Not far from this is a picture of the Vision of St. Bernard, exhibiting marvellous skill. The head is one of those prodigies of the painter’s art, that is to haunt the memory in after years. Like the “Communion of St. Jerome,” in the Vatican, to see it is to have it photographed in the mysterious chamber of the brain. Raphael painted one of his most remarkable pictures, “The Christ sinking under His Cross,” for a convent in Sicily. It is said by some to be a greater work than the “Transfiguration,” which is held to be the finest picture existing. To me, this in Madrid is the most impressive, the most nearly perfect. It is taken at the moment when Simon, the Cyrenian, attempts to lift the crushing cross, while the patient sufferer, with a face radiant with love and holy resignation, says to the weeping women near, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.” Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V. is sublime,—like a majestic mountain, or a mighty rock in a desert. The solemn grandeur of the picture is indescribable. The man and his times, a whole volume of biography and history, on one grand tableau, seen and remembered. Perhaps it would be as well to forget the women that Titian seems to have been fond of painting. Two of them here are not less perfect, many think they are more perfect, than the Venus of the Tribune. In other times the zealous priesthood condemned these nudities to the flames, with heretics, as corrupters of the people; but some have been saved. The picture that I desired more than any other to carry away and cherish as a life-long treasure, is one by Correggio. After his resurrection the Saviour appeared to Mary, and she supposed it was the gardener; but Jesus, turning, said to her, “MARY,”—and the truth burst upon her, it was her Lord! That moment of transport is the time the artist has seized for the representation of the kneeling and rejoicing Mary and Jesus. The love and tenderness in his look, the joy and reverence in hers! What beauty, too: how the yellow hair falls in living lustre on her fair shoulders, and her eyes speak the full expression of her yearning soul. “Jesus said unto her, ‘MARY.’”