The twenty-eight scenes in the history of St Francis are in the upper church, and in these we see again Giotto's noblest art in the harmonious grouping and the fluidity of his colour. The Cathedral of San Rufino is a handsome church. Here St Francis was baptised, and in this edifice he preached. The father of the saint was a woollen merchant, and his shop was in the Via Portica. The house still stands, and may be recognised by its highly decorated portal. This was not the birthplace of St Francis, for the Chiesa Nuova, built in 1615, covers the site of the house. In the Church of St Clare you are shown the "remains" of Saint Clare, in a crypt, lying in a glass case. When Goethe was in Assisi, the building that interested him more than any other was the Temple of Minerva, built in the time of Augustus. "At last we reached what is properly the old town, and behold before my eyes stood the noble edifice, the first complete memorial of antiquity that I had ever seen.... Looking at the façade, I could not sufficiently admire the genius-like identity of design which the architects have here as elsewhere maintained. The order is Corinthian, the inter-columnar spaces being somewhat above the two modules. The bases of the columns, and the plinths seem to rest on pedestals, but it is only an appearance." Goethe concludes his description: "The impression which the sight of this edifice left upon me is not to be expressed, and will bring forth imperishable fruits." VENICE The very name breathes romance and spells beauty. Poets, artists, and historians without number have revealed to us the glories of this city. Dull indeed must be the perception of loveliness of form and colour in the mind of the man who is not deeply moved by the contemplation of the Stones of Venice. Yet it seems to me that no city is so difficult to describe; everything has been said, every scene painted by master hands. One's impression must read inevitably like that which has been written over and over again. And in a brief enumeration of the buildings to be seen by the visitor, how can the unhappy writer avoid the charge of baldness and inefficiency? [Illustration: VENICE, 1831. THE GRAND CANAL.] Well, then, to say that Venice is supremely beautiful among the towns of Italy is to set down a commonplace. It is a town in which the matter-of-fact man realises the meaning of romance and poetry; a town where the phlegmatic become sentimental, and the poetic are stirred to ecstasies. George Borrow wept at beholding the beauty of Seville by the Guadalquivir in the evening light. "Tears of rapture" would have filled his eyes as he gazed upon the splendours of the Grand Canal.