A better specimen of the style, because erected as designed, and remaining nearly as erected, is the Cà d’Oro (Woodcut No. 528),[3] built in the first years of the 15th century, contemporary with the piazzetta part of the ducal palace. It has no trace of the high roofs or aspiring tendencies of the Northern buildings of the same age, no boldly-marked buttresses in strong vertical lines, but, on the contrary flat sky lines and horizontal divisions pervade the design, and every part is ornamented with a fanciful richness far more characteristic of the luxurious refinement of the East than of the manlier appreciation of the higher qualities of art which distinguished the contemporary erections on this side of the Alps. The blank space between the battlements (which belong to the first building) and the string-course would seem to have been decorated with a series of twenty-six cusped arches, forming niches (shown in a mezzotint drawing dated 1800)[4] and surmounted by an upper string-course projecting in front of the battlements, thus crowning the building in a more satisfactory way than at present. The house was built for Signor Marino Contarini, Procurator of Venice, its original title being the Palace of Sta. Sophia. [Illustration: 529. Angle Window at Venice. (From Street.)] The palaces known as the Foscari and Pisani are very similar in design to that of Cà d’Oro, though less rich and less happy in the distribution of the parts; but time has restored to them that colour which was an inherent part of the older design, and they are so beautiful and so interesting that it is hard to criticise even their too apparent defects as works of art. Most of the faults that strike us in the buildings of Venice arise from the defective knowledge which they betray of constructive principles. The Venetian architects had not been brought up in the hard school of practical experience, nor thoroughly grounded in construction, as the Northern architects were by the necessities of the large buildings which they erected. On the contrary, they merely adopted details because they were pretty, and used them so as to be picturesque in domestic edifices, where convenience was everything, and construction but a secondary consideration. For instance, the window here shown (Woodcut No. 529) cannot fail to give the building in which it occurs an appearance of weakness and insecurity quite inexcusable in spite of its external picturesqueness or its internal convenience. [Illustration: 530. Ponte del Paradiso, Venice. (From Street.)] The same remark applies to the screen (Woodcut No. 530) above the Ponte del Paradiso, which, though useless and unconstructive to the last degree, by its picturesque design and elegant details arrests all travellers. Indeed it is impossible to see it without admiring it, though, if imitated elsewhere, it could hardly be saved from being ridiculous.