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The ground is strewed with shells and covered with acanthus-leaves; but no shell had suggested the Ionic volute, no acanthus-leaf had suggested the Corinthian foliage. The vast columns, with the sudden tapering, the overhanging capitals, the stern, square abacus, all betoken the infancy of art.
The architectural interest centers chiefly in the fenestration and the pillared portico reminiscent of plantation mansions farther south. This portico, with its simple pediment and wooden columns surmounted by pleasingly unusual capitals of acanthus-leaf motive, was added some thirty years after the house was erected.
The sanctuary and apse are in the style of Auvergne, with this peculiarity, that the capitals of the slender columns are singularly massive, and bear only the mere outline of the acanthus-leaf for ornament. The long street of the village, white and sunbaked, running within a few yards of the precipice, was almost as deserted as the church.
Here a graceful Corinthian capital, with every white acanthus-leaf perfect, stood in a mat of acanthus-leaves of Nature's own making, glossy green and sharply cut; and there was a long portion of a frieze sculptured with graceful dancing figures; and in another place a fragment of a fluted column, with lycopodium and colosseum vine hanging from its fissures in graceful draping.
Between it and the cornice which runs all round the square above the passage arches is a large oblong panel, in the middle of which is a small round window. Beautifully carved figures which, instead of having legs, end in great acanthus-leaf volutes with dragons in the centre, hold a beautifully carved wreath round this window.
Here and there a marble acanthus-leaf, or the capital of an old column, or a fragment of sculpture jutted from under the mosses, ferns, and grasses with which prodigal Nature had filled every interstice and carpeted the whole.
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