st, and to talk for a few minutes about Fra
Angelico, the painter-monk, whose name has rendered historic every spot
on which he lived.

Mr. Sumner told them very briefly how two young men--brothers, hardly
more than boys--had come hither one day from the country over yonder,
the same country where Giotto had lived when a child, about one hundred
years before, and had become monks in this monastery. "They took the
names of Giovanni and Benedetto; and Giovanni, or John, as it is in
English, was afterward called Fra Angelico by his brethren because his
life was so holy, or because, as some say, he painted angels more pure
and beautiful than have ever been pictured before or since. He lived
here many years before he was transferred with his brethren to the
monastery of San Marco down in Florence, and painted several pictures in
this church, only a part of one of which is remaining. Little did the
young monk think, as he painted here in humility, that one day
emissaries from the great unknown world would come hither, cut his
frescoes out of the walls, and bear them away to foreign art galleries,
there to be treasured beyond all price."

They went into the church to give a look at the remaining picture over
the altar in the choir, a _Virgin with Saints and Angels_, the lower
part, or predella, of which is now in the National Gallery, London; but
Mr. Sumner said they must not stay long, for this was not the object of
the day. Since, however, Fra Angelico was to be their next subject of
study, he wished them to know all about him they possibly could before
going to San Marco to really study his pictures.

Lingering on the terrace outside, they looked at the lovely Villa Landor
close at hand, where the English poet, Walter Savage Landor, spent
several years. Here Malcom quoted, in a quietly impressive way:--

"From France to Italy my steps I bent,
And pitcht at Arno's side my household tent.
Six years the Medicean Palace held
My wandering Lares; then they went afield,
Where the hewn rocks of Fiesole impend
O'er Doccia's dell, and fig and olive blend."

"How did you come to know that?" asked Margery, the usual poetry quoter.

"I didn't have to go far for it. I came across it in my 'Hare's
Florence,' and I rather think the quaint fancy of the _Lares_ 'going
afield' caught my attention so that I cannot lose the words."

"It is easier to think how one must write poetry in such a lovely spot
than how