In the science of moulding I cannot but think that it is quite useless to compare works executed for the sunny skies of Venice with those fitted for the gloomy sunlessness of a northern climate. The one kind are as properly soft, gentle in their alternations of light and shade, and delicate, as the other are piquant and sharp, rejoicing in the dark shade of deep hollows and endless intricacy of outline and arrangement. But I feel no doubt whatever that, unfair as it may be to compare one school with the other, seeing that each worked for its own wants, it is yet most clear that the Northern architects were developing a much deeper art, and working with much more consummate skill, than were the Venetian. The endless variety of the arrangement of; capitals, and the necessary grouping of mouldings to fit, their varying outlines, was carried to the extreme point of perfection by the one school, whilst in the other not only was there much less depth and relief, but also very much less variety. The abacus of the Italian capital was almost always square in plan, and, as an almost necessary consequence of this, mouldings retained very much the same arrangement and shape for the whole period of the prevalence of the pointed style, and generally rather leaned to the side of heaviness than of delicacy. Venetian mouldings are composed of the constant combination of a three-quarter bead and a shallow hollow, divided by small fillets, and so invariably arranged in almost exactly the same order, that it requires very great care to decide upon the date of buildings by their mouldings with any sort of approach to certainty.