of
this, we had better round it off; and it will better protect the joint
at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone project over it in a
roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in
_e_: _e_ is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however,
more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's
beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the
arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find
this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have
been _bred_ in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be
prepared for rough weather. The up cutting of the curve is sometimes all
the distinction between the mouldings of far-distant countries and
utterly strange nations.

[Illustration: Fig. VII.]

Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner curve, the
latter undercut. Take the outer line, and this moulding is one constant
in Venice, in architecture traceable to Arabian types, and chiefly to
the early mosques of Cairo. But take the inner line; it is a dripstone
at Salisbury. In that narrow interval between the curves there is, when
we read it rightly, an expression of another and mightier curve,--the
orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between the desert of the Pyramids,
and the green and level fields through which the clear streams of Sarum
wind so slowly.

[Illustration: Fig. VIII.]

And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are often found
in the north,--borrowed from classical models,--so surely as we find a
true dripstone moulding in the South, the influence of Northern builders
has been at work; and this will be one of the principal evidences which
I shall use in detecting Lombard influence on Arab work; for the true
Byzantine and Arab mouldings are all open to the sky and light, but the
Lombards brought with them from the North the fear of rain, and in all
the Lombardic Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: _a_,
Fig. VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
Mercanti; _b_, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them with _c_ and
_d_; both from Salisbury; _e_ and _f_ from Lisieux, Normandy; _g_ and
_h_ from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.

Sec. X. The reader is now master of all that he need know about the
construction of the general wall cornice, fitted either to become a
crown of the wall, or to carry weight above. If, however, the weight