[83] A Some details respecting the mechanical structure of the Venetian balcony are given in the final Appendix.
[84] I found it convenient in my own memoranda to express them simply as fourths, seconds, &c. But “order” is an excellent word for any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases, mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that it be not understood in any wise to imply preëminence or isolation in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; and so also we may rationally speak, for the sake of intelligibility, of the five orders of Greek pillars, provided only we understand that there may be five millions of orders as good or better, of pillars not Greek.
[85] Or in their own curves; as, on a small scale, in the balustrade fig. 6, [Plate XIII.], above.
[86] For all details of this kind, the reader is referred to the final Appendix in Vol. III.
[87] Two threads of white marble, each about an inch wide, inlaid in the dark grey pavement, indicate the road to the Rialto from the farthest extremity of the north quarter of Venice. The peasant or traveller, lost in the intricacy of the pathway in this portion of the city, cannot fail, after a few experimental traverses, to cross these white lines, which thenceforward he has nothing to do but to follow, though their capricious sinuosities will try his patience not a little.
[88] An account of the conspiracy of Bajamonte may be found in almost any Venetian history; the reader may consult Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. iii.
[89] See account of series of capitals in final Appendix.
[90] If the traveller desire to find them (and they are worth seeking), let him row from the Fondamenta S. Biagio down the Rio della Tana, and look, on his right, for a low house with windows in it like those in the woodcut No. XXXI. above, p. 256. Let him go in at the door of the portico in the middle of this house, and he will find himself in a small alley, with the windows in question on each side of him.
[91] The bitterness of feeling with which the Venetians must have remembered this, was probably the cause of their magnificent heroism in the final siege of the city under Dandolo, and, partly, of the excesses which disgraced their victory. The conduct of the allied army of the Crusaders on this occasion cannot, however, be brought in evidence of general barbarism in the thirteenth century: first, because the masses of the crusading armies were in great part composed of the refuse of the nations of Europe; and secondly, because such a mode of argument might lead us to inconvenient conclusions respecting ourselves, so long as the horses of the Austrian cavalry are stabled in the cloister of the convent which contains the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. See [Appendix 3], Vol. III.: “Austrian Government in Italy.”
[92] It is generally better to read ten lines of any poet in the original language, however painfully, than ten cantos of a translation. But an exception may be made in favor of Cary’s Dante. If no poet ever was liable to lose more in translation, none was ever so carefully translated; and I hardly know whether most to admire the rigid fidelity, or the sweet and solemn harmony, of Cary’s verse. There is hardly a fault in the fragment quoted above, except the word “lectured,” for Dante’s beautiful “favoleggiava;” and even in this case, joining the first words of the following line, the translation is strictly literal. It is true that the conciseness and the rivulet-like melody of Dante must continually be lost; but if I could only read English, and had to choose, for a library narrowed by poverty, between Cary’s Dante and our own original Milton, I should choose Cary without an instant’s pause.