A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD. 259 



must therefore have been always the natural place from 

 which to command the plain of Arno. A little above 

 and a little below Florence gorges once more hem the 

 river in. So that the plain of Florence (as we call it 

 nowadays), the plain of Fiesole, as it once was, formed 

 at the beginning a little natural principality by itself, of 

 which Fiesole was the obvious capital and stronghold. 



For in order to understand Fiesole aright, we must 

 always manage in our own minds to get rid entirely of 

 that beautiful mushroom growth, Florence, and to think 

 only of the most ancient epoch. While we are in 

 Florence itself, to be sure, it seems to us always, by 

 comparison with our modern English towns, that 

 Florence is a place of immemorial antiquity. It was 

 civilized when Britain was a den of thieves. While in 

 feudal England Edward I. was summoning his barons to 

 repress the rising of William Wallace, in Florence, 

 already a great commercial town, Arnolfo di Cambio had 

 received the sublime orders of the Signoria to construct 

 for the Duomo ' the most sumptuous edifice that human 

 invention could desire or human labour execute,' and had 

 carried out those orders with consummate skill. 

 While Edward III. was dreaming of his lawless 

 filibustering expeditions into France, Giotto was 

 encrusting the face of his glorious belfry with that 

 magnificent decoration of many-coloured marbles which 

 makes northern churches look so cold and grey and 

 barbaric by comparison. While Englishmen were 

 burning Joan of Arc at Rouen, Fra Angelico was 

 adorning the walls of San Marco with those rapt saints 

 and those spotless Madonnas. Even the very back 



