The two great sights are the Museo and the Armeria; the latter is said to be the best collection of arms in Europe, but somehow I always managed to want to go there too early or too late, and, after divers mistakes, in the end did not see it at all. Of the Museo it is difficult to speak with too much enthusiasm: the number of pictures is enormous, and it seemed to me that there was a larger proportion than is usual of very first-rate works. Its deficiency is mainly in early pictures--Italian, German, and Spanish. The early Italian schools are represented by one Angelico da Fiesole only: this is a beautiful example; an Annunciation, with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden on the left of the picture, and five subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin in the predella. Among these, the Marriage of the Blessed Virgin has a close resemblance to Perugino’s and Raffaelle’s celebrated pictures. I could see no examples of Francia or Perugino, not to speak of earlier men; whilst the few early German works were none of them of any great interest. On the other hand, the pictures by Titian, Velasquez, Raffaelle, Veronese, Tintoret, Murillo, and others of the great masters of their age, are numerous and magnificent beyond description. Velasquez and Titian are both so grand that I hardly knew which to admire the most; of the former, perhaps on the whole the most charming work is the portrait of Prince Balthazar, a noble boy, galloping forward gallantly on his pony; whilst of the Titians, I think the most striking was a weird-looking portrait of Charles V. in armour on horseback. Murillo of course is in great force; he has frequent representations of the Assumption, always treated in the same way: his work has a religious spirit wanting in the manlier work of Titian and Veronese, but yet not the true religious spirit so much as a sentimental affectation of it. Of Ribera--better known in England as Spagnoletto--there are a great many examples, generally disagreeable portraits of emaciated saints in distorted attitudes, and a horrible elaboration of ghastliness. Juan Juanes, an earlier Spanish painter, is much more agreeable, and he seems to have been largely inspired by Perugino and his school; a series of five subjects from the life of St. Stephen are perhaps the most interesting of his works here.