on it; and the description given by the Silentiary, whatever allowance may be made for poetic raptures, may be taken as proof that it was no ordinary splendour which called forth such glowing phrases. One of the most remarkable points, indeed, about the history of St. Sophia is the ecstatic admiration which its interior seems to have excited among those who saw it when first completed. About no other building in history is there such a halo of romance spread; by none has such a poetic fervour of description been elicited. Nor can we conclude that this is empty verbiage. Richness of colour and exuberance of decoration with costly materials have always been the characteristics of Byzantine architecture; and, if we regard this taste as derived in some degree from the example set in the great parent church, we can only be the more convinced of the reality of that spendour of effect which could impress itself as an example for centuries afterwards. It is part of the interest of the book before us that the authors have placed side by side the raptures of the contemporary historian and the facts gleaned by the study of existing relics of Byzantine decorative art. They have reprinted the impressions of Procopius and the Silentiary as to what they saw, and have followed this up by enquiries and illustrations which throw some additional light on these descriptions, and enable us to some extent to picture to our minds some of the actual detail of the sumptuous effects which are indicated in a more florid and less practical manner by the two contemporary writers. Let us try to picture from these various descriptions and suggestions what the visitor would have seen on entering St. Sophia as it came new from the hands of Justinian's artists. The Silentiary commences at the east end, and works back to the entrance; but we prefer to follow the opposite course.

We should have entered first the atrium court, or cloister, with a fountain in the centre, and with the same ordonnance all round of square piers alternating with arcades supported on marble columns over twenty feet in height. The pavement of this atrium court was of coloured marbles, probably laid so as to give a representation of four streams meandering from the centre to the four sides-a favourite device in early Byzantine pavements, as symbolising the four rivers which watered Paradise. The atrium cloister was continued round the side next the church, as well as the other three, its eastern open ambulatory occupying the site of what is now the enclosed outer porch, or exo,

narthex. Entering one of the five doors in the west wall of the church (the east wall of the atrium), we should have stood in a great arcaded porch or corridor (the narthex), about twenty-eight feet across, forty-five feet in height, and two hundred feet long, running nearly across the entire width of the end of the church, with a door and porch at the south and north ends, and roofed with a series of segmental arches dividing it into nine vaulted spaces. Entering the church through one of the three doors in the centre of the length of the narthex, we should have passed between two immense masses of wall, twenty feet in width, and entirely covered with coloured marbles, into a large apse or semicircular bay, and seen overhead a semi-dome rising to a height of more than a hundred and twenty feet, and abutting against a great arch of the same height, ten feet in thickness, flying right across the building. On either side, beneath the semi-dome or apse, minor columned semicircles or exedræ open on the right and left, varying in a most picturesque manner the lines of the plan, and giving a vista through into the side aisles, which occupy the remainder of the rectangular space within which the whole church is contained. These exedræ are half divided off from the centre of the church by an arcade of three arches carried on shafts of marble, some twenty-four feet in height, bright with fresh green bloom,' bound round with gilt metal rings at the neck and base, and crowned with that picturesque yet refined form of convex-lined capital which the Byzantine artists evolved out of the Corinthian capital, or, we might rather say, by a blending of the Corinthian and Ionic forms, and in the carved leafage betraying clearly its origin from the Greek acanthus leaf, but treated in a new fashion, with a crispness of form and a play of little points of shadow all over it, giving it a life and sparkle quite different from the cold and more conventional grace of the classic acanthus, a wandering chain of barbed points, all 'golden, full of grace.' We may perhaps assume, from the epithet used, that the effect of the carving was heightened by gilding; though it may, on the other hand, be merely a poetic flourish. In the upper story (for we see that the exedra is in two stories) is an arcade on a smaller scale and with seven arches on shorter columns, the capitals of which

* Thus the columns of the upper story are not over those below, as in most well-regulated structures, but take their own spacing quite independently. This seems to have much astonished the Silentiary, VOL. CLXXXI. NO. CCCLXXII.

I I

show an entirely new departure, a reminiscence of the old Ionic capital (Roman form, with the volutes set obliquely), almost crushed under a conical block (small end downwards) in which the carved ornament is worked out of the flat surface by sinking between it. According to our usual estimate of the rate of developement of architectural style, there might seem to be nearly a century between the capitals of the lower and upper arcades, in regard to the main design, though there is a similarity in the feeling of the work in detail. In the lower capital the Ionic volute retains its usual place in the upper portion of the capital, with a crowning moulding over it; the connexion with the classic capital is still quite obvious: in the upper capital the Ionic volute is nearly extinguished, only survives as a subordinate detail, and the rest of the cap takes a form in which all resemblance to the classic capital has vanished-a form destined to be reproduced at Ravenna in a still more decisive fashion.

Opposite to us, at the further side of the central space of floor, we see another great arch flying across the space, beyond it another apse with exedræ at the side, similar to that through which we have entered, and beyond that again the smaller eastern apse (the sacrarium), which closes the vista. To right and left, flanking the central space, are two great arches similar in design to those which cross it (only not open, partially carried by the side walls and galleries, their function being one of design rather than construction); between the meeting-points of their curves bend over the surfaces of the pendentives; and above all hangs in air, as it were, the circular cornice, from which arises the great dome, pouring down a flood of light from the series of windows pierced in its base. Beneath the great side arches the double order of arcades which we have noticed in the two stories of the exedræ are repeated, the lower arcades consisting of five lofty arches on marble columns-glittering jewels of Thessalian marble, with 'capitals above them like locks of golden hair'—the upper ones of seven; the columns of the upper arcade, here again, placed with no reference to those below them. This is one

accustomed, no doubt, to the regular arrangement of column over column, pier over pier, in the two stories of a basilica, or of a temple of the Roman type : one wonders at the power of him who bravely set six columns over two, and has not trembled to fix their bases over empty air.'

of the peculiarities of the building, in which the main masses of wall and the main arches and domes reign supreme, and the intermediate spaces are played with as you will. Behind the arcades on the ground floor are seen the side-aisles in deep shadow, their vaults so supported on intermediate columns (half seen in the shadow) as to keep clear of the columns of the front arcade, which is only limited by the height of the gallery floor.*

So much for the main architectural forms that meet our eye. But the wealth and variety of colour with which all this grand construction was decked out gives it a glamour beyond what the mere unadorned construction could have boasted. It is true that this is all a lining-a veneer-as at Santa Maria at Florence, and other Italian churches. Far better if we could have actually built with the gloriously coloured materials, made them part and parcel of the massive construction; but to have attempted that would have been beyond even the chief bandit's purse of Justinian. The structure is mainly built of rough materials, and externally these are honestly shown, and take the weather; only on the wall of the narthex next the atrium was there an external revêtement of marble. But internally shall we have a jewel-box, a gemmed casket on a gigantic scale; and after all, if we must depend upon veneering for our colour, better such decoration on the interior than the exterior of a building-leave the latter to show itself openly and bravely, line the interior walls with the precious materials, if as lining alone we can have them. As before observed, St. Sophia, like pure Byzantine building generally, represents an internal rather than an external architecture, and all richness of material was lavished on the interior. We look over a pavement of coloured marbles, up walls of coloured marbles, to domes covered with gold mosaic. The contemplation of the spectacle raises the Silentiary to his highest key, and there is a real poetic

In the ordinary arrangement of such a vault as that over the aisles, the curves of the nearest vaults (as we look at the aisle from the centre of the church) would spring from the level of the capitals of the outer arcade. But thus they would have been visible through the upper portion of the arches, and would have obscured the appearance of lightness and openness of the arcade. To avoid this, the vaulting of the aisles is arranged so that the vaults, instead of springing from the level of the capitals of the outer arcade, rise (from their own columns) to the level of the top of the arches.

fancy in the manner in which he associates the materials with the scenes from which they came :

'Yet who, even in the measure of Homer, shall sing the marble pastures gathered on the lofty walls and spreading pavements of the mighty church? These the iron with its metal tooth has gnawedthe fresh green from Carystus, and many-coloured marble from the Phrygian range, in which a rosy blush mingles with white, or it shines bright with flowers of deep red and silver. There is a wealth of porphyry too, powdered with bright stars, that has once laden the riverboat on the broad Nile. You would see an emerald green from Sparta, and the glittering marble with many veins, which the tool has worked in the deep bosom of the Iassian bills, showing slanting streaks bloodred and livid white. From the Lydian creek came the bright stone mingled with streaks of red. Stone too is there that the Lybian sun, warning with his golden light, has nurtured in the deep-bosomed clefts of the hills of the Moors, of crocus colour glittering like gold; and the produce of the Celtic crags, a wealth of crystals, like milk poured here and there on a flesh of glittering black. There is the precious onyx, as if gold were shining through it; and the marble that the land of Atrax yields, not from some upland glen, but from the level plains; in part fresh green as the sea or emerald stone, or again like blue cornflowers in grass, with here and there a drift of fallen snow-a sweet mingled contrast on the dark shining surface.'

The coloured materials thus enthusiastically described were arranged mainly in a panelling of larger and smaller slabs over the walls; it was only in so large and simple a form of decoration that such a vast expanse of walling could be covered with an applied decorative material; but special portions were treated with more elaborate geometric design, or, as the Silentiary records

'with intersecting curves laden with plenteous fruit, and baskets and flowers, and birds sitting on the twigs. And the curved pattern of a twining vine with shoots like golden ringlets, weaves a winding chain of clusters; little by little does it put forth shoots, until it overshadows all the stone near with ripples of beauteous tresses.'

This latter part of the description probably refers to the really beautiful inlaid ornament in the spandrels of the arches of the lower-story arcades. The earlier portion describes what may be called a naïve and somewhat childish element to be found in a good deal of early Byzantine ornament, especially in the curious employment of baskets, not only in conventional inlay, but in very realistic carved capitals. There seems no way of accounting for this peculiar and unfortunate feature in Byzantine detail except that it afforded excuse for some tricky carver's work. The symbolic