to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate
than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our
English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded
and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the
shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the
tombs in the desecrated cloister.

SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its
present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and
meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only
be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on
abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the
present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the
Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the
relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or
influencing the feelings of a civilized community.

The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I
carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract
architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we
should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its
construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of
art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its
expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's
merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate
its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation
in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still
retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine
domes appear to have lost for ever.