There are indeed no mean traces of this art in Adriatic Italy; the exarchate at Ravenna, the eastern traffic of Venice, have shown their influence on Italian art and architecture. The splendid mosaics of Ravenna, nay, even the seven domes of S. Antonio at Verona, the frescoes of the Giotto Chapel at Padua, above all, the great cathedral at Venice, are all strongly colored—those of Ravenna even produced—by Byzantine art. Yet most travellers who visit S. Mark’s at Venice have never seen a Byzantine church, and do not feel its Eastern parentage; still fewer visit the splendid basilica of Parenzo, which is a still more unmistakable example. But to those who have turned aside from Olympia and Parthenon to study the early Christian remains in Greece, all this art of Eastern Italy will acquire a new interest and a deeper meaning. These are the reasons which have tempted me to say a few words on this side of Greek travel. I do not pretend to speak as an authority; I only desire to stimulate a nascent interest which will presently make what I say seem simple and antiquated. But as yet even high authorities are very much in the dark about these things. What would a student of Gothic architecture say to a discussion whether an extant building belonged to the fourth century or the eleventh? and yet such divergent views are still maintained concerning the origin of the Athenian churches. Let us begin with the best and quaintest, the so-called _Old Cathedral_, which was fortunately allowed to stand beside its ugly and pretentious successor. The first thing which strikes us is the exceeding smallness of the dimensions, it is like one of the little chapels you find in Glendalough and elsewhere in Ireland. I do not know whether the Greeks contemplated a congregation kneeling in the open air, as was the case around these chapels in Ireland, but such edifices were certainly intended in the first instance as holy places for sacerdotal celebrations, not as houses of prayer for the people. I was told on Mt. Athos that it was not the practice of the Greek church to celebrate more than one service in any one Church daily. Hence the monks, who are making prayer continually, have twenty or thirty chapels within the precincts of each monastery. Perhaps a similar motive may have led to the construction of a great number of smaller churches at Athens, where seventy have already been destroyed, and at Salonica, where remains of them are still being frequently discovered. Perhaps, also, that desire to consecrate to the religion of Christ the hallowed places of the heathen, which turned the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus into churches, also prompted the Byzantine bishops to set up chapels upon smaller heathen sanctuaries, where no stately temple existed, and mere consecration would have left no patent symbol of Christian occupation.