eneral idea by simply copying the
entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close
study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of
Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these
entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have
left them, as they will be of use hereafter.

"(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with
St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the
second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and
science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is
lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure
ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained,
or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort
(often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much
fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and
drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful,
fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a
school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never
likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of
beauty, and much solemn religious faith.

"If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is
somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade,
and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London
Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage,
unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war
and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as
sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The
Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and,
in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months
in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_
here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface
ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more
chaste, pure, or solemn."

I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St.
Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above
them is to our present purpose:

"It is covered by very light but most eff