by broad and simple spaces, like that
obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet, seen in the plate.

[Illustration: Plate VI.
THE VINE TREE, AND IN SERVICE.]

The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices
between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the
illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green
alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue
pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale
green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch
square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be
satisfied.[32] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an
azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in
the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small
circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each
only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the
outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue
crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely
mingled hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any
adequate conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to
the engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of
flowers, the decision of the respective merits of modern and of
Byzantine architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St.
Mark's alone.

From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct
imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection
to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we
may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true
vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars
upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder
remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky:
and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are
everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that
church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler
things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who
delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the
reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the
streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I.), and see what