poetical, but partaking not in the least of the old-fashioned ideal of maiden-mother, the mild benignant Madonna of Italy, the soulless Virgin of Spain, Eastern peasant women painted from the mistresses of Italian artists or from the pretty dancing girls of the Spanish people. Here is an innovation, here is originality: a mournful Mary, leaving earth with doubt and pain in her expression rather than rapture; with small refined face and intense brows; a Mary who bears the mark of our fugitive common suffering, the deep, enigmatic impress of life accompanied by thought, and not the stereotyped dolorous brand of the seven times stabbed mother Catholic art accepts. He boldly rejects the old ideal both in maiden and in mother, and paints a Mary who is neither sweet nor quiet. How tall she is too, and slenderly outlined beneath the superb green-blue drapery that bears her on its floating folds, as it waves down from the rich pink garment that covers the slim bust. Surely, in spite of defects so monstrous as to provoke laughter, angel's limbs like gnarled trees, such biceps as no athlete ever possessed, hands to fell the heaviest beast, this picture for composition, for the vivid impression of intense velocity of upward flight, for the grand treatment of drapery and colour, for the vigorous reality of those outspread wings, and above all for that beautiful, delicately-strong grieved face of Mary, with the soft dark cloud of hair marking its most charming oval, this original conception of the Assumption may be reckoned as one of El Greco's triumphs of art. It does not enchant, or captivate, but it seizes. Elsewhere you must look for delight. Here your satisfaction is disturbed by deliberate and deplorable defections, but you have boundless compensations.