ves to form the sides of the balcony, or else into
actual leafage, sweeping and free, like the leaves of nature, with which
it is richly decorated. There is no end to the variety of design, no
limit to the lightness and flow of the forms, which the workman can
produce out of iron treated in this manner; and it is very nearly as
impossible for any metal-work, so handled, to be poor, or ignoble in
effect, as it is for cast metal-work to be otherwise.

Sec. XXIII. We have next to examine those features of the Gothic palaces
in which the transitions of their architecture are most distinctly
traceable; namely, the arches of the windows and doors.

It has already been repeatedly stated, that the Gothic style had formed
itself completely on the mainland, while the Byzantines still retained
their influence at Venice; and that the history of early Venetian Gothic
is therefore not that of a school taking new forms independently of
external influence, but the history of the struggle of the Byzantine
manner with a contemporary style quite as perfectly organized as itself,
and far more energetic. And this struggle is exhibited partly in the
gradual change of the Byzantine architecture into other forms, and
partly by isolated examples of genuine Gothic taken prisoner, as it
were, in the contest; or rather entangled among the enemy's forces, and
maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them. Let
us first follow the steps of the gradual change, and then give some
brief account of the various advanced guards and forlorn hopes of the
Gothic attacking force.

[Illustration: Plate XIV.
THE ORDERS OF VENETIAN ARCHES.]

Sec. XXIV. The uppermost shaded series of six forms of windows in Plate
XIV., opposite, represents, at a glance, the modifications of this
feature in Venetian palaces, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
Fig. 1 is Byzantine, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; figs. 2
and 3 transitional, of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries;
figs. 4 and 5 pure Gothic, of the thirteenth, fourteenth and early
fifteenth; and fig. 6. late Gothic, of the fifteenth century,
distinguished by its added finial. Fig. 4 is the longest-lived of all
these forms: it occurs first in the thirteenth century; and, sustaining
modifications only in its mouldings, is found also in the middle of the
fifteenth.

I shall call these the six orders[84] of Venetian windows, and when I
speak of a window o