and maids of honour, hounds and children, lords and ladies, pictures and furniture, are all introduced into this remarkable picture, with such success as to make many judges pronounce it to be Velasquez's masterpiece, and Luca Giordano to christen it "the theology of painting." The Escurial, from whose galleries and cloisters we have been thus lured by the greater glory of Velasquez, in 1656 demanded his presence to arrange a large collection of pictures, forty-one of which came from the dispersed and abused collection of the only real lover of the fine arts who has sat on England's throne--that martyr-monarch whom the pencil of Vandyck, and the pens of Lovelace, Montrose, and Clarendon, have immortalised, though their swords and counsels failed to preserve his life and crown. In 1659 the cross of Santiago was formally conferred on this "king of painters, and painter of kings;" and on St Prosper's day, in the Church of the Carbonera, he was installed knight of that illustrious order, the noblest grandees of Spain assisting at the solemn ceremonial. The famous meeting on the Isle of Pheasants, so full of historic interest, between the crowns and courts of Spain and France, to celebrate the nuptials of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, was destined to acquire an additional though melancholy fame, as the last appearance of the great painter in public, and the possible proximate cause of his death. To him, as aposentador-mayor, were confided all the decorations and arrangements of this costly and fatiguing pageant: he was also to find lodging on the road for the king and the court; and some idea of the magnitude of his official cares may be derived from the fact, that three thousand five hundred mules, eighty-two horses, seventy coaches, and seventy baggage-waggons, formed the train that followed the monarch out of Madrid. On the 28th of June the court returned to Madrid, and on the 6th of August its inimitable painter expired.