The Venetian mode was rather likely to be destructive of good architecture, because it was sure to end in an entire concealment of the real construction of the work; the other mode, on the contrary, proceeded on true principles, and took pleasure in defining most carefully every line in the construction of the work. It might almost be said that one mode was devised with a view to the concealment, and the other with a view to the explanation, of the real mode of construction. I have already described, at some length, the main features of these old works in marble, and I feel, therefore, that all that need now be done is to point out the degree to which they afford matter for our imitation with the coloured materials and marbles which we fortunately have in Great Britain fit for the purpose, though not in very great variety. There appears to me to be a certain limited extent to which we may safely go in the way of inlaying or incrustation: we may, for instance, so construct our buildings as that there may be portions of the face of their walls in which no strain will be felt, and in which this absence of strain will be at once apparent; obviously, to instance a particular place, the spaces inclosed within circles constructed in the spandrels of a line of arches can have no strain of any kind. They are portions of wall without any active function, and may safely be filled in with materials the only object of which is to be ornamental. All kinds of sunk panels inclosed within arches or tracery would come under the same head; the spaces between string-courses might also do so very frequently, if, as in old examples, the string-courses were large slabs of stones bedded into the very midst of the wall, and so capable of protecting the thin, weak slabs of marbles incrusted between them.