granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer, "I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of Diego Velazquez." Having lived for half his life in courts, he was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity.... No mean jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists; he could afford not only to acknowledge the merits, but to forgive the malice of his rivals. His character was of that rare and happy kind, in which high intellectual power is combined with indomitable strength of will, and a winning sweetness of temper.'" Nothing shows his character better than his treatment of Murillo, who came to Madrid, an unfriended youth, in 1640. Velazquez received him to his house, gave directions for his admission to all the galleries and for permission to copy, presented him to the king, procured him commissions, and offered him facilities for making the journey to Rome. The chief characteristics of Velazquez's art have been already incidentally alluded to. "Rejecting all influences," says Sir Frederick Burton, "alike native and foreign, and following nature alone, he succeeded in imitating the true appearances of things as seen through the atmosphere that surrounds them, with a fidelity that has never been matched. Whatever he undertook to paint, whether the human face and figure, other animals, or landscape scenery, the result in his hands was a presentment intensely individualised, and yet, at the same time, suggestive of the type." Some modern writers claim the work of Velazquez as "impressionism"--a much abused and a very ill-defined term. Certainly Velazquez, like every other great artist, painted his impressions. But his sheet-anchor was fidelity to fact; and as for his _technique_, it was only by constant observation and practice that he attained that lightness of hand, that felicity of touch, by which his later work is characterised. For a painting of the master's earliest period, see 1375. The truthfulness of Velazquez had its reward, says Ruskin, in making him distinguished also amongst all Spanish painters by the sparkling purity of his colour. "Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward of veracity of purpose.... In giving an account of anything for its own sake, the most important points are those of form. Nevertheless, the form of the object is its own attribute; special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other things round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved in the colour it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify