the very feeblest light only,--in what the French would express by
their excellent word 'lueur,'--I am able to understand something of the
characters of Zoroaster, Aristotle, and Justinian. But this only
increases in me the reverence with which I ought to stand before the
work of a painter, who was not only a master of his own craft, but so
profound a scholar and theologian as to be able to conceive this scheme
of picture, and write the divine law by which Florence was to live.
Which Law, written in the northern page of this Vaulted Book, we will
begin quiet interpretation of, if you care to return hither, to-morrow
morning.




THE FIFTH MORNING.

THE STRAIT GATE.


As you return this morning to St. Mary's, you may as well observe--the
matter before us being concerning gates,--that the western facade of the
church is of two periods. Your Murray refers it all to the latest of these;
--I forget when, and do not care;--in which the largest flanking columns,
and the entire effective mass of the walls, with their riband mosaics and
high pediment, were built in front of, and above, what the barbarian
renaissance designer chose to leave of the pure old Dominican church. You
may see his ungainly jointings at the pedestals of the great columns,
running through the pretty, parti-coloured base, which, with the 'Strait'
Gothic doors, and the entire lines of the fronting and flanking tombs
(where not restored by the Devil-begotten brood of modern Florence), is