The picture _Las Lanzas_ (“The Lances”); the equestrian portraits of kings, princes and others, in which these personages appear dressed in hunting costume; those of the buffoons of the Court; the _Scenes of the Chase_ in the mountains of El Pardo; and some others of a different type, such as the _Christ on the Cross_, in the Prado Museum, make up the tale of his output after his brief stay in Italy, and compose what critics have called the second style of Velázquez, more ample and grand than that of his youth, and, as time advances, enriching all the works which come from his brush with those definite grey harmonies which are occasionally almost silvery in tone, so characteristic and so unmistakable. The painter was for a second time in Italy in the period of his maturity. He then painted the portrait of _Pope Innocent X_, and executed a bust of _Juán de Pareja_, which was on view in the exhibition at Burlington House. Returning soon afterwards to Spain, he there addressed himself to the accomplishment of his greater works, which truly reveal a superior art, somewhat enigmatical in its very simplicity, a sublime style which at first sight does not seem to require much comprehension and the view-point of which has given to the Spanish School of all times, as well as to other schools, rich legacies, excellent examples and notable fruits. There belongs to this epoch of his artistry the portraits of kings and princes, the second series of the court dwarfs, even more rich and astonishing than those of the period of his middle years, some religious pictures, mythological works and, lastly, the two great works _Las Hilanderas_ (“The Spinners”) and _Las Meninas_ (“The Maids of Honour”) (Plates X. and XI.), supreme monuments of a school, models of synthetic art, of astonishing simplicity in their composition, of delicate harmony, eloquent of the study of values, masterpieces, in short, of sublime painting, which, of an apparent modesty, are, notwithstanding, magical works, spontaneous creations, which shew neither exertion, weakness, nor weariness, and which seem to us the result of an art serene and calm, contrary to the influences of great idealistic conceptions, but which, essentially objective, reproduce the natural with a truth which is unsurpassed. In the exhibition at Burlington House Velázquez was not adequately represented. But there were reasons for this. The undoubted pictures from his brush which are privately owned in England, and to some of which we have already alluded, are well-known and have figured in recent exhibitions of Spanish art, so that it was not deemed necessary to expose them again; while of those in Spain, the greater part is housed in the Prado Museum (and could not of course be sent to England), and those belonging to private persons are very scarce.