And now, before I say more about dates, let me describe these two Gothic fronts--the sea-front and the Piazzetta-front--and then we may perhaps see our way to some sort of comprehension of the relative ages of the various portions of the fabric. The whole design is divided into three stages in height, the upper nearly equal to the united height of the two lower stages, and faced entirely with a delicate diaper of marble cut in small oblong pieces, which look, save in their texture and colour, only too much like bricks. In this marble-faced wall are pierced a number of windows with pointed arches--the tracery of which has been taken out--and in or near the centre of each façade a much larger window and balcony, which look as though they had been subsequently inserted. The lowest stage consists of a long and uniform arcade of very simple pointed arches resting upon circular columns with elaborately carved caps; these have been shortened by some twenty inches of their old height, by the rise of the water, and the consequent elevation of the pavement of the Riva, to the great damage of their effect. The intermediate stage is a magnificent arcade, supporting very vigorous tracery, too well known to everybody to require much description, and divided from the stages above and below it by large and pronounced lines of carved and moulded string-courses. It is important to observe that up to the top of the second string-course the whole of the architecture is of the very best kind of Venetian pointed; the arches of the lowest stage are well proportioned, and, though very simply, still well moulded; and the detail of the whole of the second stage is, to say the least, not at all inferior. They form together, without exception, I believe, from all I have either seen myself or heard, the very best and truest specimen of Gothic architecture south of the Alps.