he has no more right to complain
of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his
life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel.
Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat
of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the
knight.

These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must
be our business to develope.

Sec. XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise to
such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any quarries
of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland where
they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick, or
to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of
small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar
rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as great,
whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural
tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible.
But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of
its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by
the physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles, pieces
above a certain size are not to be had for money. There would also be a
tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready
sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of
their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient
edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out of this
supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality
that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly
of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island
architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. It
is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious marble here
and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the sculptured
fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the observance of fixed
proportions in the new building; or else to cut the colored stones into
thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the
walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular enough to admit
the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of
displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting