en, forming waves rippling over it like those of the
sea. It occurs so often among the ruins that it must have been perhaps
more frequently used in Rome than any other marble. It was also one of
the first introduced, for Mamurra lined the walls of his house on the
Coelian with it, as well as with Lunar marble, in the time of Julius
Caesar; but Statius mentions that it was not very highly esteemed,
especially in later times, when more valuable marbles came into use.

One remarkably fine variety called _Cipollino marino_ is distinguished
by its minute curling veins of light green on a ground of clear white.
Four very large columns in the Braccio Nuova of the Vatican, which may
have belonged originally, like the two large columns of _giallo
antico_ in the same apartment, to some sumptuous tomb on the Appian
Way, are formed of this variety, and are unique among all the other
pillars of cipollino marble to be seen in Rome for the brightness of
their colour and the exquisite beauty of their venation. Nothing can
be more striking and beautiful than the rich wavelike ripples of green
on the cipollino marbles that encase the Baptistery of St. Mark's in
Venice, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound
before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had sculptured them into the
walls of this "ecclesiastical sea-cave." Indeed all the outside and
inside walls of the glorious old church are cased with this marble--in
the interior up to the height of the capitals of the columns; while
above that, every part of the vaults and domes is incrusted with a
truly Byzantine profusion of gold mosaics--fit image, as Ruskin
beautifully says, of the sea on which, like a halcyon's nest, Venice
rests, and of the glowing golden sky that shines above it. Line after
line of pleasant undulation ripples on the smooth polished marble as
the sea ebbs and flows through the narrow streets of the city. In the
churches and palaces of Rome specimens of all the varieties of
cipollino may be found, taken from the old ruins, for the marble is
not now worked in the ancient quarries. The largest masses of the
common kind in Rome are the eight grand old Corinthian columns which
form the portico of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina in the
Forum. The height of each shaft, which is composed of a single block,
is forty-six feet, and the circumference fifteen feet. The pillars
look very rusty and weather-worn, and are much battered with the
ill-usage which