ing, with the spirit of its towers, ridged roof, and spires.
Venetian building is not gabled, but horizontal in its roots and general
masses; therefore the finial is a feature contradictory to its spirit,
and adopted only in that search for morbid excitement which is the
infallible indication of decline. When it occurs earlier, it is on
fragments of true gabled architecture, as, for instance, on the porch of
the Carmini.

In proportion to the unjustifiableness of its introduction was the
extravagance of the form it assumed; becoming, sometimes, a tuft at the
top of the ogee windows, half as high as the arch itself, and
consisting, in the richest examples, of a human figure, half emergent
out of a cup of leafage, as, for instance, in the small archway of the
Campo San Zaccaria: while the crockets, as being at the side of the
arch, and not so strictly connected with its balance and symmetry,
appear to consider themselves at greater liberty even than the finials,
and fling themselves, hither and thither, in the wildest contortions.
Fig. 4. in Plate I, is the outline of one, carved in stone, from the
later Gothic of St. Mark's; fig. 3. a crocket from the fine Veronese
Gothic; in order to enable the reader to discern the Renaissance
character better by comparison with the examples of curvature above
them, taken from the manuscripts. And not content with this exuberance
in the external ornaments of the arch, the finial interferes with its
traceries. The increased intricacy of these, as such, being a natural
process in the developement of Gothic, would have been no evil; but they
are corrupted by the enrichment of the finial at the point of the
cusp,--corrupted, that is to say, in Venice: for at Verona the finial,
in the form of a fleur-de-lis, appears long previously at the cusp
point, with exquisite effect; and in our own best Northern Gothic it is
often used beautifully in this place, as in the window from Salisbury,
Plate XII. (Vol. II.), fig. 2. But in Venice, such a treatment of it was
utterly contrary to the severe spirit of the ancient traceries; and the
adoption of a leafy finial at the extremity of the cusps in the door of
San Stefano, as opposed to the simple ball which terminates those of the
Ducal Palace, is an unmistakable indication of a tendency to decline.

In like manner, the enrichment and complication of the jamb mouldings,
which, in other schools, might and did take place in the healthiest
periods, are, a