-- "It is nearly all that I said of the Central
Renaissance--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy,
ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin--in
thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines,
Browning's being also the antecedent work" (Ruskin). The Church of
St.Praxed is notable for the beauty of its stone-work and mosaics,
one of its chapels being so extraordinarily rich that it was called
, or the Garden of Paradise; and so, although the
bishop and his tomb there are imaginary, it supplies an appropriate
setting for the poetic scene.
1. Vanity, saith the preacher: Ecclesiastes 1.2.
21. Epistle-side: the right-hand side facing the altar, where the
epistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel being
read from the other side by the priest acting as assistant.
25. Basalt: trap-rock, leaden or black in color.
31. Onion stone: for the Italian , a kind of
greenish-white marble splitting into coats like an onion, ;
hence so called.
41. Olive-frail: a basket made of rushes, used for packing olives.
42. Lapis lazuli: a bright blue stone.
46. Frascati: near Rome, on the Alban hills.
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