which I shall not at present trouble the reader.

Sec. XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember
my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the
principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent
new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old
ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea facade, eighteen
on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six
pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left,
from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the
Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have
the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and
the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the
first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th
from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series,
and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above
twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.

Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33rd,
from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th, which is very nobly
designed.

Sec. XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of
the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
Lord God giveth them light"); and