color; and instead of the base and
almost useless Greek portico, letting the rain and wind enter it at
will, build the steeply vaulted and completely sheltered Gothic porch;
and on all these fields for rich decoration let the common workman carve
what he pleases, to the best of his power, and we may have a school of
domestic architecture in the nineteenth century, which will make our
children grateful to us, and proud of us, till the thirtieth.

Sec. L. There remains only one important feature to be examined, the
entrance gate or door. We have already observed that the one seems to
pass into the other, a sign of increased love of privacy rather than of
increased humility, as the Gothic palaces assume their perfect form. In
the Byzantine palaces the entrances appear always to have been rather
great gates than doors, magnificent semicircular arches opening to the
water, and surrounded by rich sculpture in the archivolts. One of these
entrances is seen in the small woodcut above, Fig. XXV., and another has
been given carefully in my folio work: their sculpture is generally of
grotesque animals scattered among leafage, without any definite meaning;
but the great outer entrance of St. Mark's, which appears to have been
completed some time after the rest of the fabric, differs from all
others in presenting a series of subjects altogether Gothic in feeling,
selection, and vitality of execution, and which show the occult entrance
of the Gothic spirit before it had yet succeeded in effecting any
modification of the Byzantine forms. These sculptures represent the
months of the year employed in the avocations usually attributed to them
throughout the whole compass of the middle ages, in Northern
architecture and manuscript calendars, and at last exquisitely versified
by Spenser. For the sake of the traveller in Venice, who should examine
this archivolt carefully, I shall enumerate these sculptures in their
order, noting such parallel representations as I remember in other work.

Sec. LI. There are four successive archivolts, one within the other,
forming the great central entrance of St. Mark's. The first is a
magnificent external arch, formed of obscure figures mingled among
masses of leafage, as in ordinary Byzantine work; within this there is a
hemispherical dome, covered with modern mosaic; and at the back of this
recess the other three archivolts follow consecutively, two sculptured,
one plain; the one with which we are conc