of a juggler, phrases such as "lofty in
feeling," "good motive," "subdued tone,"
"want of balance;" conventional phrases
which I have generally found, though much
used by dealers and other destroyers and
manufacturers, to take the place of sense.
Now he springs at the hapless picture, rubs
his nose against it (to test, I suppose, the
texture), makes a leap back, rolls his hand
into the shape of a spy-glass, smiles, and then
all at once turns away disgusted, exclaiming,
"Harmoniously broken tones: but the execution
note—no; note plastic anofe!"

I look at the picture, but not quite knowing
what the German critic means by plastic,
or what broken tones are in a picture that
seems an emanation—not a building up of
slow thought and hand labour, I turn from
the Herr—who is absorbed now in what he
calls the "broad and solid execution" of a
grim black-visaged saint by Clavijo—to the
wonderful napkin-picture, a little square
Virgin and Child, called by the Sevillans
LA SERVILLETA, because it was painted by
Murillo for a cook or servitor of the Capucin
convent, who had been attentive to him at
the refectory-table, and who begged a
keepsake of him at parting.

"It is in his second manner!" roars
Schwartzenlicht, jealous of my praise of the
divine mother and the happy crowing child
struggling on her lap, as if longing to be petted
by the painter, just as the model-child probably
did as the dark, keen-eyed man eyed its little
kicking limbs, and struck them in on the
napkin. "Too realistic," says Schwartzenlicht,
making a face at the picture; "of too predominant
a hot tone—quite fiery in the browns."

It certainly is a little hot, and Murillo has
used, perhaps from haste or the mannerism
of the moment, too much of that brown which
the Andalusian painters, then and now,
manufacture by burning the bones saved from the
olla, just as the Valencian school imitate the
purple of their mulberry-gardens. But, then,
who but a pedant could avoid being charmed
with the sweet temper and divine suavity of
the expression, the homeliness and yet the
religion of the whole scene?

"The flesh tones too red!" shouts Schwartzenlicht,
storming about before the picture.
"Mein Gott! you should see Cornalioose—
that, sapperment! vos a bainter!"

Leaving him busy taking notes of "A Dead
Christ," with corpse face and grinning yellow
teeth, showing through the mirk midnight of
a more than Caravaggio horror, I roam
on to the nosegay of pictures of this
compound of Greuze and Raphael, this last
religious painter of Europe, passing through
all grades of Murillo's three manners—the
Frio (cold), the Calido (hot), and the Vaporoso,
or vaporous. Presently I and Chiaroscuro,
as I call the German, will go on to the
Caridad, or hospital alms-house, out on the
walls near the river to see the great Seville
painter's great pictures—"The Thirst " and
"The Loaves and Fishes," all but the two
little panels of Saint John and the Infant
Saviour, left by the French robber, Soult, of
the eleven great pictures painted for the
chapel, by Murillo.

I am entranced as I look on the " Saint
Felix de Cantaliicio," a vaporoso picture—
Schwartzenlicht, breaking out every now
and then with phrases such as "full and
marrowy execution," "harmonious tone,"
"speaking action;" alternating with a hailstorm
of critical abuse, as "bad in motive,"
"no silvery tones," "no juiciness;" so that
you really do not know at first whether he is
talking of a pudding, a pice of plate, the
coachman who drove us from the hotel, or a
currant-pie.

This, Saint Felix, the Spaniards say, was
painted with milk and blood, "con leche y
sangre;" if you prick it, it would bleed;
the child has fed on roses. The old saint, if
I remember right, is on his knees to the
little unconscious child, who is innocent and
playful as any bantling can be. And
while the little creature, about whom there is
an air of divinity and command, expressed,
we know not how, is painted with such
evident tenderness and love, the aged saint,
whose flesh is sunk and ribbed and grey, is a
model of intellectual, worn old age. The
features, though wrung and storm-beaten,
are most refined and beautiful—good for such
a man have been the warm summer twilight
spent in the cell, and the pacings in violet-scented convent-gardens. We take this as the
type of the good and intellectual monk. This
vaporous, melting manner of Murillo he took
up late in life: just before his fatal fall from
the scaffold, when he was hurried by want of
time, and was induced to imitate.

I admire Murillo's two Spansih maidens,
Saints Justina and Rufina, the guardian saints
of the Giralda, standing at either side. They
are merely those clear, brown-faced,
black-haired girls you still see in the Seville streets,
or nursing children at hotel-windows with
red roses stuck coquettishly over their left
ears. The pipkins, green and buff, lying at
their feet, show they were potters' daughters.
They are perfectly painted with clean, gritty,
creamy texture, and sharp cut shadows.

Except as a picture of two pretty peasant-girls,
this work had no interest for me; but
my German backer-up told me (he never
cares about subjects) that it was a grand
Calido, forcible yet tender, and Mein Gott,
vary, vary (he shook his fore-finger before his
nose to express the subtle meaning of this)—
blank. There certainly never was a painter
who, without much imagination and telling no
story, could yet vision his eyes with such pure
love, and make lips so parting with words of
prayer as Murillo.

On I went through the Murillo room,
leaving my critical friend to revel in seas of
Polancos, Valdez Reals, Varelas, Vasquez,
and other unknown nonentities, including the