There is so much rivalry, vanity, dishonesty, in the present day, that houses are badly and cheaply built; even in the best of them, bad iron and inferior plaster are used. How many of them, I should like to know, will be standing fifty years hence? Mr. Ruskin is much against our modern windows and the manner in which they are quickly constructed out of bad materials, and the bricks all placed one on top of the other slanting anyhow. The doors of Gothic palaces are all semicircular above. At one time the name of the family was placed over the entrance, and a prayer inserted for their safety and prosperity,--also a blessing for the stranger who should pass the threshold. Inside the houses there is always a large court round which all the various rooms circle, with a beautiful outside staircase supported on pointed arches with coned parapets and projecting landing-places. In the court there is always a well of marble superbly sculptured. [Illustration: PALAZZO CONTARINI DEGLI SCRIGNI] The centres of the early Renaissance architecture were Florence, Milan, and Venice. Venice is the only city in which important examples of all three periods of the Renaissance are to be found--the early period, the culminating period, and the period of decay. The Renaissance found better expression in Venice than elsewhere in Italy. In fact, when Florence and Rome had entered upon quite another period, Venice continued it for fully twenty-five years longer. The Venetians were ambitious, exceedingly so; and this ambition was a source of great trouble to the rest of Italy. The balance of power seemed, in their opinion, to be weighing too heavily in the direction of the Queen of the Adriatic; and the peace of the peninsula, they felt, was not by any means assured. The greatest period for Venice was at the end of the fifteenth century, when she had conquered all the land about her from Padua nearly to Milan, and seawards to Dalmatia and Crete. In the market-places of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia, the Lion of St. Mark was set up as a sign of the subjugation. Even now one can trace the influence of Venice upon the art of these various places. But the Venetians certainly learnt a great deal from the people whom they conquered. Other influences were brought to bear upon Venetian architecture--as, for example, the Lombardi family, who probably belonged to some part of Lombardy. Venice seems at this time to have gathered unto herself many fine suggestions from the rest of Italy. In fact, Venice absorbed talent from the rest of the world. In quite early days she adopted Byzantine and Arabic architecture; then, in the sixteenth century, she took unto herself the art of the Milanese, who enriched the city with their work.