codexes. He tells us of five hundred scudi given to Lorenzo Valle with a
pretty speech that the price was below his merits, but that eventually he
should have more liberal pay; of fifteen hundred scudi given to Guerroni
for a translation of the _Iliad_, and so forth. It is like a bookseller
of the present day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of
the earliest known. But Pope Nicholas, like most other patrons of his
time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that it would become a
usual subject of study, so that his translations were precious to him,
the chief way of making his treasures of any practical use.

The greater part, alas! of all his splendor has passed away. One pure and
perfect glory, the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by the tender
hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of that grand
painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the
good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there could not
have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems to have been brought to
Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under Nicholas, in two or three years
of gentle labor, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to
enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicholas. He did something to
reestablish or decorate almost all the great basilicas. It is feared--but
here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring
such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters--that
the destruction of St. Peter's, afterward ruthlessly carried out by
succeeding popes, was in his plan, on the pretext, so constantly
employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient
building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all
events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He
began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a
preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much toward
the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre,