And the cells and cloister of San Marco,--shall I ever forget them? I went there on a spring morning (spring in Italy) when the gleaming light outside filled the cloister with a cool brightness, and studied the frescoes of Fra Angelico and loitered between the columns of the arches in the cloister proper, meditating upon the beauty of the things here gathered. Really, Italy is too beautiful. One should be a poet in soul, insatiable as to art, and he should linger here forever. Each poorest cell here has a small fresco by Fra Angelico, and the refectory, the chapter house, and the foresteria are filled with large compositions, all rich in that symbolism which is only wonderful because of the art-feeling of the master. I lingered in the cells, the small chambers once occupied by Savonarola, and meditated on the great zealot’s imaginings. In a way his dream of the destruction of the Papacy came true. Even as he preached, the Reformation was at hand, only he did not know it. Martin Luther was coming. The black cross was over Rome! And also true was his thought that the end of the old order in Italy had come. It surely had. Never afterwards was it quite the same and never would it be so again. And equally true was his vision of the red cross over Jerusalem, for never was the simple humanism of Jesus so firmly based in the minds of men as it is to-day, though all creeds and religious theories totter wearily to their ruin. Savonarola was destroyed, but not his visions or his pleas. They are as fresh and powerful to-day, as magnetic and gripping, as are any that have been made in history. It was the same with the Bargello, the tombs of the Medici, San Miniato and the basilica and monastery at Fiesole. That last, with the wind singing in the cypresses, a faint mist blowing down the valley of the Arno, all Florence lying below and the lights of evening beginning to appear, stands fixed and clear in my mind. I saw it for the last time the evening before I left. I sat on a stone bench overlooking a wonderful prospect, rejoicing in the artistic spirit of Italy which has kept fresh and clean these wonders of art, when I was approached by a brown Dominican, his feet and head bare, his body stout and comfortable. He asked for alms! I gave him a lira for the sake of Savonarola who belonged to his order and--because of the spirit of Italy, that in the midst of a changing, commercializing world still ministers to these shrines of beauty and keeps them intact and altogether lovely.