[932] Thus Shakespeare:
See what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury,
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.
Hamlet, III, 4.
[934] They vary in merit considerably; see some reproductions of the better ones in Bayet, L’art byz., Paris, 1892, ii, 3, and other similar works, especially Gori, op. cit. Specimens at South Kensington.
[935] Choricius of Gaza (c. 520) has left us an elaborate description of such a church interior and also of the frescoes in a palace. The whole has been republished by Bertrand in his work, Un art crit. dans l’antiq., Paris, 1882. Modern Greek churches are precisely similar, and those belonging to the monasteries of Mt. Athos are especially noteworthy; see Bayet, op. cit., iv, 2. Two can be inspected in London. That in Bayswater is a “Kutchuk Aya Sofia.” Walsh’s CP., Lond., 1838, has a good engraving; ii, p. 31. See also the striking mosaics of St. George’s, Salonica (Texier and P., op. cit.), the Pompeiesque style of which suggest an early date in church building—vistas of superimposed arcades raised on a forest of fantastically graceful, but impossible columns, architecture run wild in fact.