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It would seem decidedly grand to use for the corners substantial blocks of hewn stone, sandstone, granite, marble, or porphyry, channelled and chamfered, rock-faced, tooled, rubbed, or decorated; key-stones and voussoirs embellished with your monogram or enriched by any other charming device you choose to invent; bands of encaustic tile, brilliant in color and pattern, belts of sculptured stone, and historic tablets, if you fancy and can afford them.
The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species.
Yet the perfection of Renaissance art never lies in any realism in our modern sense, still less in such suggestiveness as belongs to our literary age; and its triumph is when Raphael can vary and co-ordinate the greatest number of heads, of hands, feet, and groups, as in the School of Athens, the Parnassus, the marvellous little Bible histories of the Loggie; above all, in that "Vision of Ezekiel," which is the very triumph of compact and harmonious composition; when Michelangelo can tie human beings into the finest knots, twist them into the most shapely brackets, frameworks, and key-stones.
The Porta Gemina consists of twin arches, beneath a simple frieze and more elaborate cornice supported by modillions, which rest upon three engaged composite columns raised upon pedestal blocks. The key-stones are flat, and the piercing of some holes in them suggests that metal enrichments were affixed.
Two holes were left in the igloos to serve as doors; and, after they were finished, the Esquimau cut a square hole in the top of each, not far from the key-stones, and above the entrances. Into these he fitted slabs of clear ice, which formed windows as beautiful and useful as if they had been made of glass. There were two doorways in the large igloo, one of which faced the doorway of the smaller.
The flowers, the figures of men and animals clinging to the structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis XII.'s two stairways.
The chemist's shop occupies the large ground-floor room, the windows of which have appropriate key-stones. On one is carved a man's head with swollen face, another with a lolling tongue, and similar grotesques. To be an idler and watch the traffic going to and fro over the pontoon bridge which spans the Limfjord is a delightful way of passing the time.
The gondola was gliding under the stone bridge, skilfully following the line of the key-stones in the arch. It passed out into a black pool at the feet of the Church of San Niccolo. The marble bishop propped up over the pediment of the door lay silently above the pool. The grove of blossoming locusts dropped white-laden branches over a decaying barca chained to the shore.
In this they are distinguished from the covered ways made by the termites, who use a glutinous saliva for cementing their edifices. These blind ecitons build up the side of their convex arcade, and in a wonderful manner contrive so to fit in the key-stones, without allowing the loose uncemented structure to fall to pieces.
It is difficult, with such a force, to be moderate; and, with Sir Thomas Cochrane's other duties and engagements, it is probably impossible to devote any length of time on this coast; yet moderation and time are the key-stones of our policy. I have settled all the ceremonial for a meeting between the sultan and the admiral.
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