the ornamental parts; the capitals and mouldings in the latter being much more fanciful. In the time of Constantine the architects seem to have copied the antique, though very badly. Under Theodoric they abandoned it wantonly, and we find frequent indications of the whimsical style of capital which afterwards prevailed in the Gothic. In the same building, however, each capital is alike, or at least intended to be so. A block from which the arch springs is uniformly placed over the capital; it is in the shape of the inverted frustum of a pyramid, but not perfectly regular, as it generally slopes more on the front and back than on the sides. In the early Saxon architecture, (I use this incorrect term for want of a better) a block is sometimes found above the capital, to support the springing of the arch, but it is in the shape of a thickened abacus, and has sometimes dentils or mouldings, which show it to be a degradation of the whole entablature; at St. Mark’s, at Venice, and at Ravenna, it is evidently a stone block, without any relation to the parts of the ancient order. The arrangement of this church, or I may say generally of these churches, is far from displeasing; they are light, and in some degree elegant; and they would be much more so if the details were better; and if they were not injured by modern chapels and restorations of a very different taste. The plan leads the eye to the high altar, and to the large niche enriched with mosaics and gilding, in front of which it stands. The earliest remaining church of this style at Ravenna, if we may believe Beltrami, (_Il forestiere instruito delle cose notabili della città di Ravenna_) is that of Santa Agata Maggiore, which was completed about the year 417. Here again, are columns of granite and rich marbles, with the same general design, and the same mode of finishing. The columns are of unequal heights, and the impost blocks are also unequal, but not so as to reduce the springing of the arches to one level. Indeed, even these blocks seem to be the spoils of an earlier building. The height of the nave is about equal to its width, which is hardly as much as it ought to be. There seems at one time to have been a fashion at Ravenna, to introduce monograms among the ornaments of the blocks over the capitals. We have in this church the earliest example, and the latest in San Vitale, which was built in 534. What names they were intended to commemorate is very uncertain, as each writer on the subject forms a new conjecture of his own. The following is at Santa Agata, [Illustration: Illustration of monogram]