piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly
copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent
with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the
treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower
compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch
plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings.
Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of
every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the
dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely
finished.

In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca'
Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take
five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds
of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned,
in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall
find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles
in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The
lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I
cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan
design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at
its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with
the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the
front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its
first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan
(which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings
of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at
present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca'
Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much
later.

7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.

Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is
that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says)
from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like
rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable
extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or
cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass
orders, or any number of other