over half the Continent, and even in steady England grave merchants and wealthy tradesmen are counselling together on how little their sovereign can be clothed and fed, and all things are being brought to the vulgar test of _L. s. d._, it is pleasant to turn to the artistic annals of a once mighty empire like Spain, and see how uniformly, for more than five hundred years, its monarchs have been the patrons, always munificent, generally discriminating, of the fine arts--how, from the days of Isabella the Catholic, to those of Isabella the Innocent, the Spanish sceptre has courted, not disdained, the companionship of the pencil and the chisel. Mr Stirling has enriched his pages with many an amusing anecdote illustrative of this royal love of art, and suggestive, alas! of the painful reflection, that the future annalist of the artists of England will find great difficulty in scraping together half-a-dozen stories of a similar kind. With the one striking exception of Charles I., we know not who among our sovereigns can be compared, as a patron of art, to any of the Spanish sovereigns, from Charles V. of the Austrian to Charles III. of the Bourbon race. Lord Hervey has made notorious George II's ignorance and dislike of art. Among the many noble and kingly qualities of his grandson, we fear a love and appreciation of art may not be reckoned; and although, in his intercourse with men of genius, George IV. was gracious and generous, what can be said in favour of his taste and discernment? The previous life of William IV., the mature age at which he ascended the throne, and the troublous character of his reign, explain why art received but slight countenance from the court of the frank and noble-hearted Sailor Prince; but we turn with hope to the future. The recent proceedings in the Court of Chancery have made public a fact, already known to many, that her Majesty wields with skilful hand a graceful graver, and the Christmas plays acted at Windsor are a satisfactory proof that English art and genius are not exiled from England's palaces. The professors, then, of that art which Velasquez and Rubens, Murillo and Vandyck practised, shall yet see that the Crown of England is not only in ancient legal phrase, "the Fountain of Honour," but that it loves to direct its grateful streams in their honoured direction. Free was the intercourse, unfettered the conversation, independent the relations, between Titian and Charles V., Velasquez and Philip IV.; let us hope that Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, will yet witness a revival of those palmy days of English art, when Inigo Jones, and Vandyck, and Cowley, Waller, and Ben Jonson, shed a lustre on the art-loving court of England!