the refectory; and in 1437 began to build the beautiful convent we see to-day, completing it in 1443, at a cost of 36,000 ducats.  The church which was then restored has suffered many violations since, and is very different to-day from what it was at the end of the fifteenth century.  It was consecrated in 1442, on the feast of the Epiphany, by Pope Eugenius in the presence of his Cardinals.  The library, Vasari tells us, was built later.  It was vaulted above and below, and had sixty-four bookcases of cypress wood filled with most valuable books, among them later the famous collection of Niccolo Niccoli, whose debts Cosimo paid on condition that he might dispose freely of his books, which were arranged here by Thomas of Sarzana, afterwards Nicholas v.  The convent thus completed is “believed to be,” says Vasari, “the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most convenient building of its kind that can be found in Italy, thanks to the skill and industry of Michelozzo.”

Fra Angelico was nearly fifty years old when his Order took possession of S. Marco.  Already he had painted three choir books, which Cosimo so loved that he wished nothing else to be used in the convent, for, as Vasari tells us, their beauty was such that no words can do justice to it.  Born in 1387, he had entered the Order of S. Dominic in 1408 at Fiesole.  The convent into which he had come had only been founded in 1406, and as with S. Marco later, so with S. Domenico, many disputes as to the property had to be encountered, so that he had early been a traveller, going with the brethren to Foligno and later to Cortona, returning to Fiesole in 1418.  Who amid these misfortunes could have been his master?  It might seem that in the silence of the sunny cloister in the long summer days of Umbria some angel passing up the long valleys stayed for a moment beside him, so that for ever after he could not forget that vision.  And then, who knows what awaits even us too, in that valley where Blessed Angela heard Christ say, “I love thee more than any other woman in the valley of Spoleto”?  It is certainly some divinity that we find in those clouds of saints and angels, those marvellously sweet Madonnas, those majestic and touching crucifixions, that with a simplicity and sincerity beyond praise, Angelico has left up and down Italy, and not least in the convent of S. Marco.

Yes, it is a divine world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads, Christ meets His disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a traveller, and if He be not there He has but just passed by, and if He has not just passed by He is to come.  It is for Him the sun is darkened; to lighten His footsteps the moon shall rise; because His love has lightened the world men go happily, and because He is here the world is a garden.  In all that convent of S. Marco you cannot turn a corner but Christ is awaiting you, or enter a room but His smile changes your heart, or linger on the threshold but He bids you enter in, or eat at midday but you see Him on the Cross, and hear, “Take, eat; this is My Body, which was given for you.”