One especial fault of the Venetians seems to have been their proneness to repeat the same architectural idea an infinite number of times; and there is something in this so characteristic of the place and the people, that the reason for it is worthy of some consideration. Venice, surrounded by water, and cut off from that kind of emulation which in other places always has the effect of producing life and change very rapidly in the phases of art, seems to have contented herself, when once she had well done, with the conviction that improvement was either impossible or unnecessary, and so, whilst changes were going on in the mainland, to have rested satisfied with a slight alteration only, and that one of detail always, for centuries; and it is thus that I account for the singular sameness which characterized all the efforts of her Gothic artists. The façade of the Ducal Palace is really precisely the same in its idea as that of the Fondaco de’ Turchi or the Ca’ Loredan, altered only in detail--its very beautiful traceries taking the place of, but doing the same work as, the simple encrusted arcades of its predecessors. And again, in the fronts of other and much smaller palaces--indeed, in all the fronts of the Gothic period--it is singular how exactly the same idea in the general arrangement is always preserved. Let me describe an ordinary palace. It is divided into three or four stories in height, the several stages being generally separated by string-courses. The lower story opens, by an arched doorway in the centre, to the water; and on either side of this doorway a few small windows serve to light the basement. The second stage has a grand window of some five or six lights, divided by shafts of marble, and rich with tracery, in the centre; and on either side, one or two single lights, with tracery corresponding with--and often, as it were, cut out in a slice from--the traceries of the central window. The third stage is nearly a reproduction of the second, though sometimes slightly less important; and the upper stage is either again a repetition of the others, or else consists of a few small windows placed over the others, and very unimportant and unpretending. The whole is crowned by a slightly projecting eaves-cornice, generally very meagre in its character, and with a line of genuine dog-tooth ornament on its lower edge. Above this, probably--for only one or two examples remain at all in their original state--was a parapet like those which still in part remain on the Ca’ d’Oro, at the back of the Ca’ Foscari, and on the Ducal Palace, light and fantastic to a degree, and almost masking the flat roof behind.