ght be grasped
with the hand, and cast sharp dark shadows, perpetually changing, across
the bell of the capital behind them. I have drawn one of these vine
plants larger in fig. 2, that the reader may see how little imitation
of the Corinthian there is in them, and how boldly the stems of the
leaves are detached from the ground. But there is another circumstance
in this ornament still more noticeable. The band which encircles the
shaft beneath the spring of the leaves is copied from the common
classical wreathed or braided fillet, of which the reader may see
examples on almost every building of any pretensions in modern London.
But the mediaeval builders could not be content with the dead and
meaningless scroll: the Gothic energy and love of life, mingled with the
early Christian religious symbolism, were struggling daily into more
vigorous expression, and they turned the wreathed band into a serpent of
three times the length necessary to undulate round the shaft, which,
knotting itself into a triple chain, shows at one side of the shaft its
tail and head, as if perpetually gliding round it beneath the stalks of
the vines. The vine, as is well known, was one of the early symbols of
Christ, and the serpent is here typical either of the eternity of his
dominion, or of the Satanic power subdued.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

Sec. VI. Nor even when the builder confines himself to the acanthus leaf
(or to that representation of it, hereafter to be more particularly
examined, constant in Romanesque work) can his imagination allow him to
rest content with its accustomed position. In a common Corinthian
capital the leaves nod forward only, thrown out on every side from the
bell which they surround: but at the base of one of the capitals on the
opposite side of the nave from this of the vines,[8] two leaves are
introduced set with their sides outwards, forming spirals by curling
back, half-closed, in the position shown in fig. 4 in Plate II., there
represented as in a real acanthus leaf; for it will assist our future
inquiries into the ornamentation of capitals that the reader should be
acquainted with the form of the acanthus leaf itself. I have drawn it,
therefore, in the two positions, figs. 3 and 4 in Plate II.; while fig.
5 is the translation of the latter form into marble by the sculptor of
Torcello. It is not very like the acanthus, but much liker than any
Greek work; though still entirely conventional in its cinquefoiled
l