ore respect than we should have considered ourselves justified
in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at Eleusis, Ellora, or
Edfou.[29]

Sec. XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion were
employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not employed
alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight
illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and
every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in
Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard
from any one the most languid expression of interest in any feature of
the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding
the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the English
cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services for which
it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many of its
characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now surrounded,
retains yet so much of its religious influence that no prominent feature
of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in vain, we have in
St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the ceremonies for
which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive attributes have
altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which
it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is forgotten; and in the
midst of the city to whose service it has so long been consecrated, and
still filled by crowds of the descendants of those to whom it owes its
magnificence, it stands, in reality, more desolate than the ruins
through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our English valleys; and
the writing on its marble walls is less regarded and less powerful for
the teaching of men, than the letters which the shepherd follows with
his finger, where the moss is lightest on the tombs in the desecrated
cloister.

Sec. XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning
of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after
we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract
grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present
neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian
character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a
barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admi