ps have been removed by restorations, together with the parapets
with which they were associated.

[Illustration: Fig. XXIII.]

Sec. XII. Of these roof parapets of Venice, it has been already noticed
that the examples which remain differ from those of all other cities of
Italy in their purely ornamental character. (Chap. I. Sec. XII.) They are
not battlements, properly so-called; still less machicolated cornices,
such as crown the fortress palaces of the great mainland nobles; but
merely adaptations of the light and crown-like ornaments which crest the
walls of the Arabian mosque. Nor are even these generally used on the
main walls of the palaces themselves. They occur on the Ducal Palace,
on the Casa d' Oro, and, some years back, were still standing on the
Fondaco de' Turchi; but the majority of the Gothic Palaces have the
plain dog-tooth cornice under the tiled projecting roof (Vol. I. Chap.
XIV. Sec. IV.); and the highly decorated parapet is employed only on the
tops of walls which surround courts or gardens, and which, without such
decoration, would have been utterly devoid of interest. Fig. XXIII.
represents, at _b_, part of a parapet of this kind which surrounds the
courtyard of a palace in the Calle del Bagatin, between San G.
Grisostomo, and San Canzian: the whole is of brick, and the mouldings
peculiarly sharp and varied; the height of each separate pinnacle being
about four feet, crowning a wall twelve or fifteen feet high: a piece of
the moulding which surrounds the quatrefoil is given larger in the
figure at _a_, together with the top of the small arch below, having the
common Venetian dentil round it, and a delicate little moulding with
dog-tooth ornament to carry the flanks of the arch. The moulding of the
brick is throughout sharp and beautiful in the highest degree. One of
the most curious points about it is the careless way in which the curved
outlines of the pinnacles are cut into the plain brickwork, with no
regard whatever to the places of its joints. The weather of course wears
the bricks at the exposed joints, and jags the outline a little; but the
work has stood, evidently from the fourteenth century, without
sustaining much harm.

Sec. XIII. This parapet may be taken as a general type of the
_wall_-parapet of Venice in the Gothic period; some being much less
decorated, and others much more richly: the most beautiful in Venice is
in the little Calle, opening on the Campo and Traghetto San Samuel