the lower
example in Plate XVIII. are original and characteristic: not so the
lateral one of the detached window, which has been restored; but by
imagining it to be like that represented in fig. 1, Plate XIII., above,
which is a perfect window of the finest time of the fifth order, the
reader will be enabled to form a complete idea of the external
appearance of the principal apartments in the house of a noble of
Venice, at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Sec. XLVI. Whether noble, or merchant, or, as frequently happened, both,
every Venetian appears, at this time, to have raised his palace or
dwelling-house upon one type. Under every condition of importance,
through every variation of size, the forms and mode of decoration of all
the features were universally alike; not servilely alike, but
fraternally; not with the sameness of coins cast from one mould, but
with the likeness of the members of one family. No fragment of the
period is preserved, in which the windows, be they few or many, a group
of three or an arcade of thirty, have not the noble cusped arch of the
fifth order. And they are especially to be noted by us at this day,
because these refined and richly ornamented forms were used in the
habitations of a nation as laborious, as practical, as brave, and as
prudent as ourselves; and they were built at a time when that nation was
struggling with calamities and changes threatening its existence almost
every hour. And, farther, they are interesting because perfectly
applicable to modern habitation. The refinement of domestic life appears
to have been far advanced in Venice from her earliest days; and the
remains of her Gothic palaces are, at this day, the most delightful
residences in the city, having undergone no change in external form, and
probably having been rather injured than rendered more convenient by the
modifications which poverty and Renaissance taste, contending with the
ravages of time, have introduced in the interiors. So that, in Venice,
and the cities grouped around it, Vicenza, Padua, and Verona, the
traveller may ascertain, by actual experience, the effect which would be
produced upon the comfort or luxury of daily life by the revival of the
Gothic school of architecture. He can still stand upon the marble
balcony in the soft summer air, and feel its smooth surface warm from
the noontide as he leans on it in the twilight; he can still see the
strong sweep of the unruined traceries drawn