To our lasting gratitude, Cardinal Quiroga, at the instance of the Augustines, ordered El Greco's immortal and glorious picture of the "Burial of Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz." It is no exaggeration to describe this picture as one of the greatest of Spain. One puts it only immediately below the [Illustration: THE BURIAL OF THE COUNT OF ORGAZ] masterpieces of Velasquez. The Toledans went wild with admiration, and writing of it a century ago, Antonio Ponz describes their admiration as still unabated. At the time part of the excitement was due to the superb portraits of well-known personages, which the townspeople contemplated with ever fresh delight. We, who have not this interest in the picture, may wisely, nay, must enforcedly, follow their example to-day. "Since its appearance," writes Ponz, "the city has never tired of admiring it, visiting it continually, always finding new beauties in it, and contemplating the life-like portraits of the great men of Toledo." How modern, how seizing, what a subtle, magnificent impressionist the man was! is the first surprised exclamation when confronted with all these living, speaking faces of old Spain. Faces so Spanish, so delicately and forcibly varied and individual in their maintenance of a rigid, racial type. Every shade of national character stands out separate and in union with the general expression: harsh pride, insane wilfulness, stupendous fanaticism, exalted and untender mysticism, a sensuality so dominant as to tread on cruelty, a delicate humour, an inflated self-consciousness, exquisite kindliness, morose indifference, the very genius of selfishness and a sterile sensibility. Did ever a canvas before so perfectly gather all the fugitive moods, all the underlying currents, all the grace and charm, the vices and defects of a single race, and give them complete stability in their wavering expression? This is to carry portraiture to the rarest perfection. Among these twenty or so living faces, there is not one that is insignificant or mediocre, not one that apart would not make a superb picture, not one that does not carry the enveloping stamp of moment, race and environment. In some the type is so unchanged that to-day in Spain such faces may be seen looking precisely as they did then; unaltered even by costume, so marked is the individuality, so seemingly imperishable the large strong utterance of the Castillian physiognomy. This picture has something of the eternal freshness of "Don Quixote." There is the simple, unconscious stroke of Cervantes in the fashioning of these hidalgoes' heads, something of his mild incomparable humour, something of his nobility and the underlying depth of sadness in his easy wit. No painter who was not both witty and humorous could observe so deeply, so wisely, with such an obvious kindliness of regard; could accentuate so suggestively, so delicately, national traits, and yet not break the consistent harmony of a solemn scene; could tell posterity so much with