Few things in the history of art are more remarkable than the revulsion of taste that has taken place with regard to the architecture of Venice. In the early part of the nineteenth century, before Ruskin wrote “The Stones of Venice,” an English architect,[84] giving expression to the professional judgment of the age, speaks of “the lumpy form of the Cathedral which surprises you by the extreme ugliness of its exterior; of the lower part built in the degraded Roman we call Norman; of the gouty columns and ill-made capitals, all in bad taste.” “The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything previously mentioned,” vastly inferior to Palladio’s churches of S. Giorgio and the Redentore. Disraeli echoes in “Contarini Fleming” the conventional lay praise of Palladio, and writes of the “barbarous although picturesque buildings called the Ducal Palace.” Even to-day the stranger fresh from the North with memories of the massive towers and lofty spires of his own architecture will hardly escape a sense of disappointment as he stands before St Mark’s. The fabric will seem to lack majesty and to be even less imposing than the Ducal Palace. It must, however, be remembered that the raising of the level of the Piazza has somewhat detracted from the elevation of both the basilica and the Palace. Fynes Moryson notes in his Itinerary (1617) that “there were stairs of old to mount out of the market-place into the church till the waters of the channel increasing they were forced to raise the height of the market-place.” [Illustration: A GONDOLIER.] Whether there were any such intention in the minds of the builders is doubtful, but in all communities where the sense of municipal liberty or of secular independence is strong, the dominant civic power is actualised in architecture. In Flemish towns the Hôtel de Ville and not the cathedral is often the more important structure; even so in Venice the subordinate position of the church is marked by the accessory character of the ecclesiastical building, which in its origin indeed was but the official chapel of the Doge, and only became the Cathedral in 1807, when Napoleon transferred the patriarchate from S. Pietro in Castello--itself a poor thing architecturally--to St Mark’s. Joseph Woods gave a shrewd criticism of Venetian architecture when he characterised it as showing riches and power rather than just proportions. St Mark’s was erected by a merchant folk, with all the merchant’s love of display of wealth. Their taste was for costly material rather than for nobility and grandeur of design. For centuries the East was ransacked for precious stones to adorn the sanctuary of their patron saint, and the captain of every ship that traded in the Levant was ordered to bring home marbles or fine stones for the builders. St Mark’s is a jewelled casket wrought to preserve the Palladium of the Venetian people. [Illustration: S. MARCO--MAIN PORTAL]