ad passed by since Giotto lived and worked in
Florence, and in the same hilly country where he used to tend his sheep
another great painter was born.

Many other artists had come and gone, and had added their golden links
of beauty to the chain of Art which bound these years together. Some
day you will learn to know all their names and what they did. But now
we will only single out, here and there, a few of those names which are
perhaps greater than the rest. Just as on a clear night, when we look
up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all
the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily
recognised--the Plough, or the Great Bear, as they shine with a clear
steady light against the background of a thousand lesser stars.

The name by which this second great painter is known is Fra Angelico,
but that was only the name he earned in later years. His baby name was
Guido, and his home was in a village close to where Giotto was born.

He was not a poor boy, and did not need to work in the fields or tend
the sheep on the hillside. Indeed, he might have soon become rich and
famous, for his wonderful talent for painting would have quickly
brought him honours and wealth if he had gone out into the world. But
instead of this, when he was a young man of twenty he made up his mind
to enter the convent at Fiesole, and to become a monk of the Order of
Saint Dominic.

Every brother, or frate, as he is called, who leaves the world and
enters the life of the convent is given a new name, and his old name is
never used again. So young Guido was called Fra Giovanni, or Brother
John. But it is not by that name that he is known best, but that of Fra
Angelico, or the angelic brother--a name which was given him afterwards
because of his pure and beautiful life, and the heavenly pictures which
he painted.

With all his great gifts in his hands, with all the years of youth and
pleasure stretching out green and fair before him, he said good-bye to
earthly joys, and chose rather to serve his Master Christ in the way he
thought was right.

The monks of St. Dominic were the great preachers of those days--men
who tried to make the world better by telling people what they ought to
do, and teaching them how to live honest and good lives. But there are
other ways of teaching people besides preaching, and the young monk who
spent his time bending over the illuminated prayer-book, seeing with
his dreamy eyes v