_Atrium._--“Now on the western side of this divine church you will see a great open court (_aule_) surrounded by four cloisters. One of these joins on to the narthex, but the others spread round the sides, where stand their several paths. In the very centre of the wide garth stands a spacious phiale, cleft from the Iassian peaks; and from it bubbling water gushes forth and throws a stream into the air, leaping up from the pressure of the brazen pipe--a stream that purges away all suffering, when the people, in the month of the golden vestments[73] at the mystic feast of Christ, draw the unsullied waters in vessels by night. And the water shows the power of God; for never will you find decay on its surface, even if it remains in its vessel, and away from the fountain for more than a year.[74] “Everywhere the walls glitter with wondrous designs, the stone for which came from the quarries of seagirt Proconnesus. The marbles are cut and joined like painted patterns, and in stones formed into squares or eight-sided figures the veins meet to form devices; and the stones show also the forms of living creatures. “And on either side along the flanks and outskirts (_antuges_) of the beautiful church, you would see open courts (_aulai_). These were all planned about the building with cunning skill, that it might be bathed all round by the bright light of day. _The Marbles._--“Yet who, even in the measures of Homer, shall sing the marble pastures gathered on the lofty walls and spreading pavement of the mighty church? These the iron with its metal tooth has gnawed--the fresh green from Carystus, and many-coloured marble from the Phrygian range, in which a rosy blush mingles with white, or it shines bright with flowers of deep red and silver. There is a wealth of porphyry too, powdered with bright stars, that has once laden the river boat on the broad Nile. You would see an emerald green from Sparta, and the glittering marble with wavy veins, which the tool has worked in the deep bosom of the Iassian hills, showing slanting streaks blood-red and livid white. From the Lydian creek came the bright stone mingled with streaks of red. Stone too there is that the Lybian sun, warming with his golden light, has nurtured in the deep-bosomed clefts of the hills of the Moors, of crocus colour glittering like gold; and the product of the Celtic crags, a wealth of crystals, like milk poured here and there on a flesh of glittering black. There is the precious onyx, as if gold were shining through it: and the marble that the land of Atrax yields, not from some upland glen, but from the level plains; in parts fresh green as the sea or emerald stone, or again like blue cornflowers in grass, with here and there a drift of fallen snow,--a sweet mingled contrast on the dark shining surface.