Velasquez, of course, is represented in all his strength. Whether the subject of his portraiture be the haughty noble or the loathsome pauper, he is the quintessence of strength and truth, and the highest delineator of national character. The splendid colouring and fine _chiaroscuro_ of Ribera can be recognised in several of his most beautiful productions. In the centre of the long gallery the steps are suddenly arrested before a painting which really deserves the title that the catalogue gives it--a marvel, _El Pasmo de Sicilia_, one of the masterpieces of Raffaelle. The subject is that of Christ falling under the cross; and in truth, it is a noble example of power, colouring, and harmony. The development of the human form is at once muscular and graceful, and the sufferer's sorrow is expressed with wonderful force. The grouping of the figures, most of which are nearly, if not quite, the size of life, is perfection. For force of treatment the work is a worthy rival of the Transfiguration in the Vatican, albeit the latter is celestial and mystic; while this represents the pure earthly side of Christ's nature, depicting him as a man ennobled by sorrow, untainted by sin, and purified by suffering. The expression of the Saviour's countenance, as his eyes meet those of his mother, at the moment when, smarting under blow and taunt, he faintly endeavours to rise from his bruised knees, is beyond everything that has been depicted on canvas. Farther on, amongst this _embarras_ of gems, which includes a long array of pictures any single one of which would add to a city's fame, hangs a noble Titian. Mounted (life-size) on his sturdy Flemish charger, is a grand old mediæval knight, dressed in chased and damascened armour. His round, dogged-looking head is thrust well into a simple morion, and his beard of a week's growth shows a disregard of personal foppery not unbecoming in those who make war a business, and perhaps unavoidable in the life of the camp. With stern and steady look, his long lance grasped in his nervous hand, ready to place in rest at a moment's need, he gallops towards the fray. A _San Sebastian_ of Guido, is a painting which it would be impossible to match, except by that in the capitol at Rome, by the same hand. This is, indeed, a noble picture of the young martyr. One can see by the ecstatic expression of the countenance that he is exulting in a hope that carries him, on the wings of faith, beyond the persecutions and sufferings of this world, and reveals to him the dawn of a higher, better, and purer life. What to him are the arrows burying themselves one after the other deep in his fair flesh? His soul is above, far away from pain, and in the joy of opening immortality is no longer sensible of the agonies of its earthly body.