ch will enable the
eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins. And this is
actually the method in which, for the most part, the alabasters of St.
Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double good,--directing the
spectator, in the first place, to close observation of the nature of the
stone employed, and in the second, giving him a farther proof of the
honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever similar veining is
discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that they have been cut
from the same stone. It would have been easy to disguise the similarity
by using them in different parts of the building; but on the contrary
they are set edge to edge, so that the whole system of the architecture
may be discovered at a glance by any one acquainted with the nature of
the stones employed. Nay, but, it is perhaps answered me, not by an
ordinary observer; a person ignorant of the nature of alabaster might
perhaps fancy all these symmetrical patterns to have been found in the
stone itself, and thus be doubly deceived, supposing blocks to be solid
and symmetrical which were in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant
it; but be it remembered, that in all things, ignorance is liable to be
deceived, and has no right to accuse anything but itself as the source
of the deception. The style and the words are dishonest, not which are
liable to be misunderstood if subjected to no inquiry, but which are
deliberately calculated to lead inquiry astray. There are perhaps no
great or noble truths, from those of religion downwards, which present
no mistakeable aspect to casual or ignorant contemplation. Both the
truth and the lie agree in hiding themselves at first, but the lie
continues to hide itself with effort, as we approach to examine it; and
leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies; the truth reveals itself in
proportion to our patience and knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our
pleading, and leads us, as it is discovered, into deeper truths.

Sec. XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in cutting._ The
method of construction being thus systematized, it is evident that a
certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based on the primal
condition that over the greater part of the edifice there can be _no
deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not admit of it; we
must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever ornaments we
engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an