level field of
chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong
themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses
that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back
into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and
broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly
sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone.

Sec. XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered
arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square
seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far
away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low
pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and
partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great
vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of
alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic
and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined
together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst
of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and
leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among
the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them,
interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the
branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And
round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated
stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with
flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the
sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as
it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation,
as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the
Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of
language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of
men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these,
another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged
with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts
of the Greek horses