Poised on arches and columns, soaring from triple bays to semi-dome, and from semi-dome to dome, bolder and bolder, higher and higher, more and more convergent, culminating above a circle of forty lights, through which the radiant heavens appear, it is not strange that it has seemed a canopy merged in the sky, and that for more than thirteen centuries men have worshipped beneath it with the feeling “This is none other than the House of God!” [Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN S. SOPHIA One of the two great alabaster water-jars near the entrance.] Only one thing more was needed to make the fabric artistically complete--to spread over it what Ruskin terms, “that most subtle, variable, inexpressible colour in the world--the colour of glass, of transparent alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold.” Accordingly, all that porphyry, verde antique, white marble, marbles of variegated hues, in the form of pillar, slab, capital, inlaid patterns, could contribute, all that delicate carving, with its lights and shadows, all that mosaics bright and soft as sunset tints could lend, was brought into requisition, until every part of the interior surface was suffused in a splendid coloration, and the solid fabric stood transfigured into a pavilion of some iridescent tissue, overwrought with gorgeous embroidery, and held up on shafts of prophyry and emerald. Many persons are, it is said, disappointed with the first view of even the interior of S. Sophia. Of course the church is not in the state which made Justinian exclaim, when he first crossed its threshold, “O Solomon, I have surpassed thee.” But, after making every allowance for the effect of what detracts from the original glory of the church, those disappointed with S. Sophia must be reminded that, as some one has remarked, “it costs an expensive education to admire a sunset”; and, furthermore, that it is the mark of what is truly great to transcend our immediate grasp, and to reveal its majesty only to prolonged and reverent contemplation. S. John Studius, SS. Sergius and Bacchus, S. Sophia, and S. Irene, notwithstanding their great differences, agree in following, to an extent that can be recognised, traditions of ancient art. The light of a day, that is past and over, is still reflected from them; or, to change the figure, in them the foliage of a bygone summer mingles sparse and faded forms with the leaves of a new spring. In the other churches left in the city, old features disappear, and what is new reigns supreme. The influence of S. Sophia upon the history of Art has, it is said, been greater than that of any other single building. And yet S. Sophia has never been repeated.