57. Abacus, St. John and Paul. 58. Abacus, St. Stefano. It is only farther to be noted, that these mouldings are used in various proportions, for all kinds of purposes: sometimes for true cornices; sometimes for window-sills; sometimes, 3 and 4 (in the Gothic time) especially, for dripstones of gables: 11 and such others form little plinths or abaci at the spring of arches, such as those shown at _a_, Fig. XXIII. Vol. II. Finally, a large number of superb Byzantine cornices occur, of the form shown at the top of the arch in Plate V. Vol. II., having a profile like 16 or 19 here; with nodding leaves of acanthus thrown out from it, being, in fact, merely one range of the leaves of a Byzantine capital unwrapped, and formed into a continuous line. I had prepared a large mass of materials for the illustration of these cornices, and the Gothic ones connected with them; but found the subject would take up another volume, and was forced, for the present, to abandon it. The lower series of profiles, 7 to 12 in Plate XV. Vol. I, shows how the leaf-ornament is laid on the simple early cornices. _VI. Traceries._ We have only one subject more to examine, the character of the early and late Tracery Bars. The reader may perhaps have been surprised at the small attention given to traceries in the course of the preceding volumes: but the reason is, that there are no _complicated_ traceries at Venice belonging to the good Gothic time, with the single exception of those of the Casa Cicogna; and the magnificent arcades of the Ducal Palace Gothic are so simple as to require little explanation. There are, however, two curious circumstances in the later traceries; the first, that they are universally considered by the builder (as the old Byzantines considered sculptured surfaces of stone) as material out of which a certain portion is _to be cut_, to fill his window. A fine Northern Gothic tracery is a complete and systematic arrangement of arches and foliation, _adjusted_ to the form of the window; but a Venetian tracery is a piece of a larger composition, cut to the shape of the window. In the Porta della Carta, in the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto, in the Casa Bernardo on the Grand Canal, in the old Church of the Misericordia, and wherever else there are rich traceries in Venice, it will always be found that a certain arrangement of quatrefoils and other figures has been planned as if it were to extend indefinitely into miles of arcade; and out of this colossal piece of marble lace, a piece in the shape of a window is cut, mercilessly and fearlessly: whatever fragments and odd shapes of interstice, remnants of this or that figure of the divided foliation, may occur at the edge of the window, it matters not; all are cut across, and shut in by the great outer archivolt.