Your Murray’s Guide tells you that this chapel of the Bardi della Libertà, in which you stand, is covered with frescoes by Giotto; that they were whitewashed, and only laid bare in 1853; that they were painted between 1296 and 1304; that they represent scenes in the life of St. Francis; and that on each side of the window are paintings of St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Louis King of France, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and St. Claire,--“all much restored and repainted.” Under such recommendation the frescoes are not likely to be much sought after; and accordingly, as I was at work in the chapel this morning, Sunday 6th September, 1874, two nice-looking Englishmen, under guard of their valet de place, passed the chapel without so much as looking in. You will perhaps stay a little longer in it with me, good reader, and find out gradually where you are. Namely, in the most interesting and perfect little Gothic chapel in all Italy--so far as I know or can hear. There is no other of the great time which has all its frescoes in their place. The Arena, though far larger, is of earlier date--not pure Gothic, nor showing Giotto’s full force. The lower chapel at Assisi is not Gothic at all, and is still only of Giotto’s middle time. You have her developed Gothic, with Giotto in his consummate strength, and nothing lost, in form, of the complete design. [Illustration: SANTA CROCE, ITALY.] By restoration--judicious restoration, as Mr. Murray usually calls it--there is no saying how much you have lost. Putting the question of restoration out of your mind, however, for a while, think where you are, and what you have got to look at. You are in the chapel next the high altar of the great Franciscan Church of Florence. A few hundred yards west of you, within ten minutes’ walk, is the Baptistery of Florence. And five minutes’ walk, west of that is the great Dominican Church of Florence, Santa Maria Novella. Get this little bit of geography, and architectural fact, well into your mind. There is the little octagon Baptistery in the middle; here, ten minutes’ walk east of it, the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross; there, five minutes’ walk west of it, the Dominican Church of St. Mary. Now, that little octagon Baptistery stood where it now stands (and was finished, though the roof has been altered since) in the Eighth Century. It is the central building of Etrurian Christianity,--of European Christianity. From the day it was finished, Christianity went on doing her best, in Etruria and elsewhere, for four hundred years,--and her best seemed to have come to very little,--when there rose up two men who vowed to God it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith; of which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have a fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel:--which two buildings you have also within sight.