to seek
that blessed wood, and finding the three crosses, and in ignorance which
was that of Our Lord, commands that the dead body of a youth which is
borne by shall be touched with them all, one after another. So they find
the True Cross, for at its touch the dead rises from his bier. Then they
bear the cross before the Queen: till presently it is lost to Chosroes,
King of Persia, who took Jerusalem "in the year of Our Lord six hundred
and fifteen," and bare away with him that part of the Holy Cross which
St. Helena had left there. So he made a tower of gold and of silver,
crusted with precious stones, and set the Cross of Our Lord before him,
and commanded that he should be called God. Then Heraclius, the Emperor,
went out against him by the river of Danube, and they fought the one
with the other upon the bridge, and agreed together that the victor
should be prince of the whole Empire: and God gave the victory to
Heraclius, who bore the Cross into Jerusalem. So Agnolo Gaddi has
painted the story in the choir of S. Croce.

In the chapels on the north side of the choir there is but little of
interest. And then one is a little weary of frescoes. If we return to
the south aisle and pass through the door between the Annunciation of
Donatello and the tomb of Leonardo Bruni, we shall come into the
beautiful cloisters of Arnolfo, where there will be sunshine and the
soft sky. Here, too, is the beautiful Cappellone that Brunellesco built
for the Pazzi family, whose arms decorate the porch. Under a strange and
beautiful dome, which, as Burckhardt reminds us, Giuliano da Sangallo
imitated in Madonna delle Carceri at Prato, Brunellesco has built a
chapel in the form almost of a Greek cross. And without, before it, he
has set, under a vaulted roof, a portico borne by columns, interrupted
by a round arch. It is the earliest example, perhaps, of the new
Renaissance architecture. Very fair and surprising it is with its frieze
of angels' heads by Donatello, helped perhaps by Desiderio da
Settignano. Within, too, you come upon Donatello's work again, in the
Four Evangelists in the spandrels, and below them the Twelve Apostles.

Walking in the cloisters, you find the great ancient refectory of the
convent itself, which has here been turned into a museum, while another
part of it is used as a barracks; and indeed the finest cloister of the
Early Renaissance, one of the loveliest works of Brunellesco, has also
been given up to the army o