The seven lamps of architecture . only describe as a mingling of the mindsof Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are per-haps even more awful than Orcagnas; and, insome of the expressions of debased humanityin its utmost despair, the English painter is atleast equalled. Not less wild is the imaginationwhich gives fury and fear even to the placingof the figures. An evil angel, poised on thewing, drives the condemned troops from beforethe Judgment seat; with his left hand he dragsbehind him a cloud, which he is spreading likea winding-sheet over them all; but they areurged by him so furiously, that
The seven lamps of architecture . only describe as a mingling of the mindsof Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are per-haps even more awful than Orcagnas; and, insome of the expressions of debased humanityin its utmost despair, the English painter is atleast equalled. Not less wild is the imaginationwhich gives fury and fear even to the placingof the figures. An evil angel, poised on thewing, drives the condemned troops from beforethe Judgment seat; with his left hand he dragsbehind him a cloud, which he is spreading likea winding-sheet over them all; but they areurged by him so furiously, that they are drivennot merely to the extreme limit of that scene,which the sculptor confined elsewhere withinthe tympanum, but out of the tympanum andinto the niches of the arch ; while the flames thatfollow hem, bent by the blast, as it seems, ofthe angels wings, rush into the niches also, andburst up through their tracery, the three lower-most niches being represented as all on fire,while, instead of their usual vaulted and ribbed. THE LAMP OF LIFE. 30/ ceiling, there is a demon in the roof of each,with his wings folded over it, grinning downout of the black shadow. XX. I have, however, given enough instancesof vitality shown in mere daring, whether wise,as surely in this last instance, or inexpedient;but, as a single example of the Vitality of As-similation, the faculty which turns to its pur-poses all material that is submitted to it, I wouldrefer the reader to the extraordinary columns ofthe arcade on the south side of the Cathedral ofFerrara. A single arch of it is given in PlateXIII. on the right. Four such arches form-ing a group, there are interposed two pairs ofcolumns, as seen on the left of the same plate;and then come another four arches. It is along arcade of, I suppose, not less than fortyarches, perhaps of many more ; and in the grae^eand simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curve^I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of \column, I certainly do not know; there
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