ts of grey and green at either side.

Sec. XXX. The two pieces of carved stone inserted at each side of the
arch, as seen at the bottom of Plate V., are of different workmanship from
the rest; they do not match each other, and form part of the evidence
which proves that portions of the church had been brought from the
mainland. One bears an inscription, which, as its antiquity is confirmed
by the shapelessness of its letters, I was much gratified by not being
able to read; but M. Lazari, the intelligent author of the latest and best
Venetian guide, with better skill, has given as much of it as remains,
thus:

[Illustration: T SCEMARIEDIGENETRICISETBEATIESTEFANIMART
IRIEGOINDIGNVSETPECCATURDOMENICUST]

I have printed the letters as they are placed in the inscription, in
order that the reader may form some idea of the difficulty of reading
such legends when the letters, thus thrown into one heap, are themselves
of strange forms, and half worn away; any gaps which at all occur
between them coming in the wrong places. There is no doubt, however, as
to the reading of this fragment:--"T ... Sancte Marie Domini Genetricis
et beati Estefani martiri ego indignus et peccator Domenicus T." On
these two initial and final T's, expanding one into Templum, the other
into Torcellanus, M. Lazari founds an ingenious conjecture that the
inscription records the elevation of the church under a certain bishop
Dominic of Torcello (named in the Altinat Chronicle), who flourished in
the middle of the ninth century. If this were so, as the inscription
occurs broken off on a fragment inserted scornfully in the present
edifice, this edifice must be of the twelfth century, worked with
fragments taken from the ruins of that built in the ninth. The two T's
are, however, hardly a foundation large enough to build the church upon,
a hundred years before the date assigned to it both by history and
tradition (see above, Sec. VIII.): and the reader has yet to be made
aware of the principal fact bearing on the question.

Sec. XXXI. Above the first story of the apse runs, as he knows already,
a gallery under open arches, protected by a light balustrade. This
balustrade is worked on the _outside_ with mouldings, of which I shall
only say at present that they are of exactly the same school as the
greater part of the work of the existing church. But the great
horizontal pieces of stone which form the top of this balustrade are
fragments of