ecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of
its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but
every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_.
There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader
will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more
value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its
delicate fiction.[97]

[Illustration: Plate XXI.
WALL VEIL DECORATION.]

As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat
more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should
suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be,
fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern
side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of
the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the
"Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a
more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and
especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well
down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's),
with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was
supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has
lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity
to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as
compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian
church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here:
civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val
d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its
rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating,
then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals
than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed,
generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west
front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors,
which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic
I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable,
except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven
Lamps," p. 15