LECTURE VI.
marble couchant.
137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of that which preceded it.
I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these stones of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions, insertions, refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the genius of the people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed, and mix up twelfth and
