135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century. The architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained examples of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed by the Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric splendour, and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can conjecture the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have presented some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever existent among civil societies. 136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of following the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in this place, my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points relating to the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style is familiar to us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to believe the early date,--the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of it are of the twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca, as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St. Niccol, at Pisa, (though this was built in continuation of the older style by Niccola himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched condition, the general manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman period in Val d'Arno. That of the Tosinghi, above the old market in Florence, is especially mentioned by Villani, as more than a hundred feet in height, entirely built with little pillars, (colonnelli,) of marble. On their splendid masonry was founded the exquisiteness of that which immediately succeeded them, of which the date is fixed by definite examples both in Verona and Florence, and which still exists in noble masses in the retired streets and courts of either city; too soon superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate and monotonous luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried stone which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti and Strozzi palaces. LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT. 137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of that which preceded it.