VII. will show the effect of both, with the farther
incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave
truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen
execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven
into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a
chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written
his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE
SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.

Sec. XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of
this kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the
idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing
leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four
leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves
which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the
most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented;
represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta
columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in
the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century,
while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old
Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall
enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be
noted here.

Sec. XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two,
and only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the
Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex
contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V.,
p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively
concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple
contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation
to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph
introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the
chiselling of which the characters described above, Sec. XXVIII., which
are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the
families of the capital.

Sec. XXXVI. Whatever the nature