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 PROGRAMMING
MICROSOFT INFOPATH™
A DEVELOPER’S GUIDE

SECOND EDITION
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 PROGRAMMING
MICROSOFT INFOPATH™
A DEVELOPER’S GUIDE

SECOND EDITION

THOM ROBBINS

CHARLES RIVER MEDIA, INC.

Hingham, Massachusetts
Copyright 2006 by THOMSON DELMAR LEARNING. Published by CHARLES RIVER MEDIA, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way, stored in a retrieval system of any
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to, photocopy, recording, or scanning, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
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Robbins, Thomas, 1965-
Programming Microsoft InfoPath : a developer's guide / Thom Robbins.--2nd ed.
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1. Microsoft InfoPath. 2. Business--Forms--Computer programs. I.
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All brand names and product names mentioned in this book are trademarks or service marks of
their respective companies. Any omission or misuse (of any kind) of service marks or trademarks
should not be regarded as intent to infringe on the property of others. The publisher recognizes
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 Contents

Acknowledgments xi
Preface xii

1 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 1

Introduction 1
What Is .NET? 2
.NET Framework 3
Defining the Solutions Architecture 5
The Benefits of a Service Oriented Architecture 6
What Is a Service? 8
Web Services 9
Web Services Architecture 9
Creating a Simple Web Service 10
Microsoft Office System 2003 15
What You Need to Know About InfoPath 19
Office 2003 and What’s New for Developers 21
Smart Documents 21
Developing a Smart Document 22
Smart Document Security Restrictions 23
Smart Tags Version 2 23
Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 24
Visual Studio Tools for Office 26
Summary 29

2 Understanding the InfoPath IDE 31

Introduction 31
The InfoPath Interface 32

v
vi Contents

Form Area 32
Repeating and Optional Sections 36
Task Panes 39
The Basics of Form Design 40
Creating Data Sources 43
Laying Out a Form 50
Placing Controls 52
Creating Views 52
Publishing Forms 54
Testing the Employee Contact Form 56
Form Template Architecture 61
The Template Definition File (Manifest.xsf) 63
Template Customization 64
Summary 65

3 Generating XML Forms 67

Introduction 67
What Is an XML Schema? 68
Creating a Data Source 68
XSD Schema Definitions 71
Extending Schemas with Validation 73
The Employee Timesheet Application 81
Schema Inheritance 81
Form Design 86
Extending Forms with Formatting and Validation 89
Conditional Formatting 89
Data Validation 90
Extending Forms with Script 97
Declarative versus Programmatic Development 99
The InfoPath Object Model 99
 Contents vii

Extending the Timesheet 102

Calculate Total Time Entered 105
Summary 106

4 Generating Web Service Forms 107

Introduction 107
The HTTP Pipeline Model 108
The WebMethods Framework 112
The Interview Feedback Application 113
The Middle Tier 115
Database Access 117
Compile and Run 119
Where Is UDDI? 120
Publishing a Service Provider 122
Publishing the Service 122
Publishing the Instance Information 124
Where Is WSDL? 126
InfoPath and WSDL 129
Where’s the SOAP? 129
InfoPath and the Web Service Data Source 132
Forms That Submit Data 132
InfoPath Controls 135
Control Inheritance 138
Forms That Query for Data 139
Returning the Data Document 139
The Manager’s Views 140
Enabling Custom Submission 142
Submitting with Custom Script 142
Submitting with HTTP 146
viii Contents

Summary 148

5 Generating Database Forms 149

Introduction 149
Database Architecture 150
Which Is the Right Database? 151
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 152
Database Design Considerations 153
InfoPath and Database Connectivity 155
Executing Stored Procedures 164
Microsoft Access 2003 169
Database Architecture 170
Access Components 171
The Shape Provider 176
Summary 181

6 Building Workflow Enabled Applications 183

Introduction 183
Defining a Workflow Automation Solution 184
Defining a Workflow Repository 186
The Need for Real Time 201
InfoPath and Mail Enablement 202
Creating Ad Hoc Workflow 205
Sales Call Report Example 206
Task Panes 207
Designing Administrative Workflow 208
The Web Service Advantage 208
Designing the InfoPath Form 210
Designing the Status Screen 211
Summary 212
 Contents ix

7 Integrating with BizTalk Server 2004 213

Introduction 213
What Is BizTalk Server 2004? 214
The Architecture Overview 216
MessageBox Database 221
Integration with the .NET Framework 228
Defining Messages 230
Orchestration Design 232
Deploying the Solution 237
Summary 238

8 Integrating Smart Client Applications 239

Introduction 239
The Smart Client Application 240
What Is a Smart Client? 241
A Tablet PC as a Smart Client 257
The Ink Control 258
Summary 264

9 Securing Solutions 265

Introduction 265
What Does Security Mean? 266
The InfoPath Security Model 267
Examining Security Levels 269
Restricted 269
Domain 270
Full Trust 271
Defining Security with the .NET Framework 279
Defining Assemblies 280
User versus Code Security 283
Summary 291
x Contents

10 Deployment Strategies 293

Introduction 293
Defining Deployment Requirements 294
The InfoPath Configuration 295
Web Service Deployment 296
Configuring Web Services 296
Building Web Service Deployment Solutions Using Visual Studio 303
Publishing InfoPath Forms 308
Publishing Forms 308
Upgrading Modified Forms 319
Summary 321

Appendix A InfoPath Object Model Reference 323

Appendix B About the CD-ROM 347

Glossary 349

Index 357
 Acknowledgments

he most important person to thank is my wife and best friend, Denise. With-

T out her patience, understanding, and cooperation, this book would never
have been completed. I am always amazed at how she is able to help me
focus and succeed at all the challenges that we have met in our life together. I can
only hope that she can say the same about me.

xi
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

he goal of this book is to provide a developer's reference for application de-

T velopment for Microsoft InfoPath 2003 SP 1, along with the underlying

standards and various associated technologies that help to complete an In-
foPath-based solution. This book shows how these different technologies work to-
gether and describes some of the practical patterns and practices that can be used
to develop applications.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book builds on itself as you move forward. If you have a good understanding
of Office 2003, .NET Framework, and InfoPath, you may want to skip Chapters 1
and 2; you can refer back to these introductory chapters as needed.
Many of the topics covered in the text are fairly self-contained so that if you are
looking for a quick reference on a specific topic, you should be able to find it
quickly. Each chapter of the book examines a specific topic area in order to create
an easy-to-find cross-reference of specific samples or how-to information.
This book is designed for the application developer and not the end user. If you
are looking for specific end-user features, then this is not the text for you. If you're
looking for information on end-user features, I recommend that you take a look at
Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003 by Ed Bott. If you are a hard-core enter-
prise developer who is interested in creating distributed applications that use In-
foPath, you are reading the right book.

xiii
xiv Preface

WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK

This book requires that you have a PC running Windows Server 2003 or Windows
XP Professional running at least Microsoft InfoPath 2003. Many of the samples re-
quire the use of Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) for the Web-enabled
samples. Additionally, you will need Visual Studio.NET 2003, Visual Studio 2005 or
the .NET Framework 1.1 and .NET Framework 2.0 to compile and run many of the
samples. If you want to take advantage of all the samples mentioned, you will also
need to have available the Microsoft Office System 2003 and all the associated prod-
ucts included.

ASSUMED KNOWLEDGE

This book assumes that you have experience developing applications within a dis-
tributed environment and that you understand Web-based programming. The ex-
amples used in the book are designed to illustrate the various concepts explained
throughout, so that you can focus on the various concepts that we will cover. How-
ever, the assumption is that you understand basic programming and enterprise ar-
chitecture concepts.
 1 Anatomy of the Microsoft
Office System 2003

INTRODUCTION

It’s been almost five years since Microsoft® announced the .NET strategy. This strat-
egy was centered on a new and innovative platform that would change the way ap-
plications and systems were designed and developed. At the announcement, one of
the most interesting pieces of the .NET strategy was an almost total reliance on a set
of emerging industry-driven standards. At the time, these standards were becoming
increasingly important based on the growing integration needs and platform inter-
operability issues that businesses were facing. Today, these Extensible Markup Lan-
guage (XML)–based standards are enterprise proven and the .NET platform is a
reality. Both .NET and XML have had a substantial impact on the way applications

1
2 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

are designed and implemented. The addition of the Microsoft Office System 2003
Service Pack 1 changes the landscape and architecture even more.
This chapter provides a basic overview of the .NET Framework, Microsoft
Office 2003 Service Pack 1, and the various technologies used throughout this book.
This is an important starting point as we look more deeply at the newest product in
the Office family, Microsoft InfoPath 2003. Even if you are an experienced devel-
oper, this chapter provides the baseline architectural overview used throughout the
rest of the book. It is important to review the concepts here so that you really un-
derstand the rest of the book and can explore the full potential of InfoPath 2003
Service Pack 1.

What Is .NET?
It is impossible to say anything about .NET without first explaining the core com-
ponents.
.NET is a product vision and platform roadmap for Microsoft products. This
includes a broad spectrum of products, architectural patterns, and solutions. The
confusing part of .NET is the effect this strategy has on your role within the orga-
nization. For example, developers have new tools and architectural patterns that are
used to develop applications. Business users have new tools and technology that
offer them additional productivity enhancement. The .NET platform is really a
broad range of solution offerings that are built around three fundamental building
blocks. Each of these represents a set of .NET core components.
The first building block is a set of industry-accepted standards that guarantee
an application’s ability to easily interact and communicate through a message-
based architecture. There are a variety of these standards, but the main ones that we
will focus on throughout this book are XML, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP),
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI), and Web Services.
These standards provide the core building blocks of application enablement across
the other two components.
The second building block is a set of client- and server-based application solu-
tions built on top of these standards and designed to solve a business problem. For
example, Exchange 2003 Server delivers an email and calendaring solution that uses
XML and HTTP. Another example is BizTalk Server 2004, which provides work-
flow and data transformation services. Also included in this is Microsoft Office
System 2003, which delivers both client- and server-based integration and produc-
tivity solutions.
The last building block is the development environment of Visual Studio 2005.
This component is designed to hide the semantics of the standards and enable de-
velopers to create and deploy solutions on top of the .NET Framework that solve
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 3

problems in addition to interacting with the various products. Basically, the goal is
to enhance productivity by enabling developers to solve business problems without
having to code for each specific standard. Each of these three core components is an
essential piece of the .NET architecture, and all are interrelated in delivering an in-
tegrated solutions platform.

.NET Framework
Within each of these core building blocks is the technology stack that makes up the
various components of .NET. Figure 1.1 provides a diagram. The most important
of these is the .NET Framework, which is the Windows® component that provides
the compile and runtime services for applications and Web Services. Consider it the
core plumbing that provides the standards-based implementation that allows de-
velopers to focus on writing the business logic.

FIGURE 1.1 The .NET Framework consists of various layers.

The .NET Framework contains several different abstraction layers. At the bottom
is the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR contains a set of components
that implement language integration, garbage collection, security, and memory
management. The output of application code compiled within the CLR is Microsoft
4 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

Intermediate Language (MIL). MIL is a language-neutral byte code that operates

within the managed environment of the CLR. For developers, the CLR provides life-
time management services and structured exception handling. An object’s lifetime
within the .NET Framework is determined by the Garbage Collector (GC), which is
responsible for checking every object to evaluate and determine its status.
The GC traverses the memory tree, and any objects that the GC encounters are
marked as alive. During a second pass, any object not marked is destroyed and the
associated resources are freed. Finally, to prevent memory fragmentation and in-
crease application performance, the entire memory heap is compacted. This auto-
matically prevents memory leaks and ensures that developers don’t have to deal
with low-level system resources.
On top of the CLR is a layer of class libraries that contain the interface and
classes that are used within the framework abstraction layers. This Base Class Library
(BCL) is a set of interfaces that defines things like data types, data access, and I/O
methods. The BCL is then inherited into the upper layers to provide services for
Windows, Web Forms, and Web Services. All the base controls that are used to de-
sign forms are inherited from classes that are defined within the BCL. At the core
of the BCL are the XML enablement classes that are inherited and used within the
entire framework and provide a variety of additional services including data access.
Data access is one of the most important enhancements within .NET. The pre-
.NET data access infrastructure of ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and OLE DB was
a tightly coupled connected environment. The Microsoft Data Access Component
(MDAC) stack of services evolved primarily to keep up with the emergence of the
Internet. Portions of ADO like Remote Data Services (RDS) were introduced to
provide a disconnected data access model that was similar to the traditional ADO
model for Web developers. One additional feature of ADO was that it allowed you
to load and save disconnected recordsets in and out of XML. Developers found it
hard to reconcile the ADO data model, which was primarily relational, with the
new world of XML, where data was becoming heterogeneous and hierarchical. In
addition, XML came with its own unique object model (Document Object Model
[DOM]) and a different set of services—XSL Transformations (XSLT), XML Path
Language (XPATH), and Extensible Schema Definition (XSD) schemas. Therefore,
developers had to make an architectural choice of whether to use a relational design
pattern or a more hierarchical or heterogeneous approach based on the type of ap-
plication they were writing.
Fundamentally, in being forced to make the design choice, application archi-
tecture was inherently limited. In reality, what architects wanted was to use the best
of both design patterns. One of the fundamental strengths of the .NET Framework
was the uniformity of the model. All components were designed to share a common
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 5

type system, design pattern, and naming conventions. It just didn’t make any sense
to re-design the existing model within the context of the Framework. The result was
a new design approach—called ADO.NET—which added core classes to the native
Framework. For existing applications, a set of Component classes was added; that
provided interoperability to the traditional ADO object model.
Among the key design decisions for ADO.NET was that XML and data access
are intimately tied together. ADO.NET doesn’t just use the XML standards; it is
built on them. XML support is tied to ADO.NET at every fundamental level. The
result was a data access method that didn’t require developers to make a choice in
their application design.
ADO.NET is divided into two levels. The first is the managed provider. This en-
ables high-speed managed access to the native database. The second level is the
dataset, which is the local buffer of tables, or a collection of disconnected XML data
collections. Most code that we will cover in this book uses the dataset and the man-
aged provider as the connection and transport for database data.
Layered on top of the data access and XML layers and inheriting all their features
is the visual presentation layer of Windows Forms and Web Forms. The data access
layer inherits all the features of the bottom level and adds additional objects and
classes that enable application developers to present and design a visual interface.
Residing at the top level is the Common Language Specification (CLS), which
provides the basic set of language features. The CLS is responsible for defining
a subset of the common type system that provides a set of rules that define how
language types are declared, managed, and used in the runtime environment. This
ensures language interoperability by defining a set of feature requirements that are
common in all languages. Because of this, any language that exposes CLS interfaces
is guaranteed to be accessible from any other language that supports the CLS. This
layer is responsible for guaranteeing that the Framework is language agnostic for
any CLS-compliant language. For example, both VB.NET and C# are CLS compli-
ant and therefore interoperable. All the examples within this book are written in
VB.NET, but they could have easily been written in any CLS-compliant language.

DEFINING THE SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTURE

Traditional application architecture is distributed across machine and operating

system boundaries to improve performance, scalability, and availability. This ap-
plication design pattern often leads to applications and systems becoming islands
of data, each with their own geographic and physical boundaries. Developers are
then forced to duplicate concepts and functionalities across systems as a way of
6 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

compensating for these borders. Also, traditional system architecture didn’t account
for integration during its design. As a result, additional restrictions and layers that
made applications difficult to maintain and, especially, change were created. Tightly
coupled systems led to hard connected application layers that often dramatically
increased the complexity of integration.
The adoption of Web Services and XML has caused a shift in the way applica-
tions are designed. Today, we want to design applications as a collection of inter-
acting services. Each service provides access to a well-defined collection of unique
functionality. Exposing functionality as a service gives additional flexibility to ap-
plications that allows them to make use of other services in a natural way regardless
of their physical location.
A system should be designed to evolve through the addition of new services.
This is called a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA defines the services that
are used to compose a system and then maps these into a physical implementation.
As a design pattern, SOA provides services to application consumers through stan-
dards-based, published, and discoverable interfaces. From a developer’s perspec-
tive, this elevates code reuse because it allows applications that can bind to services
that evolve over time. Also, this provides a clear integration model between sys-
tems, both inside the enterprise and across organization boundaries.

THE BENEFITS OF A SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE

As we begin to design and develop applications, it’s important for us to understand

the benefits of an SOA:

Focused Developer Roles: The SOA design pattern forces applications into
tiers or application layers. Each layer provides a set of specific developer roles.
For example, a database layer needs developers with Structured Query Lan-
guage (SQL) experience. The presentation layer needs client-side program-
mers. SOA allows developers to specialize and organizations to rely on these
specialists to develop their applications.
Better Return on Investment: The isolation of services into distinct business
domains allows the service layer to exist beyond the lifetime of any of the com-
posed systems. For example, if an application needs a credit card authorization
routine, developers have two choices. They can create a component that ser-
vices just a single application, or they can create a component that services all
applications. If the credit card authorization is developed as a separate business
component and used as a service throughout the enterprise, then most likely it
will outlive the original application.
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 7

Location Independent: Location transparency is an essential element of the

SOA design pattern. The lookup and dynamic binding to services means that
the client application doesn’t care where the service is located. The natural ex-
tension is that services become mobile from one machine to another.
Tighter Security: The separation of an application into services naturally al-
lows a multilevel authentication scheme. Each service can implement a security
scheme that makes sense for the sensitivity of the data it presents and then pro-
vide additional security layers based on the services they use.
Better Quality: The independent and isolated nature of SOA provides easily
testable software units. Services can be tested independently of any application
that uses the service. This allows developers and Quality Assurance (QA) to
provide a more focused testing suite that will result in better software quality.
Multiple Client Support: SOA makes it easier to implement multiple clients
and types. The splitting of software into layers means clients can access services
using whatever protocol or methods make sense for the client. For example, a
Pocket PC can use the Compact Framework and an ASP.NET Web page can
both directly call the same Web Service.
Natural Code Reuse: Traditionally, code reuse has failed because of general
language and platform inconsistency. The standardized architecture of a service
naturally creates a catalog of evolving and reusable components. The language
and platform adherence to a known set of standards ensures an application is
able to automatically understand and implement components within this cata-
log. At the same time, this catalog creates a flexible and secure environment that
allows new uses of existing components and is secure enough to ensure data
safety. The result is that developers no longer have to worry about compiler ver-
sions, platforms, and other incompatibilities that made code reuse difficult.
Lower Maintenance: The business service layer provides a central location
for all application logic. This enables developers to locate and correct isolated
areas quickly and easily. The loosely coupled interfaces enable individual com-
ponents to be independently compiled, automatically alleviating the problem
of fragile component interfaces.
Faster Development Time: Multiple software layers means multiple devel-
opers can work independently of each other. The creation of interfaces guar-
antees that the individual parts are able to communicate.
Scalable Architecture: The use of location transparency guarantees better
scale and availability. Multiple servers may have multiple service instances
spread across multiple locations. Fail-over and redundancy can be built on the
service end so that clients don’t have to worry about implementing specific net-
work features.
8 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

WHAT IS A SERVICE?

By definition, a service is really nothing but discrete units of application logic that
expose message-based interfaces suitable for access across a network. Typically, ser-
vices provide both the business logic and state management relevant to the problem
they are designed for. When a developer or application architect is designing ser-
vices, the main goal is to effectively encapsulate the logic and data associated with
the real-world process. Decomposition, or the process of what to implement within
the same or a separate service, is an important design consideration. These types of
design patterns evolve as services are implemented and tied together to solve more
complex business problems.
State manipulation of a service is governed by Business Rules. These rules are
relatively stable algorithms, such as the method in which an invoice is totaled from
an item list, and are typically governed by application logic. On the other hand,
policies are less static than business rules and may be governed by regional or cus-
tomer-specific information. For example, a policy may be driven by a lookup table
at runtime.
Always remember that services are network-capable units of software that im-
plement logic, manage state, and communicate via messages and that are governed
by policy. When defining a service, make sure to identify its specific responsibility
within the system architecture. This guarantees that the service acts independently
within a multitiered application. The service definition specifies that boundaries are
explicit, services are autonomous, services can share schema and contract, but not
class, and service compatibility is based on policy.
Logically, a service is similar to a component or an object. The big difference
is that a service doesn’t have an instancing model. It basically sends a message to
a destination and hopes that it will both arrive and be responded to by a return
message. Service interfaces are designed to expose functionality. A component or
an object interface defines what the method calls should look like. Also, the service
interface defines what the message and its sequencing should look like.
Messages are the units of information transmitted from one service to another.
These must be highly structured with both sides being either aware or able to dis-
cover the format of the message and the exposed types. Typically, this is commu-
nicated through the use of schemas. These structures must be clear enough to
contain or reference all the information necessary to understand the message. This
basic concept allows communication between different technologies and allows
you to choose an appropriate technology for every new service. This is the base con-
cept of loose coupling that we will discuss throughout this book.
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 9

Always remember that a message is not just a function call. It’s the loose cou-
pling of components that enables messages to pass easily through both system and
process boundaries. Often, messages are processed asynchronously and in any
order; it’s not guaranteed that they will be delivered multiple times or that an im-
mediate response will be received.

WEB SERVICES

Web Services are one of the core components for the development of a services-
based architecture. Technology alone doesn’t make the services. It is important
that components be designed with a loose coupling—as we will see throughout this
book. This ideal scenario enables Office 2003 to take advantage of and provide the
greatest application flexibility. Most of the applications developed within this book
are based on the SOA design pattern and focus on the use of Web Services.

Web Services Architecture

The .NET Framework supports a variety of managed application types. These in-
clude the traditional Windows Forms, ASP.NET, mobile applications, and Web
Services. Web Services are important because they provide self-contained business
functions that operate over the Internet or an intranet. They are written to a strict
set of standards that ensure they are interoperable and callable from other Web Ser-
vices or front-end applications like Windows Forms or Microsoft Office®.
Web Services are important to a business because they quickly enable interaction
between different systems or processes. Web Services allow companies to provide
data electronically through a message based infrastructure using a set of reusable and
discoverable interfaces. Many of the applications that we will build throughout this
book use Web Services to provide back-end data access or integration.
The architecture of a Web Service, as shown in Figure 1.2, is similar to a Re-
mote Procedure Call (RPC) over HTTP using XML as the message payload. The
RPC portion of the Web Service implements the Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) to manage the underlying communication architecture. SOAP defines
structured XML messages that ride over any type of network transport, although
HTTP is generally preferred. These messages contain addressing and routing in-
formation that determines the delivery of their XML payload. The use of XML
guarantees that these messages are firewall friendly and system independent.
10 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

FIGURE 1.2 Web Services are a stack of technology that

enables the creation of a service.

While SOAP provides the intersystem messaging structure, the Web Service
Description Language (WSDL) describes the set of operations within each service
that the server supports. WSDL is an XML-based file that acts as a service contract
between the server (producer) and client (consumer) of a Web Service. As part of
this contract, the server agrees to provide a set of services as long as the client pro-
vides a properly formatted SOAP request.
As Web Services are created, UDDI enables the lookup and discovery for Web
Services. UDDI provides the yellow pages lookup that allows clients to dynamically
discover and consume Web Services. There is a public version of the UDDI registry
as well as a private one. For the purposes of this book, all code examples use the pri-
vate version included as part of the Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Creating a Simple Web Service

To illustrate what we have talked about, let’s walk through a simple Web Service
that returns the current server time (this is covered on the CD-ROM in the Chap-
ter 1 samples directory—\Code\Chapter 1\FirstServiceSetup\Setup.exe).
Open Visual Studio 2005 and create a new ASP.NET Web Service project
named FirstService, as shown in Figure 1.3.
Once you have selected the project, you are brought into the design palette. To
write code, we need to switch to the code window, as shown in Figure 1.4.
An XML Web Services consist of an entry point and the code that implements
the XML Web Service functionality, as shown in Figure 1.5. In ASP.NET, the
.ASMX file serves as the addressable entry point. It references code in pre-compiled
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 11

FIGURE 1.3 Within Visual Studio, select the type of project that you want to create.

FIGURE 1.4 Visual Studio provides both a design palette and code window.
12 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

FIGURE 1.5 The code window within Visual Studio 2005.

assemblies, a code behind file, or code contained within the .ASMX file. The Web
Service processing directive at the top of the .ASMX file determines where to find
the implementation of the XML Web Service. When you build an XML Web Ser-
vice in managed code, ASP.NET automatically provides the infrastructure and han-
dles the necessary processing of XML Web Service requests and responses,
including the parsing and creation of SOAP messages.
To expose a method as part of the Web Service, place a WebMethod attribute
before the declaration of each public method. This attribute tells the ASP.NET run-
time to provide all the implementation required to expose a method of a class on
the Web. This includes creating an instance of the WSDL necessary to advertise the
service on the Web.
Once the Web Service is compiled and run, it can be accessed from a Web
browser and passed a valid query string. The .ASMX file returns an auto-generated
Web page, as shown in Figure 1.6. This service help page provides a list of the ad-
vertised methods available for this service.
In addition, this page contains a link to the XML Web Services description
document. The service description page provides the formal XML WSDL definition
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 13

FIGURE 1.6 The compiled Web Service running in a browser.

for the Web Service, as shown in Figure 1.7. This XML document conforms to the
WSDL grammar and defines the contract for the message format that clients need
to follow when exchanging messages.

FIGURE 1.7 The auto-generated WSDL for the Web Service.

14 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

The service method page provides additional information that relates to a par-
ticular XML Web Service method. The page provides the ability to invoke the
method using the HTTP-POST protocol, as shown in Figure 1.8. At the bottom of
the Web page, the service method help page provides sample request and response
messages for the protocol that the XML Web Service method supports.

FIGURE 1.8 The compiled Web Service running in a browser.

Once the service is invoked, a new browser window is open and the returned
XML message is displayed, as shown in Figure 1.9.
Congratulations! We have just walked through the creation of our first Web
Service. Throughout this book we will build many more, but it is important to un-
derstand the steps necessary to build and then use a simple Web Service. Now let’s
move on to how we can use these services.
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 15

FIGURE 1.9 The returned XML message from the Web Service.

MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM 2003

Microsoft Office 2003 allows you to create intelligent business solutions that ad-
dress a variety of requirements while providing an easy-to-use interface. It is a big
mistake to think of Office as just a word processor or spreadsheet. The Office Sys-
tem goes beyond that simple definition and combines a series of products and ser-
vices that enables end users and developers to write managed code, understand
XML, and consume Web Services. Combining these features with the familiar Of-
fice interface allows Office to become a universal front-end for any application re-
gardless of the system or platform the data is located on.
A few of the traditional Office-based products may be the familiar Microsoft
Word, Excel, and Access, but several new ones have been added to the mix. It is im-
portant to look at a few of these new products and features because we will be using
them throughout the rest of the book to develop customer solutions.

Microsoft Word 2003: One of the key features of Word 2003 is the native file
support of XML, as shown in Figure 1.10. Word 2003 templates can also include
an underlying XML schema that allows users to create documents containing
XML markup. Developers can create templates based on custom XML schemas
and then build intelligent applications around these documents. Word 2003
also provides direct support for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and
XPATH. The native support of these features enables developers to build solu-
tions that capture and reuse document content across applications, processes,
devices, and platforms. XML support enables Word to function as a smart client
for Web Services and a host for these intelligent XML-based documents.
16 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

FIGURE 1.10 Saving a Word 2003 document to XML.

Microsoft Excel 2003: Spreadsheets within Excel 2003 can be designed with
an underlying custom XML structure. In defining schemas, businesses can im-
plement a flexible data connection between client and server to describe spe-
cific business objects. Excel also provides a new tool for mapping these custom
XML elements to spreadsheet cells, as shown in Figure 1.11. As with Word
2003, the native XML support enables Excel to act as a smart client for Web
Services and host intelligent XML-based documents.
Microsoft Access 2003: Access 2003 offers extended capabilities to import,
export, and work with XML data files, as shown in Figure 1.12. Many of the
new features provide a common error interface that makes it easier to find and
correct XML issues.
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 17

FIGURE 1.11 Importing an

XML document into Excel 2003.

Microsoft Office OneNote 2003: OneNote 2003 is a new application that is

designed for note taking and information management, as shown in Figure
1.13. Using OneNote, users can capture, organize, and reuse notes on a laptop
or desktop. OneNote 2003 gives you one place to capture multiple forms of in-
formation, including typed and handwritten notes, hand-drawn diagrams,
audio recordings, photos and pictures from the Web, and information from
other programs.
18 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

FIGURE 1.12 Importing an XML document into Excel 2003.

FIGURE 1.13 Note taking within OneNote 2003.

Microsoft InfoPath 2003: InfoPath 2003 is a new application designed to

streamline the process of gathering information for teams and individuals. The
structure of InfoPath allows these groups to work with a rich, dynamic forms
interface that allows the collection and distribution of structured XML data.
 Anatomy of the Microsoft Office System 2003 19

The native support of customer-defined XML, Web Services, SQL, or Access

databases allows the collected information to integrate easily with a broad
range of business processes and systems. This integration allows InfoPath to
connect seamlessly and directly to organizational information and SOA.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT INFOPATH

For the average end user, InfoPath provides a general-purpose viewer of structured
business data. Using this information, business users can collect and distribute
forms with no programming. This automatically guarantees data accuracy and ad-
herence to business requirements.
For developers, InfoPath is the power tool for building applications that view,
transform, and edit XML-based data. The native XML interface allows developers
to easily develop and implement solutions that address organization process and
workgroup collaboration scenarios, such as what we see in Figure 1.14.

FIGURE 1.14 An XML–based InfoPath 2003 form.

20 Programming Microsoft InfoPath

The organization process of gathering information is typically inefficient and

often leads to incorrect data with very little reusability. Paper-based forms are the
best example of a hard-to-use collection mechanism that provides very little flexi-
bility and integration. Many times, custom applications developed for information
gathering are expensive and difficult to maintain. The combination of these two
factors often makes data and code reuse impossible with organizations of any size.
The solution to this problem is a SOA that solves the back-end integration
issues but not the front-end data collection. InfoPath is designed to become a key
piece of this solution. The result is that InfoPath provides reduced IT costs by
allowing end users and developers to maintain form-based solutions, and XML
provides the direct integration without additional overhead or development work.
Unlike the other Office 2003 applications, XSLT is the only option for data
transformation. The structured XML data created by InfoPath is presented through
a series of XSLT transforms and based on an object model that expresses docu-
ments using Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) through a series of
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The InfoPath object model is actually derived from
the Internet Explorer model, and this provides a direct link to SOA, WSDL, and
HTTP, as shown in Figure 1.15.

FIGURE 1.15 An overview of how InfoPath works.

 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Turrets,
towers, and temples
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Turrets, towers, and temples

The great buildings of the world, as seen and
described by famous writers

Editor: Esther Singleton

Release date: February 13, 2024 [eBook #72946]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Dodd, Mead and Company,

1898

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURRETS,

TOWERS, AND TEMPLES ***
 Transcriber’s Note
Larger versions of most illustrations may be seen by right-
clicking them and selecting an option to view them separately,
or by double-tapping and/or stretching them.
Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
Turrets, Towers, and
Temples
BOOKS BY MISS SINGLETON
FAMOUS PICTURES, SCENES, AND BUILDINGS
DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS
Turrets, Towers, and Temples
Great Pictures
Wonders of Nature
Romantic Palaces and Castles
Famous Paintings
Paris—London—A Guide to the Opera
Love in Literature and Art
ST. MARK’S
 Turrets,
Towers, and Temples
The Great Buildings of the World, as
Seen and Described by Famous Writers

EDITED AND TRANSLATED

By ESTHER SINGLETON
TRANSLATOR OF “THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER”

With Numerous Illustrations

❦
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1912
 Copyright, 1898,
By Dodd, Mead and Company
 Preface
IN making the selections for this book, which is thought to be the
realization of a new idea, it has been my endeavour to bring
together descriptions of several famous buildings written by authors
who have appreciated the romantic spirit, as well as the architectural
beauty and grandeur, of the work they describe.
It would be impossible to collect within the small boundaries of a
single volume sketches and pictures of all the masterpieces of
architecture, and a vast amount of interesting literature has had to
be ignored. I have tried, however, to gather choice examples of as
many different styles of architecture as possible and to give a
description, wherever practicable, of each building’s special object of
veneration, such as the Christ of Burgos and the Cid’s coffer in the
same Cathedral; the Emerald Buddha at Wat Phra Kao, Bangkok; the
statue of Our Lady at Toledo; the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at
Canterbury; etc., as well as the special feature for which any
particular building is famous, such as the Court of Lions in the
Alhambra; the Chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey; the
Convent of the Escurial; the spiral stairway at Chambord; etc., and
also a typical scene, like the dance de los seises in the Cathedral of
Seville; and the celebration of Easter at St. Peter’s.
Ruskin says: “It is well to have not only what men have thought
and felt, but what their hands have handled and their strength
wrought all the days of their life.” It is also well to have what
sympathetic authors have written about these massive and
wonderful creations of stone which have looked down upon and
outlived so many generations of mankind.
With the exception of the Mosque of Santa Sofia, all the
translations have been made expressly for this book.
 E. S.
New York, May, 1898.
 Contents
St. Mark’s, Venice 1
John Ruskin.

The Tower ofLondon 11

William Hepworth Dixon.
The Cathedral of Antwerp 18
William Makepeace Thackeray.

The Taj Mahal, Agra 23

André Chevrillon.
The Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris 28
Victor Hugo.

The Kremlin, Moscow 38

Théophile Gautier.
The Cathedral of York 49
Thomas Frognall Dibdin.

The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem 56

Pierre Loti.

The Cathedral of Burgos 65

Théophile Gautier.
The Pyramids, Gizeh 71
Georg Ebers.
St. Peter’s, Rome 76
 Charles Dickens.
The Cathedral of Strasburg 84
Victor Hugo.

The Shway Dagohn Rangoon 92

Gwendolin Trench Gascoigne.

The Cathedral of Siena 98

John Addington Symonds.

The Town Hall of Louvain 102

Grant Allen.
The Cathedral of Seville 105
Edmondo De Amicis.
Windsor Castle 110
William Hepworth Dixon.

The Cathedral of Cologne 117

Ernest Breton.

The Palace of Versailles 126

Augustus J. C. Hare.

The Cathedral of Lincoln 132

Thomas Frognall Dibdin.

The Temple of Karnak 137

Amelia B. Edwards.

Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence 143

Charles Yriarte.
Giotto’s Campanile, Florence 147
i. Mrs. Oliphant.
ii. John Ruskin.
The House of Jacques Cœur, Bourges 152
Ad. Berty.

Wat Phra Kao, Bangkok 158

Carl Bock.

The Cathedral of Toledo 163

Théophile Gautier.

The Château de Chambord 170

Jules Loiseleur.

The Temples of Nikko 177

Pierre Loti.
The Palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh 187
David Masson.

Saint-Gudule, Brussels 193

Victor Hugo.

The Escurial, Madrid 195

Edmondo De Amicis.

The Temple of Madura 204

James Fergusson.

The Cathedral of Milan 209

Théophile Gautier.

The Mosque of Hassan, Cairo 215

Amelia B. Edwards.

The Cathedral of Trèves 221

Edward Augustus Freeman.

The Vatican, Rome 225

Augustus J. C. Hare.
The Cathedral of Amiens 234
John Ruskin.

The Mosque of Santa Sofia, Constantinople 242

Edmondo De Amicis.
Westminster Abbey, London 248
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.
The Parthenon, Athens 257
John Addington Symonds.
The Cathedral of Rouen 263
Thomas Frognall Dibdin.
The Castle of Heidelberg 269
Victor Hugo.
The Ducal Palace, Venice 278
John Ruskin.
The Mosque of Cordova 286
Edmondo De Amicis.
The Cathedral ofThrondtjem 293
Augustus J. C. Hare.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa 298
Charles Dickens.
The Cathedral ofCanterbury 301
W. H. Fremantle.
The Alhambra, Granada 308
Théophile Gautier.
 Illustrations
PAGE
St. Mark’s Italy Frontis.
The Tower of London England 14
The Cathedral of Antwerp Belgium 20
The Taj Mahal India 23
The Cathedral of Notre Dame France 30
The Kremlin Russia 40
The Cathedral of York England 49
The Mosque of Omar Palestine 58
The Cathedral of Burgos Spain 65
The Pyramids Egypt 72
St. Peter’s Italy 78
The Cathedral of Strasburg Germany 86
The Shway Dagohn Burmah 94
The Cathedral of Siena Italy 98
The Town Hall of Louvain Belgium 103
The Cathedral of Seville Spain 106
Windsor Castle England 110
The Cathedral of Cologne Germany 121
The Palace of Versailles France 126
The Cathedral of Lincoln England 132
The Temple of Karnak Egypt 139
Santa Maria del Fiore Italy 144
Giotto’s Campanile Italy 147
The House of Jacques Cœur France 155
Wat Phra Kao Siam 159
The Cathedral of Toledo Spain 164
The Château de Chambord France 172
The Temples of Nikko Japan 178
The Palace of Holyrood Scotland 187
Saint-Gudule Belgium 193
The Escurial Spain 195
The Temple of Madura India 204
The Cathedral of Milan Italy 213
The Mosque of Hassan Egypt 216
The Cathedral of Trèves Germany 221
The Vatican Italy 225
The Cathedral of Amiens France 234
The Mosque of Santa-Sofia Turkey 242
Westminster Abbey England 248
The Parthenon Greece 257
The Cathedral of Rouen France 265
The Castle of Heidelberg Germany 269
The Ducal Palace Italy 280
The Mosque of Cordova Spain 288
The Cathedral of Throndtjem Norway 293
The Leaning Tower of Pisa Italy 298
The Cathedral of Canterbury England 301
The Alhambra Spain 310
 Turrets, Towers, and Temples.

ST. MARK’S.
JOHN RUSKIN.

A YARD or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and,
glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply
moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of
vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its
side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè,
whence to the entrance into St. Mark’s Place, called the Bocca di
Piazza (mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly
destroyed, first by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will
pause at another time to examine, and then by the modernizing of
the shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling with the lower
Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Austrians. We
will push fast through them into the shadow of the pillars at the end
of the “Bocca di Piazza,” and then we forget them all; for between
those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we
advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly
forth from the level field of chequered stones; and, on each side, the
countless arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the
rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the
dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely
order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been
transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture and fluted
shafts of delicate stone.
And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered
arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square
seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it
far away;—a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a
long, low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly
of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath
into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset
with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,—
sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and
grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among
the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds
and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels,
sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across
the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden
ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like
the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden,
when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the
walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper
and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of
snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine,
Cleopatra-like, “their bluest veins to kiss”—the shadow, as it steals
back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a
receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with
interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of
acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in
the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous
chain of language and of life—angels, and the signs of heaven, and
the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth;
and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with
white arches edged with scarlet flowers,—a confusion of delight,
amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in
their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark’s Lion, lifted on a
blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests
of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into
the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the
breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell,
and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst.
Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an
interval! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for,
instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged,
drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark’s porches are full of
doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft
iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion with the
tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven
hundred years.
And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath
it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the
gateway of St. Mark’s, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a
countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian,
rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of
the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters;
nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats—not “of
them that sell doves” for sacrifice, but of vendors of toys and
caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is
almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the
middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the
Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music
jarring with the organ notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and
the sullen crowd thickening around them,—a crowd which, if it had
its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the
recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest
classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards;
and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their young eyes
full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with
cursing,—gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the
church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down
upon it continually.... Let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still
deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some
moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then
there opens before us a vast cave hewn out into the form of a Cross,
and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of
its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large
stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far-away
casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric
stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand
colours along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches or
silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the
roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with
alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming
to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured
saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the
gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded
imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms
beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and
ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them
drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the
passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and
the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and
changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved
in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of
eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and
sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of
all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised
in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in
the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense
hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines
upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to
heaven, and the inscription above her, “Mother of God,” she is not
here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always,
burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of
its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in
power, or returning in judgment.
Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At
every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various
shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the darker places
of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for
the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater
number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen
murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and
unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb
those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark’s; and hardly a
moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not
see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast
itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising
slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and
clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the
lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church as if
comforted....
It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with
its purple heather and pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a
glade of Jura forest, with its floor of anemone and moss, than a
single portico of St. Mark’s.... The balls in the archivolt project
considerably, and the interstices between their interwoven bands of
marble are filled with colours like the illuminations of a manuscript;
violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green alternately: but no green is
ever used without an intermixture of blue pieces in the mosaic, nor
any blue without a little centre of pale green; sometimes only a
single piece of glass a quarter of an inch square, so subtle was the
feeling for colour which was thus to be satisfied. The intermediate
circles have golden stars set on an azure ground, varied in the same
manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are alternately
blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles of white set in the
golden ground above and beneath them, each only about half an
inch across (this work, remember, being on the outside of the
building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue crosses
have each a pale green centre....
The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the witness of
the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its centre
and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was
little seen by the people; their contemplation was intended to be
chiefly drawn to that of the centre of the church, and thus the mind
of the worshipper was at once fixed on the main groundwork and
hope of Christianity—“Christ is risen,” and “Christ shall come.” If he
had time to explore the minor lateral chapels and cupolas, he could
find in them the whole series of New Testament history, the events
of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in their order, and
finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation; but if he only entered,
as often the common people do to this hour, snatching a few
moments before beginning the labour of the day to offer up an
ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far
as the altar screen, all the splendour of the glittering nave and
variegated dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often,
in strange contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the
lagoon, smote upon it only that they might proclaim the two great
messages—“Christ is risen,” and “Christ shall come.” Daily, as the
white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the
shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into
the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph—“Christ is
risen;” and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the
people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from
their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of
warning,—“Christ shall come.”
And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look with
some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild
blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark’s. He now perceives that it was in
the hearts of the old Venetian people far more than a place of
worship. It was at once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and
a scroll for the written word of God. It was to be to them, both an
image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold;
and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, written within
and without. And whether honoured as the Church or as the Bible,
was it not fitting that neither the gold nor the crystal should be
spared in the adornment of it; that, as the symbol of the Bride, the
building of the wall thereof should be of jasper, and the foundations
of it garnished with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the
channel of the World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist
should be true of it—“I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies,
as much as in all riches”? And shall we not look with changed
temper down the long perspective of St. Mark’s Place towards the
sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple, when we know
with what solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above the
pavement of the populous square? Men met there from all countries
of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd
swaying forever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of
delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to
them, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, that
there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy without a
price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and the
statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain
ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those
marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in
the colours of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of
them, that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of
their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,—“He shall
return, to do judgment and justice.” The strength of Venice was
given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found
her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably,
because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious
Bible. Among the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy
sculpture filled their temples with confused and hardly legible
imagery; but, for her the skill and the treasures of the East had
gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the Book-Temple
shone from afar off like the star of the Magi.
Stones of Venice (London, 1851–’3).
 THE TOWER OF LONDON.
WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON.

HALF a mile below London Bridge, on ground which was once a

bluff, commanding the Thames from St. Saviour’s Creek to St.
Olave’s Wharf, stands the Tower; a mass of ramparts, walls, and
gates, the most ancient and most poetic pile in Europe.
Seen from the hill outside, the Tower appears to be white with
age and wrinkled by remorse. The home of our stoutest kings, the
grave of our noblest knights, the scene of our gayest revels, the field
of our darkest crimes, that edifice speaks at once to the eye and to
the soul. Grey keep, green tree, black gate, and frowning
battlement, stand out, apart from all objects far and near them,
menacing, picturesque, enchaining; working on the senses like a
spell; and calling us away from our daily mood into a world of
romance, like that which we find painted in light and shadow on
Shakespeare’s page.
Looking at the Tower as either a prison, a palace, or a court,
picture, poetry, and drama crowd upon the mind; and if the fancy
dwells most frequently on the state prison, this is because the soul is
more readily kindled by a human interest than fired by an archaic
and official fact. For one man who would care to see the room in
which a council met or a court was held, a hundred men would like
to see the chamber in which Lady Jane Grey was lodged, the cell in
which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, the tower from which Sir John
Oldcastle escaped. Who would not like to stand for a moment by
those steps on which Ann Boleyn knelt; pause by that slit in the wall
through which Arthur De la Pole gazed; and linger, if he could, in
that room in which Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, searched the New
Testament together?
The Tower has an attraction for us akin to that of the house in
which we were born, the school in which we were trained. Go where
we may, that grim old edifice on the Pool goes with us; a part of all
we know, and of all we are. Put seas between us and the Thames,
this Tower will cling to us like a thing of life. It colours Shakespeare’s
page. It casts a momentary gloom over Bacon’s story. Many of our
books were written in its vaults; the Duke of Orleans’ “Poesies,”
Raleigh’s “Historie of the World,” Eliot’s “Monarchy of Man,” and
Penn’s “No Cross, No Crown.”
Even as to the length of days, the Tower has no rival among
palaces and prisons; its origin, like that of the Iliad, that of the
Sphinx, that of the Newton Stone, being lost in the nebulous ages,
long before our definite history took shape. Old writers date it from
the days of Cæsar; a legend taken up by Shakespeare and the
poets, in favour of which the name of Cæsar’s Tower remains in
popular use to this very day. A Roman wall can even yet be traced
near some parts of the ditch. The Tower is mentioned in the Saxon
Chronicle, in a way not incompatible with the fact of a Saxon
stronghold having stood upon this spot. The buildings as we have
them now in block and plan were commenced by William the
Conqueror; and the series of apartments in Cæsar’s tower,—hall,
gallery, council-chamber, chapel,—were built in the early Norman
reigns, and used as a royal residence by all our Norman kings. What
can Europe show to compare against such a tale?
Set against the Tower of London—with its eight hundred years of
historic life, its nineteen hundred years of traditional fame—all other
palaces and prisons appear like things of an hour. The oldest bit of
palace in Europe, that of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of
the time of Henry the Third. The Kremlin in Moscow, the Doge’s
Palazzo in Venice, are of the Fourteenth Century. The Seraglio in
Stamboul was built by Mohammed the Second. The oldest part of
the Vatican was commenced by Borgia, whose name it bears. The