Goya's drawings are executed in aquatinta, touched up and picked out with aquafortis; nothing can be more frank, more free, and more easy. A single stroke expresses a whole physiognomy, and a trail of shade serves as a background, or allows the spectator to catch a glimpse of some landscape only half-sketched in, or some pass of a _sierra_, fit scenes for a murder, a witches' sabbath, or a _tertulia_ of gipsies; but this is rare, for the _background_ cannot be said to exist in Goya's works. Like Michael Angelo, he completely despises external nature, and only takes just sufficient to enable him to group his figures, and very often he composes his background of clouds alone. From time to time, there is a portion of a wall cut off by a large angle of shade, a hedge hardly indicated, and that is all. For the want of a better word, we have said that Goya was a caricaturist. But his caricatures are in the style of Hoffmann, where fancy always goes hand in hand with criticism, and often rises to the gloomy and the terrible. It seems as if all these grinning heads had been drawn by the talons of Smarra, on the wall of some suspicious alcove, lighted by the flickering of an expiring lamp. You feel transported into some unheard-of, impossible, but still real world. The trunks of the trees look like phantoms, the men resemble hyenas, owls, cats, asses, or hippopotamuses; their nails may be talons, their shoes covered with bows may conceal cloven feet; that young cavalier may be some old corpse, and his trunk hose, ornamented with ribbons, envelop perhaps a fleshless thigh-bone and two shrunk legs; never did more mysterious and sinister apparitions issue from behind the stove of Dr. Faustus. It is said that Goya's caricatures contain certain political allusions, but they are few in number. They are directed against Godoy, the old Duchess de Benavente, the favourites of the queen, and some of the noblemen of the court, whose vices and ignorance they stigmatize. But you must seek their meaning through the folds of the thick veil with which they are covered. Goya executed, also, other drawings for his friend, the Duchess d'Alba; but they have never been made public, doubtless, on account of the ease with which they could be applied to the persons caricatured in them. Some of them ridicule the fanaticism, gluttony, and stupidity of the monks, while others represent subjects of public manners or witchcraft. The portrait of Goya serves as a frontispiece to the collected edition of his works. He is represented as a man of about fifty, with a quick oblique glance, a large eyelid and a sly, mocking, crow's-foot beneath. The chin is curved upwards, the upper lip is thin, and the lower one prominent and sensual. The face is surrounded by whiskers of a description peculiar to natives of southern climates and the head is covered by a hat _à la Bolivar_. The whole physiognomy is that of a man of strongly-developed character.