It is very difficult to translate this; for fastigium, besides its general sense, has a particular one in architecture, and refers to the part of the building occupied by the bust; but the main meaning of it is that "Vincenzo Fini fills all height with his virtue." The inscription goes on into farther praise, but this example is enough. Over the two lateral doors are two other laudatory inscriptions of younger members of the Fini family, the dates of death of the three heroes being 1660, 1685, and 1726, marking thus the period of consummate degradation. [Illustration: Plate III. NOBLE AND IGNOBLE GROTESQUE.] § XXI. In like manner, the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo is entirely dedicated to the Barbaro family; the only religious symbols with which it is invested being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven. At the top of the church is Venice crowned, between Justice and Temperance, Justice holding a pair of grocer's scales, of iron, swinging in the wind. There is a two-necked stone eagle (the Barbaro crest), with a copper crown, in the centre of the pediment. A huge statue of a Barbaro in armor, with a fantastic head-dress, over the central door; and four Barbaros in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the common stage postures of the period,--Jo. Maria Barbaro, sapiens ordinum; Marinus Barbaro, Senator (reading a speech in a Ciceronian attitude); Franc. Barbaro, legatus in classe (in armor, with high-heeled boots, and looking resolutely fierce); and Carolus Barbaro, sapiens ordinum: the decorations of the façade being completed by two trophies, consisting of drums, trumpets, flags and cannon; and six plans, sculptured in relief, of the towns of Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu, and Spalatro. § XXII. When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto); noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs. He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of the Grotesque Renaissance. I cannot pollute this volume by any illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an idea of its most graceful and refined developments. The figure set beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself.