0, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile
is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital;
while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either
actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the
Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan
water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly
the same.

Sec. XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile
which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note
what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital
itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the
other.

Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented
the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_
of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate
XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so
many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied
simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_.

Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and
slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect
described in Chapter IX. Sec. XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate
XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or
out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well
be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present
permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will
easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples
that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put
before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his
Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched
upon, in the disposition of the abacus.

Sec. XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the
rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of
Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it,
but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two
of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus
oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of
the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Mila