post from the Church, but remained closeted with his books and scholars; and we can conceive what his horror would be could he view this apotheosis.  On the ceiling is a quaint rendering of the walking on the water, S. Peter’s failure being watched from the ship with the utmost closeness by the other disciples, but attracting no notice whatever from an angler, close by, on the shore.  The chapel is desolate and unkempt, and those of us who are not Dominicans are not sorry to leave it and look for the simple sweetness of the Giottos.

These are to be found, with some difficulty, on the walls of the niche where the tomb of the Marchese Ridolfo stands.  They are certainly very simple and telling, and I advise every one to open the “Mornings in Florence” and learn how the wilful magical pen deals with them; but it would be a pity to give up Ghirlandaio because Giotto was so different, as Ruskin wished.  Room for both.  One scene represents the meeting of S. Joachim and S. Anna outside a mediaeval city’s walls, and it has some pretty Giottesque touches, such as the man carrying doves to the Temple and the angel uniting the two saints in friendliness; and the other is the Birth of the Virgin, which Ruskin was so pleased to pit against Ghirlandaio’s treatment of the same incident.  Well, it is given to some of us to see only what we want to see and be blind to the rest; and Ruskin was of these the very king.  I agree with him that Ghirlandaio in both his Nativity frescoes thought little of the exhaustion of the mothers; but it is arguable that two such accouchements might with propriety be treated as abnormal—­as indeed every painter has treated the birth of Christ, where the Virgin, fully dressed, is receiving the Magi a few moments after.  Ruskin, after making his deadly comparisons, concludes thus genially of the Giotto version—­“If you can be pleased with this, you can see Florence.  But if not, by all means amuse yourself there, if you can find it amusing, as long as you like; you can never see it.”

The S. Maria Novella habit is one to be quickly contracted by the visitor to Florence:  nearly as important as the S. Croce habit.  Both churches are hospitable and, apart from the cloisters, free and eminently suited for dallying in; thus differing from the Duomo, which is dark, and S. Lorenzo, where there are payments to be made and attendants to discourage.

An effort should be made at S. Maria Novella to get into the old cloisters, which are very large and indicate what a vast convent it once was.  But there is no certainty.  The way is to go through to the Palaestra and hope for the best.  Here, as I have said in the second chapter, were lodged Pope Eugenius and his suite, when they came to the Council of Florence in 1439.  These large and beautiful green cloisters are now deserted.  Through certain windows on the left one may see chemists at work compounding drugs and perfumes after old Dominican recipes, to be sold at the Farmacia in the Via della Scala close by.  The great refectory has been turned into a gymnasium.