beginning of the great æra of art in Italy, but the demand for altar-pieces in Spain, before and after that time, is proved by a constant influx of Italian, Flemish, and even German painters; a fact which is commonly explained by the wealth which flowed or was expected to flow into the country by the discovery of America about the same period. However this may be, so late as the seventeenth century, when painting may be supposed at length to have been appreciated for itself, and to have been applied to the ends of general cultivation, as the handmaid of history and poetry, it is a curious fact that neither Roelas, Castillo, nor Murillo, not to mention earlier names, ever painted a mythologic or merely historic subject. From the sublimest mysteries of the church, and from themes demanding more than ordinary elevation, the Sevillian painters turned with eagerness to the homely materials of modern miracles, and from these descended only to indulge their fondness for indiscriminate imitation. The pictures of Beggar Boys by which Murillo is perhaps most known in this country, come under the class of subjects and display the mode of treatment which a school of mere copyists of nature would prefer. Some works of this kind, however, attributed to Murillo, and possessing great merit, are said, with probability, to be the work of Nuñez de Villavicencio, his pupil. It was, however, precisely such studies as these, which enabled Murillo and his contemporaries to infuse into their religious subjects that powerful reality which was among the means of naturalizing the art in Spain, and which thus produced a new style, uniting sometimes the dignity of the Italian School with the truth and vivacity of Flemish imitation.