eBooks Base 2000

The most of these were modern, and recorded the
names of persons of no particular note. Other monumental slabs were
inlaid with the pavement itself. Two or three Dominican monks, belonging
to the convent, passed in and out, while we were there, in their white
habits.
After going round three sides, we came to the fourth, formed by the wall
of the church, and heard the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell
down before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found ourselves in
the ancient chapter-house, a large interior formed by two great pointed
arches crossing one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of the
walls were entirely covered with frescos that are rich even now, and must
have glowed with an inexpressible splendor, when fresh from the artists'
hands, five hundred years ago. There is a long period, during which
frescos illuminate a church or a hall in a way that no other adornment
can; when this epoch of brightness is past, they become the dreariest
ghosts of perished magnificence.


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