The splendid artistic power of Titian may perhaps be better discerned in his portraits than in the more ambitious works of sacred art. He stands unquestionably at the head of portrait painters of all ages and of all schools; not even Velasquez equaling him at his best. Beside religious pictures and portraits he painted a great number of subjects from classical mythology. Among the most famous, beside the “Bacchus and Ariadne,” mentioned above—the pride of the English collection—may be named the “Bacchanals” of Madrid, the two of “Venus” in the Uffizi, at Florence, the “Danae,” at Naples, and the often repeated “Venus and Adonis,” and “Diana and Callisto.” He is seen at his very best in the “Venus” of the Tribune, at Florence, perhaps the only work of his which has escaped retouching, and in the exquisite allegory called “Sacred and Profane Love,” at the Borghese Palace, at Rome. As a landscape painter, he possessed a sentiment for nature in all its forms which had never before been seen, and his backgrounds have never been equaled since. The mountains in the neighborhood of his native town, Cadore, of which, as well as of other landscape scenes, numerous pen and ink drawings by his hand are in existence, inspired him, doubtless, with that solemn treatment of effects of cloud and light and shade and blue distance for which his pictures are conspicuous. It is unnecessary to deal with the school of painting which exists in Italy at the present day. It would be paying it too high a compliment to regard it as the legitimate successor of the art of those great epochs whose course we have tried to sketch. The modern Italian school is little more than an echo of the modern French. And seeing that there is no principle clearer or more certain than this, that a great national school of art can flourish only when it springs from a sane and vigorous national existence, it is not to be wondered at if a country so convulsed by the political passions and so vulgarized by the social triviality and meanness of modern times, should be in this respect cast down further than her more fortunate neighbors by the same causes which have soiled even the best art of the nineteenth century with something of dilettantism and affectation. SUNDAY READINGS. SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D. [_April 6._] THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him.—I. John, ii:15.