ulness, piquancy, decision
of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately
brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the
developement of their unapproachable color-power.

Sec. LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the
grotesque does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not
exist in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly
traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our
workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape.
They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so
where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence
repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present
in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national
custom and festival; _acted_ grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and
good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the
beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another,
more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the
twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch
of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado,
and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced,
not to death, but to send every year on "Fat Thursday" sixty-two large
loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being
understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy:
and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these
representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators;
together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the
erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the
_Doge and the Senate_ attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the
Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to
let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish,
and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they
found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far
as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.[44]

Sec. LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit
is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again:
it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the
spiri