in composition and colour, is what constitutes the higher spiritual import[290] of these Dutch pictures. On much the same grounds the beggar boys of Murillo, in the central gallery of the Munich collection, are excellent. Superficially regarded, the subject here, too, is of a vulgar character. The mother is scolding one of the youngsters, as he quickly munches a piece of bread; two others hard by, ragged and poor, are eating melons and grapes[291]. But in this very poverty of half-nakedness what gleams forth from the entire composition as the soul of that beggar life is its complete carelessness and spontaneity. No dancing dervish himself could give it us more frankly in its impression of entire health and jubilant vitality. This freedom from all external care, this inward liberty reflecting itself in that which is visible, is precisely that which the notion of the Ideal demands. There is in Paris a certain portrait of a boy by Raphael; the head leans propped at leisure on one arm, and gazes with such ecstasy of careless contentment into the open landscape that we are loth to turn away from a picture expressive of such health and exuberant animation. We receive a delight of very much the same nature from these lads of Murillo. It is obvious enough that neither their objects nor their interests aim high, but this is no result of stupidity; there they chaffer on God's earth with, we may almost say, the bliss and contentment of the Olympian gods themselves. They, too, have their business; but though we hear little about it they are a genuine sample of humanity, neither morose nor discontented with their lot. Feeling this ground-root in them of all sterling performance we can readily imagine that in favourable conditions youth such as this might be capable of most things. A composition of this kind is entirely on a different level from the one above mentioned of the scolding housewife, or two others we might also contrast with it, of a certain peasant mending his whip and a postillion sleeping on a straw pallet[292]. Such paintings of _genre_ should unquestionably be of small size; and, indeed, in their total impression on the sense, they must be made to appear of comparative insignificance, that we may not feel the character of their subject-matter and its presentment has received undue prominence. It would be intolerable to have such subjects painted life size as though the fulness of the reality were sufficiently attractive to claim our attention. Such are the principles which should regulate our artistic treatment of and sympathy with that which it is usual to stigmatize as mean or vulgar in ordinary life.