I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense.
While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls
of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best
craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most
part, the Early Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them
in their present enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety,
desired that these stones of their temples might be goodly; and all
kinds of junctions, insertions, refittings, and elevations were
undertaken; which, the genius of the people being always for mosaic,
are so perfectly executed, and mix up twelfth and thirteenth century
work in such intricate harlequinade, that it is enough to drive a poor
antiquary wild.
138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church,
which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable
manner.
You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine
people, and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine
trunk was through Lucca, on Pisa.
Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the
facade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the
Florentines, in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-
de-lys, let into its masonry.
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