of
the small pillars bear the closest possible resemblance to the group of
Lions over the gate of Mycenae; and the whole of the ornamentation of
that gate, as far as I can judge of it from drawings, is so like
Byzantine sculpture, that I cannot help sometimes suspecting the
original conjecture of the French antiquarians, that it was a work of
the middle ages, to be not altogether indefensible. By far the best
among the sculptures at Venice are those consisting of groups thus
arranged; the first figure in Plate XI. is one of those used on St.
Mark's, and, with its chain of wreathen work round it, is very
characteristic of the finest kind, except that the immediate trunk or
pillar often branches into luxuriant leafage, usually of the vine, so
that the whole ornament seems almost composed from the words of Ezekiel.
"A great eagle with great wings, long-winged, full of feathers, which
had divers colors, came into Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the
cedar: He cropped off the top of his young twigs; and _carried it into a
city of traffic; he set it in a city of merchants_. He took also of the
seed of the land, ... and it grew, and became a spreading vine of low
stature, _whose branches turned towards him, and the roots thereof were
under him_."

Sec. XXVIII. The groups of contending and devouring animals are always
much ruder in cutting, and take somewhat the place in Byzantine sculpture
which the lower grotesques do in the Gothic; true, though clumsy,
grotesques being sometimes mingled among them, as four bodies joined to
one head in the centre;[51] but never showing any attempt at variety of
invention, except only in the effective disposition of the light and
shade, and in the vigor and thoughtfulness of the touches which indicate
the plumes of the birds or foldings of the leaves. Care, however, is
always taken to secure variety enough to keep the eye entertained, no
two sides of these Byzantine ornaments being in all respects the same:
for instance, in the chainwork round the first figure in Plate XI. there
are two circles enclosing squares on the left-hand side of the arch at
the top, but two smaller circles and a diamond on the other, enclosing
one square, and two small circular spots or bosses; and in the line of
chain at the bottom there is a circle on the right, and a diamond on the
left, and so down to the working of the smallest details. I have
represented this upper sculpture as dark, in order to give some