Tear them all down in your
imagination; fancy the vast hall with its massive pillars,--not painted
calomel-pill colour, as now, but of their native stone, with a rough,
true wood for roof,--and a people praying beneath them, strong in
abiding, and pure in life, as their rocks and olive forests That was
Arnolfo's Santa Croce. Nor did his work remain long without grace.
That very line of chapels in which we found our St. Louis shows signs
of change in temper. _They_ have no pent-house roofs, but true
Gothic vaults: we found our four-square type of Franciscan Law on one
of them.
It is probable, then, that these chapels may be later than the rest
--even in their stonework. In their decoration, they are so, assuredly;
belonging already to the time when the story of St. Francis was becoming
a passionate tradition, told and painted everywhere with delight.
And that high recess, taking the place of apse, in the centre,--see how
noble it is in the coloured shade surrounding and joining the glow of
its windows, though their form be so simple. You are not to be amused
here by patterns in balanced stone, as a French or English architect
would amuse you, says Arnolfo. "You are to read and think, under these
severe walls of mine; immortal hands will write upon them." We will go
back, therefore, into this line of manuscript chapels presently; but
first, look at the two sepulchral slabs by which you are standing.
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