the present,
to abandon it. The lower series of profiles, 7 to 12 in Plate XV. Vol.
I, shows how the leaf-ornament is laid on the simple early cornices.

_VI. Traceries._

We have only one subject more to examine, the character of the early and
late Tracery Bars.

The reader may perhaps have been surprised at the small attention given
to traceries in the course of the preceding volumes: but the reason is,
that there are no _complicated_ traceries at Venice belonging to the
good Gothic time, with the single exception of those of the Casa
Cicogna; and the magnificent arcades of the Ducal Palace Gothic are so
simple as to require little explanation.

There are, however, two curious circumstances in the later traceries;
the first, that they are universally considered by the builder (as the
old Byzantines considered sculptured surfaces of stone) as material out
of which a certain portion is _to be cut_, to fill his window. A fine
Northern Gothic tracery is a complete and systematic arrangement of
arches and foliation, _adjusted_ to the form of the window; but a
Venetian tracery is a piece of a larger composition, cut to the shape of
the window. In the Porta della Carta, in the Church of the Madonna
dell'Orto, in the Casa Bernardo on the Grand Canal, in the old Church of
the Misericordia, and wherever else there are rich traceries in Venice,
it will always be found that a certain arrangement of quatrefoils and
other figures has been planned as if it were to extend indefinitely into
miles of arcade; and out of this colossal piece of marble lace, a piece
in the shape of a window is cut, mercilessly and fearlessly: whatever
fragments and odd shapes of interstice, remnants of this or that figure
of the divided foliation, may occur at the edge of the window, it
matters not; all are cut across, and shut in by the great outer
archivolt.

It is very curious to find the Venetians treating what in other
countries became of so great individual importance, merely as a kind of
diaper ground, like that of their chequered colors on the walls. There
is great grandeur in the idea, though the system of their traceries was
spoilt by it: but they always treated their buildings as masses of color
rather than of line; and the great traceries of the Ducal Palace itself
are not spared any more than those of the minor palaces. They are cut
off at the flanks in the middle of the quatrefoils, and the terminal
mouldings take up part of the bre