dorned.
Mosaic, as is well-known, is the most permanent of all the processes of
decorative art. Fresco must fade sooner or later, and where there is any
tendency to damp, it fades with cruel rapidity. Oil painting on canvas
changes its tone in the long course of years, and the boundary line
between cleaning and repainting is difficult to observe. But the
fragments out of which the mosaic picture is formed, having been already
passed through the fire, will keep their colour for centuries, we might
probably say for millenniums. Damp injures them not, except by lessening
the cement with which they are fastened to the wall, and therefore when
restore tion of a mosaic picture becomes necessary, a really
conscientious restorer can always reproduce the picture with precisely
the same form and colour which it had when the last stone was inserted
by the original artist. And thus, when we visit Ravenna, we have the
satisfaction of feeling that we are (in many cases) looking upon the
very same picture which was gazed upon by the contemporaries of
Theodoric. Portraits of Theodoric himself, unfortunately we have none;
but we have two absolutely contemporary portraits of Justinian, the
overturner of his kingdom, and one of Justinian's wife, the celebrated
Theodora. These pictures, it is interesting to remember, were
considerably older when Cimabue found Giotto in the sheepfolds drawing
sheep upon a tile, than any picture of Cimabue's or Giotto's is at the
present time.

Let us enter the church which is now called "S. Apollinare within the
Walls", but which in the time of Theodoric was called the Church of S.
Martin, often with the addition "de Caelo Aureo", on account of the
beautiful gilded ceiling which distinguished it from the other basilicas
of Ravenna. This church was built by order of Theodoric, who apparently
intended it to be his own royal chapel. Probably, therefore, the great
Ostrogoth many a time saw "the Divine mysteries" celebrated here by
bishops and priests of the Arian communion. Two long colonnades fill the
nave of the church. The columns are classical, with Corinthian capitals,
and are perhaps brought from some older building. A peculiarity of the
architecture consists in the high abacus--a frustum of an inverted
pyramid--which is interposed between the capital of the column and the
arch that springs from it, as if to give greater height than the columns
alone would afford. Such in its main features was the Church