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.

But your business is not at present with them; but with these two
earlier churches of Holy Cross and St. Mary. The two men who were the
effectual builders of these were the two great religious Powers and
Reformers of the thirteenth century;--St. Francis, who taught Christian
men how they should behave, and St. Dominic, who taught Christian men
what they should think. In brief, one the Apostle of Works; the other
of Faith. Each sent his little company of disciples to teach and to
preach in Florence: St. Francis in 1212; St. Dominic in 1220.

The little companies were settled--one, ten minutes' walk east of the
old Baptistery; the other five minutes' walk west of it. And after they
had stayed quietly in such lodgings as were given them, preaching and