The Italian treatment of windows is especially worthy of note. The drawings which I have given will shew how generally the tracery, commonly called plate-tracery, was used. It is, indeed, a very beautiful mode of treatment, but quite distinct from all fully-developed systems, inasmuch as it deals only with the piercings here and there in the block of stone which forms the window-head, and not with the intricate combinations of lines which mark out the outlines of the spaces to be pierced. The difference is great--the one kind giving that exquisite depth and mystery and admitting of the infinite variety so characteristic of northern Gothic, the other giving breadth and flatness of effect, and leaving space on its broad surfaces for the play of the brilliant sunshine, save where the black piercing of some simple form--quatrefoil or trefoil--gives life to the otherwise monotonous window-head. Of the two the former admits of infinitely more variety and display of fancy and ingenuity; though the latter, perhaps, when seen at its best, is really the more beautiful. Both of them are, however, so good as to be equally usable, and neither of them to the exclusion of the other. In Italian Gothic traceries, it is difficult to shew the progression or regular development which marks every stage of northern Gothic. There are numerous examples of simple lancet windows, of cusped lancets, of combinations of lancets cusped or uncusped, and oftentimes of windows of plate-tracery, and then of more developed tracery which, however, was still treated as plate tracery with the addition of mouldings. In the later windows an unsightly effect is produced by the wide and bald plain splay or reveal which is usually formed round the window, outside as well as inside, and also by the placing of glazing behind the traceries in a separate wooden frame, so that they are completely concealed from view on the interior. The tracery of the second stage of the Doge’s Palace at Venice is probably equal to any that has ever been executed, and may well be the pride of the country. It has also the special peculiarity, common to all Venetian domestic work, of being sufficiently strong in its section and construction to bear an enormous weight of wall without the aid of any discharging arch above it. There is another class of traceries which seems to have been essentially an Italian invention, and which is as objectionable as any tracery that I know. Examples of this may be seen in the south transept of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, at Venice. They give the idea of having been cut out to order, from an enormous mass of ready-made tracery, kept in slab, sold by the superficial yard, and cut to fit any opening required. There is no attempt to finish the tracery where it meets the inclosing arch, and the effect is consequently always rude and unskilful.[87]