayor and Corporation? Well. That last guess comes near the Venetian mind, only it is not my Lord Mayor, in his robes of state, nor the Corporation at their city feast; but the mere Craftsmen of Venice-the Trades, that is to say, depending on handicraft, beginning with the shipwrights, and going on to the givers of wine and bread-ending with the carpenter, the smith, and the fisherman.

Beginning, I say, if read from left to right (north to south), with the shipwrights; but under them is a sitting figure, though sitting, yet supported by crutches. I cannot read this symbol: one may fancy many meanings in it,-but I do not trust fancy in such matters. Unless I know

* See the large plate of two capitals in early folio illustrations.¹

¹ [Plate 3 in the Examples of Venetian Architecture (Vol. XI. p. 322).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]