; but influencing the treatment of the whole there
is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling
which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of
analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to
the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume.

9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.

I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting
shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in
Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the
church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up
through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while
the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall
above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each
capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid,
at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the
transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon
he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously
ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad
imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed
the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than
snow.'"

10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.

The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the
body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for
the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter
enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the
destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat
prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above
quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per
fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle
Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i piu scelti marmi;" and that the
Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un
Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same
kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.

11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.

I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be
suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of
"Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this
suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds o