n or not, the delicate adaptation of this
diminished base to the diminished shaft is a piece of fastidiousness in
proportion which I rejoice in having detected; and this the more,
because the rude contours of the bases themselves would little induce
the spectator to anticipate any such refinement.

4. DATE OF THE DUOMO OF TORCELLO.

The first flight to the lagoons for shelter was caused by the invasion
of Attila in the fifth century, so that in endeavoring to throw back the
thought of the reader to the former solitude of the islands, I spoke of
them as they must have appeared "1300 years ago." Altinum, however, was
not finally destroyed till the Lombard invasion in 641, when the
episcopal seat was removed to Torcello, and the inhabitants of the
mainland city, giving up all hope of returning to their former homes,
built their Duomo there. It is a disputed point among Venetian
antiquarians, whether the present church be that which was built in the
seventh century, partially restored in 1008, or whether the words of
Sagornino, "ecclesiam jam vetustate consumptam recreare," justify them
in assuming an entire rebuilding of the fabric. I quite agree with the
Marchese Selvatico, in believing the present church to be the earlier
building, variously strengthened, refitted, and modified by subsequent
care; but, in all its main features, preserving its original aspect,
except, perhaps, in the case of the pulpit and chancel screen, which, if
the Chevalier Bunsen's conclusions respecting early pulpits in the Roman
basilicas be correct (see the next article of this Appendix), may
possibly have been placed in their present position in the tenth
century, and the fragmentary character of the workmanship of the latter,
noticed in Secs. X. and XI., would in that case have been the result of
innovation, rather than of haste. The question, however, whether they
are of the seventh or eleventh century, does not in the least affect our
conclusions, drawn from the design of these portions of the church,
respecting pulpits in general.

5. MODERN PULPITS.

There is no character of an ordinary modern English church which appears
to me more to be regretted than the peculiar pompousness of the
furniture of the pulpits, contrasted, as it generally is, with great
meagreness and absence of color in the other portions of the church; a
pompousness, besides, altogether without grace or meaning, and dependent
merely on certain applications of uphol