(3.) The Baluster Parapet. Long before the idea of tracery
had suggested itself to the minds either of Venetian or any other
architects, it had, of course, been necessary to provide protection for
galleries, edges of roofs, &c.; and the most natural form in which such
protection could be obtained was that of a horizontal bar or hand-rail,
sustained upon short shafts or balusters, as in Fig. XXIV. p. 243. This
form was, above all others, likely to be adopted where variations of
Greek or Roman pillared architecture were universal in the larger masses
of the building; the parapet became itself a small series of columns,
with capitals and architraves; and whether the cross-bar laid upon them
should be simply horizontal, and in contact with their capitals, or
sustained by mimic arches, round or pointed, depended entirely on the
system adopted in the rest of the work. Where the large arches were
round, the small balustrade arches would be so likewise; where those
were pointed, these would become so in sympathy with them.

Sec. XX. Unfortunately, wherever a balcony or parapet is used in an
inhabited house, it is, of course, the part of the structure which first
suffers from dilapidation, as well as that of which the security is most
anxiously cared for. The main pillars of a casement may stand for
centuries unshaken under the steady weight of the superincumbent wall,
but the cement and various insetting of the balconies are sure to be
disturbed by the irregular pressures and impulses of the persons leaning
on them; while, whatever extremity of decay may be allowed in other
parts of the building, the balcony, as soon as it seems dangerous, will
assuredly be removed or restored. The reader will not, if he considers
this, be surprised to hear that, among all the remnants of the Venetian
domestic architecture of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries, there is not a single instance of the original balconies
being preserved. The palace mentioned below (Sec. XXXII.), in the piazza
of the Rialto, has, indeed, solid slabs of stone between its shafts, but I
cannot be certain that they are of the same period; if they are, this is
the only existing example of the form of protection employed for
casements during this transitional period, and it cannot be reasoned
from as being the general one.

Sec. XXI. It is only, therefore, in the churches of Torcello, Murano, and
St. Mark's, that the ancient forms of gallery defence may stil