Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/176

158 portraits much. Busts of Roman emperors great fun. Such bad heads! The Julias, Faustinas, and Agrippinas, with hair dressed like a big sponge on the brow, were so comical I was never tired of looking at them. I see now where the present bedlamite style of coiffure comes from.

"The philosophers, &c, were very interesting. Cicero so like Wendell Phillips that I could hardly help clapping my hands and saying, 'Hear! hear!'

"Gave A. a sad blow by saying the Campanile looked like an inlaid work-box. Did not admire it half so much as I did a magnificent stone pine. Best of all, saw in the old Monastery of St. Marco many works of Fra Angelico. I love his pictures, for he put his pious heart into them, and one sees and feels it, and I don't care if his saints do have six joints to their fingers and impossible noses. A very dear picture of 'Providenza,'—poor monks at an empty table and angels bringing bread.

"Angelico's picture of heaven was more to my mind than any I have seen. No stern, avenging God, no silly Madonna, but happy souls playing like children, or singing and piping with devout energy.

"Relics of Savonarola,—his cell, bust, beads,