Bk. VIII. Ch. IV. TOWERS. 351 These take the circular or polygonal form appropriate to tombs, but are on so small a scale that they niight rather be called crosses than mausolea; and though illustrating all the best principles of Italian design, and evincing an exuberance of exquisite ornament, they can hardly be regarded as important objects of high art. It is only from small buildings like these that we may recover the principles of this art as practised in Italy. Not being, like the Northern styles, a progressive national effort, but generally an individual exertion, if the first architect died during the progress of a larger building, no one knew exactly how he had intended to finish it, and its completion was entrusted to the caprice and fancy of some other man, which he generally indulged, wholly regardless of its incongruity with the work of his predecessor. The Italians in the age of pointed architecture were hardly more successful in their towers than in their other buildings, except that a 781. Vie-w of the Duomo at Prato. (From Wiebeking.) tower, from its height, must always be a striking object, and, if both massive and high, cannot fail to have a certain imposing appear- ance, of which no clumsiness on the part of the architect can deprive
