A few months later Venice was given to Austria by the Treaty of Campoformio. Between the French and the Austrians the city passed through a troublous period of many years. Venice was now a fallen state. But what a memorial it is! The city is like a huge volume of history, and we linger over its enchanting pages. Let us now look upon the monuments that reveal to us the soul and genius of Venice of the olden times. Several of the most important buildings in Venice border the fine square of San Marco, a favourite evening gathering-place of the Venetians. Dominating the piazza is the Cathedral of San Marco, with its magnificent front, a bewildering array of portals, decorated arches, carvings in relief, surmounted by graceful towers and steeples. The style is Byzantine, and partly Roman, designed after St Sophia at Constantinople. In shape the edifice is cruciform, with a dome to each arm of the cross. High above the cathedral roof rises the noble Campanile. Over the chief portal are four bronze horses, brought here in 1204 from Byzantium. The steeds are beautifully modelled, and the work is ascribed to Lysippos, a sculptor of Corinth. Napoleon took the horses to Paris, but they were restored to Venice in 1815. The mosaic designs of the façade represent "The Last Judgment," among other Scriptural subjects, while one of the mosaics depicts San Marco as it was in the early days. A number of reliefs and images adorn the arches of each of the five doorways of the main entrance. Within the decorations are exquisite. Ruskin writes: "The church is lost in a deep twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far-away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colours along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames, and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom."