can we point to any paramount Italian manner. In Italy what was gained in
richness and individuality was lost in uniformity and might. Yet we may
well wonder at the versatile appreciation of all types of beauty that
these monuments evince. How strange, for example, it is to think of the
Venetians borrowing the form and structure of their temple from the
mosques of Alexandria, decking its façade with the horses of Lysippus, and
panelling the sanctuary with marbles from the harem-floors of Eastern
emperors; while at the other end of Italy, at Palermo, close beside the
ruined colonnades of Greek Segesta, Norman kings were embroidering their
massive churches with Saracenic arabesques and Byzantine mosaics,
interspersing delicate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and monsters of
the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile,
at Rome, tombs, baths, and theatres had been turned into fortresses. The
Orsini held the Mole of Hadrian; the Savelli ensconced themselves in the
Theatre of Marcellus, and the Colonnesi in the Mausoleum of Augustus; the
Colosseum and the Arches of Constantine and Titus harboured the
Frangipani; the Baths of Trajan housed the Capocci; while the Gaetani made
a castle of Caecilia Metella's tomb. Under those vast resounding vaults
swarmed a brood of mediaeval _bravi_--like the wasps that hang their
pear-shaped combs along the cloisters of Pavia. There the ghost of the
dead empire still sat throned and sceptred. The rites of Christianity were
carried on beneath Agrippa's dome, in Diocletian's baths, in the
Basilicas. No other style but that of the imperial people struck root near
the Eternal City. Among her three hundred churches, Rome can only show one
Gothic building. Further to the north, where German influences were more
potent, the cathedrals still displayed, each after its own kind, a sunny
southern waywardness. Glowing with marbles and mosaics, glittering with
ornaments, where the foliage of the Corinthian acanthus hides the symbols
of the Passion, and where birds and Cupids peep from tangled fruits
beneath grave brows of saints and martyrs; leaning now to the long low