by any of her great masters. Murillo's beggar-boys are almost the only pictures which answer to the "picaresque" side of Spanish literature till the advent of Goya and of Fortuny. The expressions of the plastic arts of Spain are neither so idealized as the Italian, nor so intellectual as the German, nor so sensuous as the Flemish, nor so realistic as those of the Dutch school; but they are far more powerful in colouring and truer and deeper in feeling than are those of the French school. The Spaniard painted the types and characters of his native land, but he delighted to throw around them the magic lights that never were on sea or land; through the intense darkness of his asceticism ever peers a ray of heavenly light; but the type of the figure is ever Spanish; never, in the best days of art, was inspiration sought from a reproduction of the forms of pagan classical ism, or from a mere eclecticism of beauty. Though the drawing is correct, we feel that it has not been learned from a mere study of ancient statuary or from anatomical preparations, but from the living type and figure. Here and there we find painters like Juande Joannes (Vicente Macip) and Domenico Theotocopuli (El Greco), who might have lived on Italian soil; but generally the tone of Spanish painters is local and unmistakable. Through all his styles--the _frio_ (cold), _calido_ (warm), and the _vaporoso_ (mystic)--Murillo remained faithful to Spanish, nay, to Andalusian models; none can mistake his saints and virgins, his boys and beggars, as belonging to any other race. He does not tell the wondrous story of the Incarnation with so grand an appeal to the intellect as do the Italian painters. The "woman blessed throughout all generations" does not look out to us from his canvas from the serene heights of perfect woman-hood which has found its crown in the mystery of the Motherhood of the Son of God, but in younger and more girlish forms he paints for us the maiden rapt in adoring ecstasy as she experiences the wonders of love divine, bathed in the golden light of a rapture which none but the very purest can ever feel, and which the very angels are represented as reverencing.