lised into a monotonous successiveness of
nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those
Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the
tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far
as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest
possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the
true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression
from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance
from the eye, and in almost any light.

Sec. XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and
naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his
works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look
back to what I said in Chap. 1. Sec. XX. of this dealing of hers, and
invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (Sec. VIII.)
respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the
evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
how the whole is beginning to come together.

Sec. XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and
_d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is
also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the
transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already
singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of
leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the
well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old
incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the
proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on
the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface
of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making.

Sec. XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of
Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits
the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines
are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions
have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed
completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised
into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower
between is only acciden