It is very curious to find the Venetians treating what in other countries became of so great individual importance, merely as a kind of diaper ground, like that of their chequered colors on the walls. There is great grandeur in the idea, though the system of their traceries was spoilt by it: but they always treated their buildings as masses of color rather than of line; and the great traceries of the Ducal Palace itself are not spared any more than those of the minor palaces. They are cut off at the flanks in the middle of the quatrefoils, and the terminal mouldings take up part of the breadth of the poor half of a quatrefoil at the extremity. One other circumstance is notable also. In good Northern Gothic the tracery bars are of a constant profile, the same on both sides; and if the plan of the tracery leaves any interstices so small that there is not room for the full profile of the tracery bar all round them, those interstices are entirely closed, the tracery bars being supposed to have met each other. But in Venice, if an interstice becomes anywhere inconveniently small, the tracery bar is sacrificed; cut away, or in some way altered in profile, in order to afford more room for the light, especially in the early traceries, so that one side of a tracery bar is often quite different from the other. For instance, in the bars 1 and 2, Plate XI., from the Frari and St. John and Paul, the uppermost side is towards a great opening, and there was room for the bevel or slope to the cusp; but in the other side the opening was too small, and the bar falls vertically to the cusp. In 5 the uppermost side is to the narrow aperture, and the lower to the small one; and in fig. 9, from the Casa Cicogna, the uppermost side is to the apertures of the tracery, the lowermost to the arches beneath, the great roll following the design of the tracery; while 13 and 14 are left without the roll at the base of their cavettos on the uppermost sides, which are turned to narrow apertures. The earliness of the Casa Cicogna tracery is seen in a moment by its being moulded on the face only. It is in fact nothing more than a series of quatrefoiled apertures in the solid wall of the house, with mouldings on their faces, and magnificent arches of pure pointed fifth order sustaining them below. [Illustration: Plate XI. TRACERY BARS.] The following are the references to the figures in the plate: