s in every age (for the
actual condition of the exiles who built the cathedral of Torcello is
exactly typical of the spiritual condition which every Christian ought
to recognize in himself, a state of homelessness on earth, except so far
as he can make the Most High his habitation), that I would rather fix
the mind of the reader on this general character than on the separate
details, however interesting, of the architecture itself. I shall
therefore examine these only so far as is necessary to give a clear idea
of the means by which the peculiar expression of the building is
attained.

[Illustration: Plate I.
PLANS OF TORCELLO AND MURANO.]

Sec. V. On the opposite page, the uppermost figure, 1, is a rude plan
of the church. I do not answer for the thickness and external
disposition of the walls, which are not to our present purpose, and
which I have not carefully examined; but the interior arrangement is
given with sufficient accuracy. The church is built on the usual plan of
the Basilica[5] that is to say, its body divided into a nave and aisles
by two rows of massive shafts, the roof of the nave being raised high
above the aisles by walls sustained on two ranks of pillars, and pierced
with small arched windows. At Torcello the aisles are also lighted in
the same manner, and the nave is nearly twice their breadth.[6]

[Illustration: Plate II.
THE ACANTHUS OF TORCELLO.]

The capitals of all the great shafts are of white marble, and are among
the best I have ever seen, as examples of perfectly calculated effect
from every touch of the chisel. Mr. Hope calls them "indifferently
imitated from the Corinthian:"[7] but the expression is as inaccurate as
it is unjust; every one of them is different in design, and their
variations are as graceful as they are fanciful. I could not, except by
an elaborate drawing, give any idea of the sharp, dark, deep
penetrations of the chisel into their snowy marble, but a single example
is given in the opposite plate, fig. 1, of the nature of the changes
effected in them from the Corinthian type. In this capital, although a
kind of acanthus (only with rounded lobes) is indeed used for the upper
range of leaves, the lower range is not acanthus at all, but a kind of
vine, or at least that species of plant which stands for vine in all
early Lombardic and Byzantine work (vide Vol. I. Appendix 8); the leaves
are trefoiled, and the stalks cut clear so that they mi