Murillo was impelled by a desire for realism. There is much of the spirit and manner of Zurbarán in his early pictures: “San Leandro and San Buenaventura,” two early “Virgins and the Child,” and the “Adoration of the Shepherds,” all in the Museum, are examples. The same careful characterisation meets us in the much later “Last Supper” of Santa Maria la Blanca, his most truthful Scriptural scene. Then his portraits, such as those of SS. Leandro and Isidore in the Sacristia Mayor of the Cathedral, or that of St Dorothy in the Sacristia de los Cálices, are serious studies after nature. Once or twice in his landscapes we find a sincerity that surprises us. But a painter must be judged by the main output of his art. And the truth is that, with a natural gift that certainly was great, added to unusual facility, Murillo’s personality was commonplace. His self-assurance amazes us. His emotion, neither profound nor simple, but always perfectly satisfied, perfectly happy, exactly fitted him to give voice to the common sentiments of his age. He did create a sort of life, but his compositions are the work of his hand rather than of his soul. All his Saints, his Madonnas--pose unthinkingly in the subtly interwoven light he knew so well how to paint, living only in the moment which their conventionalised attitudes perpetuate. You do not realise them as personalities greeting you from the canvas like the intense, painful faces of El Greco, or the wonderful creations of Velazquez; if you remember them at all it is part of a pleasing picture. This is the reason why these religious idylls have lost so much of their meaning; their over-statement of sweetness cloys. Murillo gives us one aspect of Andalusia; it was left for El Greco, Ribera, Velazquez, and Goya to interpret Spain to the world. THE OLD ROMAN CITY. Moor and Spaniard have, between them, effaced almost all traces of the ancient Hispalis or Romula, the little Rome; but the sister-city of Italica, early deserted by man, has been dealt not too harshly with by time. Its remains--a Spanish league to the north-west of Seville--still attract the artist and the archæologist. There, where the wretched hamlet of Santi Ponce now stands, was in the dim past the Iberian village of Sancios. Scipio the Elder, after his long and victorious campaign, passed this way, and selected the spot as a place of rest and refreshment for his war-worn veterans. “Relicto utpote pacata regione valido præsidio, Scipio milites omnes vulneribus debiles in unam urbem compulit, quam ab Italia Italicam nominavit,” says Appian. Señor de Madrazo remarks that this must have been the first Latin-speaking town founded outside Italy. It was not at first a municipium, but a place for meeting and council of the Roman citizens. The municipal status it owed to Augustus. Subsequently, its citizens petitioned to be classed as a colony of Rome.