Gil_, which he named "A Vision in the Colosseum." Saint Almaquio, who was slain, according to tradition, by gladiators in the Colosseum, is seen floating in the air, as he swings in fanatical ecstasy a crucifix from which light is streaming. Upon one side men who have borne witness to Christianity with their blood chant their hymns of praise; upon the other, troops of female martyrs clothed in white and holding tapers in their hands move by; but below, the earth has opened, and the dead rise for the celebration of this midnight service, praying from their graves, while the full moon shines through the apertures of the ruins and pours its pale light upon the phantom congregation. There was exhibited by _Checa_ "A Barbarian Onset," a Gallic horde of riders thundering past a Roman temple, from which the priestesses are flying in desperation. _Francisco Amerigo_ treated upon a huge canvas a scene from the sacking of Rome in 1527, when the despoiling troops of Charles V plundered the Eternal City. "Soldiers intoxicated with wine and lust, tricked out with bishops' mitres and wrapped in the robes of priests, are desecrating the temples of God. Nunneries are violated, and fathers kill their daughters to save them from shame." So ran the historical explanation set upon the broad gold frame. But, after all, these historical pictures, in spite of their great spaces of canvas, are of no consequence when one comes to characterise the efforts of modern art. Explanations could be given showing that in the land of bull-fights this painting of horrors maintained itself longer than elsewhere, but the hopes of those who prophesied from it a new golden period for historical painting were entirely disappointed. For Spanish art, as in earlier days for French art, the historical picture has merely the importance implied by the _Prix de Rome_. A method of colouring which is often dazzling in result, and a vigorous study of nature, preserved from the danger of "beautiful" tinting, make the Spanish works different from the older ones. Their very passion often has an effect which is genuine, brutal, and of telling power. In the best of these pictures one believes that a wild temperament really does burst into flame through the accepted convention that the painters have delight in the horrible, which the older French artists resorted to merely for the purpose of preparing veritable _tableaux_. But in the rank and file, in place of the Southern vividness of expression which has been sincerely felt, histrionic pose is the predominant element, the petty situation of the stage set upon a gigantic canvas, and in addition to this a straining after effect which grazes the boundary line where the horrible degenerates into the ridiculous. Through their extraordinary ability they all compel respect, but they have not enriched the treasury of modern emotion, nor have they transformed the older historical painting in the essence of its being. And the man who