there is in it to
make us any of the three. Let him remember that the men who design such
work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity, and let him judge
between us.

Sec. L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and
especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal
ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following
chapter.[33] Here I must pass on to the second part of our immediate
subject, namely, the inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of
St. Mark's fits it, as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be
applicable in the churches of modern times. We have here evidently two
questions: the first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether
richness of ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the
ornament of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian
character.

Sec. LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I
endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to
be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of
offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately
expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church,
as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its
purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to
deal with briefly and candidly.

The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always
presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of
ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our
own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a
cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a
preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation
was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral.

Sec. LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the
modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier architectural
forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous. But I do say,
that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely uncalculated upon by
the old builder. He endeavored to make his work beautiful, but never
expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate ourselves altogether from
fair judgment of its intention, if we forget that, when it was built, it
rose in the midst of other work fanciful and beautiful as itself; that
every d