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They vary much in composition, resembling in many respects the dikes at Low's Harbour: the greater number consist of feldspathic porphyries, sometimes containing grains of quartz: one, however, was black and brilliant, like an augitic rock, but really formed of feldspar; others of a feldspathic nature were perfectly white, with either an earthy or crystalline fracture, and including grains and regular octagons of quartz; these white varieties passed into ordinary greenstones.
The pattern has been elaborate; a broad border of diagonal checks surrounding a narrow oblong in which the checks are crossed by darker lines so as to form octagons, and between the outer border and the octagons a band of lighter ground down which in the middle runs a coloured line having on each side cones of the common Arab pattern exactly like the palace battlements.
Above this begins an octagonal dome with elaborately carved and gilt mouldings, like those round the panels, in each angle and round the large octagon which comes in the middle of each side. The next stage is similar, but set at a different angle, and with smaller and unequal-sided octagons, while the dome ends in one large flat eight-sided panel forty-five feet above the floor.
The horizontal part of the weathering of the flying-buttresses is stopped behind the octagons of the pinnacles. The parapet has a plain weathered coping, close under which is a string-course which helps to throw the water clear from the top of the wall; and two coupes below this one is another moulded string. Each is about six inches in depth.
This great roof in the Swan Hall has a deep and projecting classical cornice; it is divided into three equal parts, two sloping and one flat, with the slopes returned at the ends. The whole is made up of twenty-three large octagons and of four other rather distorted ones in the corners, all surrounded with elaborate mouldings, carved and gilt like the cornice.
One pattern is purely geometrical; another has birds, dogs, hares, baskets of flowers, and floral scrolls in octagons and squares set diagonally between them; both marble and vitreous pastes are used, as well as gold tesseræ. Inscriptions were also found in letters of the third or beginning of the fourth century: " *ore Felix hic crevisti hic Felix" and "Cyriacus vivas."
The step up to this bay, and also the step to the next and to the altar pace, all of which stretch the full length of the chancel, as well as the three steps to the altar daïs, are in carefully selected Pavonazzo. The design of the fourth bay is a system of interlacing bands, forming alternately large and small octagons, between which are squares and oblongs.
It seems, however, probable that he intended to adopt something similar to the dome of Chiaravalle, which ends, after a succession of narrowing octagons, in a slender conical pyramid.
Inside the columns are round, with caps and bases partly round and partly eight-sided, the hollow octagons interpenetrating with the circular mouldings. The arches of the arcade are also round, though those of the chancel and eastern chapels are pointed.
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