the two great classes, monocotyledonous
and dicotyledonous.

[25] Job xxi: 26-28; Psalm lxxxix. 37.

[26] I shall not forget the impression made upon me at Oxford, when,
going up for my degree, and mentioning to one of the authorities
that I had not had time enough to read the Epistles properly, I was
told, that "the Epistles were separate sciences, and I need not
trouble myself about them."

The reader will find some farther notes on this subject in Appendix
7, "Modern Education."

CHAPTER III.

GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE.

Sec. I. In the close of the last chapter it was noted that the phases of
transition in the moral temper of the falling Venetians, during their
fall, were from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to the
unscrupulous _pursuit of pleasure_. During the last years of the
existence of the state, the minds both of the nobility and the people
seem to have been set simply upon the attainment of the means of
self-indulgence. There was not strength enough in them to be proud, nor
forethought enough to be ambitious. One by one the possessions of the
state were abandoned to its enemies; one by one the channels of its
trade were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and closed against
it by its more energetic rivals; and the time, the resources, and the
thoughts of the nation were exclusively occupied in the invention of
such fantastic and costly pleasures as might best amuse their apathy,
lull their remorse, or disguise their ruin.

Sec. II. The architecture raised at Venice during this period is amongst
the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially
distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which,
exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be
hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the
ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is
painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I
found that the entire spirit of the Renaissance could not be
comprehended unless it was followed to its consummation; and that there
were many most interesting questions arising out of the study of this
particular spirit of jesting, with reference to which I have called it
the _Grotesque_ Renaissance. For it is not this period alone which is
distinguished by such a spirit. There is jest--perpetual, careless, and
not unfrequently obscene--in the most nob