Neither the _Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes_, nor _Moses Striking the Rock_, contains any spiritual suggestion; for to the modern imagination at least the figure of Christ in the one and those of Moses and Aaron in the other seem to be invested only with a little symbolical distinction. Further, even the significance of the events is not suggested. If you take away the Christ, whose importance in the composition is already belittled by the group of women on the right, is there anything in the action of the figures and the expression of their faces to indicate that they are witnesses of a miracle? The scene becomes nothing more than a huge picnic, conducted on an absurdly meagre commissariat. So too, in _Striking the Rock_--where is the hint of the agony of thirst or of high-wrought emotion at the miraculous deliverance? But for the two central figures, whose impressiveness, such as it is, is confined to themselves, the incident might be simply that of a party of people gathered about a spring. To myself a very suggestive indication of the shallowness and insincerity of the whole conception is the introduction of the small boy on the sleek plump horse. It is a mere studio device for getting a spot on which to concentrate the light and for lifting one figure above the line of the others. Another example of this series of Hospital subjects is the very famous _S. Elizabeth of Hungary_, now in the Prado. The scene is being enacted in the shadowed arcade of an imposing classical building. The saintly Queen, attended by two young ladies, charmingly attired, is washing the scalp of an urchin, who leans over a silver basin. A beggar sits on the ground removing a bandage from a festering sore, and a boy, with an expression on his face of exasperated distress, scratches his head and chest. Meanwhile an old woman sits looking up in worshipful gratitude at the face of the queen, who possibly returns her gaze. For she is turning her head away from the business in which she is engaged, as well as she may, since the head she is bathing shows a disgusting sore. Perhaps you may say that such details are incidental to a clinic, and may quote the example of Rembrandt’s _Clinic of Dr. Tulp_. But the latter is frankly a naturalistic picture in which the cadaver forms the explanation and focus of the group of eager, intellectual heads, absorbed in the instruction of the master-surgeon. But Murillo’s is an academically disposed composition, involving splendid classical accessories. It is, in the manner of its form, idealised according to the Italian tradition, while in its details grossly naturalistic. Yet Théophile Gautier, moved to a characteristic burst of sentiment, exclaims--“In his picture of S. Elizabeth Murillo takes us into the most thorough-going reality. Instead of angels we are here shown lepers. But Christian art, like Christian charity, feels no disgust at such a spectacle. Everything which it