My present task, however, is not to waste time going over the indifferent works in the Gallery, but rather to point out, as they occur to me, those masterpieces, the studying of which may educate the mind of the outsider to whom Art is a mystic term, and advance the student in his education as a painter. I therefore turn from the formal and affected Ansidei to a picture which at the present time is placed near at hand in the same room, as I think it will make your minds rebound with real relief; at any rate, I know that it will go far to educate you in the knowledge of what a good piece of masterly work is. I refer to No. 1315, 'Admiral Adrian Pulido Pareja,' by Velasquez. For a full and sympathetic account of this great painter's work, the student cannot do better than read 'Annals of the Artists of Spain,' by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, published by John C. Nimmo, in four vols. This portrait comes upon us like a revelation of ease and masterly handling. There is nothing like it in this respect in the whole Gallery; indeed, it was considered so life-like when it was first painted that King Philip mistook it for the man himself, and gave it a royal chiding for wasting his time at Madrid. Sir Joshua Reynolds says of this master: 'What we are all attempting to do with great labour, Velasquez does at once.' I fix upon this portrait because the copyist will learn more from a single figure than from a crowded composition, and the drawing out and copying of this work will do more to make a master of him than any other study. It is like painting direct from nature, with a teacher of great experience at your elbow to prompt you as to the right brushes and colours to use. It is all fire, dash, and vigour, bold and free as the best work of our own contemporary, James McNeill Whistler. The drawing is perfect and the colours are nearly as brilliant as when they were first put on. Here, as in the works of Shakespeare, we have the 'mirror held up to nature.' Opposite to this work in the present arrangement of the pictures we have a companion as to size and quality, although not quite so simply treated, No. 1316, 'An Italian Nobleman,' by Moroni--the painter of the most perfectly natural portrait in the National Gallery, No. 697, 'Portrait of a Tailor.' In the 'Italian Nobleman' the quality is so good and unforced, the art so covered up, unobtrusive, and natural, that the student is apt to begin copying without considering the difficulties before him; therefore I would advise him or her to turn first to the Tailor's portrait before he tackles this less perfect, yet more difficult, 'Nobleman.'