The extraordinary power of Velasquez lay in the sure freedom of his execution, and in this he was equal to Titian. He was besides a master of balance, and so every portrait he painted is one complete whole, and has exactly the effect that a portrait should have--to direct the mind of the observer to the subject, and away altogether from the painter. But these high qualities as portrait painters do not place Rembrandt and Velasquez on a level with Raphael, and Michelangelo, and Correggio. Whatever the individual opinion, it is impossible to move aside from the long path of experience and the laws dependent upon natural functions, and so long as the world lasts, a work of ideal beauty, whether it be a Madonna by Raphael, a Prophet by Michelangelo, or a symbolical figure by Fragonard, will live in general estimation, which is the only test of high beauty, far above portraits from life and scenes of every day labour, however they may be painted. The beauty of the one is eternal and exalting; and of the other, sympathetic and more or less passive. The appreciation of Raphael and Michelangelo is universal, spontaneous, emphatic; of Rembrandt and Velasquez, sometimes imperative, but usually deliberative and cultivated. In fact it is only amongst a section of cultivated people, that is to say, a small percentage of the community, that Rembrandt and Velasquez are given a status which is not, and cannot be, accorded them if we adhere to the natural and time-honoured standards of judgment accepted by the first artists and philosophers known to the world since art emerged from the prehistoric shade. To place these artists above, or on a level with, the Italian artists named, is to cast from their pedestals Homer, Phidias, Praxiteles, Apelles, Shakespeare, Dante, and every other admittedly sublime genius in art of whom we have record. Another baneful result of Impressionism is the attempt to raise landscape to a higher level in art than that to which it is properly entitled. This is perhaps a natural consequence of the elevation of colour at the expense of form, for the movement is based upon new methods of colouring, and the significance of colour is vastly greater in landscape than in any other branch of art. Elsewhere the disabilities of the landscape painter are pointed out, and it will be seen that fixed and unalterable restrictions compel an extreme limitation to his work. It is because of these restrictions that the very greatest artists have refrained from paying close attention to this branch of art as a separate department.