"LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU."
SECTION XCIV. Eighth side. God creating Man. Represented as a throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of "formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble, before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely ascertained the rest.
"DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA."
Or
"De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;"
From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve.
I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore—the principal one of the old palace,—to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves.
Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble Christianity.
In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work.
SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the Fig-tree angle the first.
It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar significance: for the capital represents the arts of sculpture and architecture; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying, and of the value of color generally in his own art.