e care of
the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned
them with scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a
patience born of loving service. Each member of the edifice was
designed with a view to its ultimate place. The proper curve was
ascertained for cylindrical columns and for rounded arches. Larger
bricks were moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were
adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and the
kiln the whole church was planned and wrought out in its details,
before the hands that made a unity of all these scattered elements
were set to the work of raising it in air. When they came to put the
puzzle together, they laid each brick against its neighbour, filling
up the almost imperceptible interstices with liquid cement composed
of quicklime and fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams
between the layers of bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo
at Milan, yield no point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.

Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen
showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with
marble, sparingly but effectively employed--as in those slender
detached columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo,
or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the
church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the _mandorlato_
of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant
lions, inserting polished slabs on their facades, and building huge
sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this
marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took
the name of _mandorlato_, I suppose, from a resemblance to almond
blossoms. But it is far from having the simple beauty of a single hue.
Like all noble veined stones, it passes by a series of modulations and
gradations through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted tints.
Not the pink of the almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of
the almond kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found
in it; and yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading
mellowness, that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of
a preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing,
curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no
doubt, to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes,
mak