But of all the features of this grand church, that which next to the gorgeous colour of the walls most attracted me was the wild beauty of the pavement. I know not what other word to use which quite describes the effect it produces. It is throughout arranged in the patterns common in most Opus Alexandrinum, but instead of being laid level and even, it swells up and down as though its surface were the petrified waves of the sea, on which those who embark in the ship of the church may kneel in prayer with safety, the undulating surface serving only to remind them of the stormy sea of life, and of the sea actually washing the walls of the streets and houses throughout their city. It cannot be supposed that this undulation is accidental, for had it been the consequence of a settlement of the ground we should see some marks of it in the crypt and in the walls, and some tokens of disruption in the pavement itself. And the corresponding example of Sta. Sofia, Constantinople, where we have it on record that there was an intentional symbolism in just such a floor, is conclusive as to the intention of its imitators here.
Of the mosaics with which the church is richly adorned I cannot pretend to give a complete account. They deserve a volume to themselves. As regards choice of subjects, it is noticeable that the most prominent figure is that of Our Lord, who is seated and surrounded by prophets. Below are the emblems of the four Evangelists, and the four rivers of Paradise. Whilst again in the west dome He is surrounded by the apostles and the Evangelists, and everywhere the general scheme is a lesson to those who now-a-days too often forget the relative importance or the proper order and arrangement of the divine story in the schemes they adopt for stained glass and mural decoration. As regards colour, I need not repeat what I have already said; but it may be observed that wherever modern mosaics have taken the place of old ones there at once we see a complete collapse, and a loss of all good effect. This is mainly owing, beyond doubt, to the attempt which their designers made to produce the effect of pictures, instead of thinking first and mainly of the decorative effect of their work on the building. But at the same time it is obvious that their eyes had lost all feeling for good colour, and that in attempting to draw with a certain amount of academical accuracy, they had equally lost all sense of the prime necessity in such works of simplicity of arrangement, and directness in the telling of their story. There is no part of the church in which some of the best of this sort of decoration can be studied with more ease and advantage than in the cloister on the north side of the nave. Here the mosaics are so near the eye, and the details of design and colour so fine that one is never tired of admiring them.