about his wrists and over the black-framed mirror. The flesh tints are as fresh as though painted yesterday. The reflected face in the mirror is intentionally slightly obscured, for Velasquez knew that a picture should have unity and here he avoids diffusion of interest by concentration upon the figure. "A. fully defined head," writes Mr. Amstrong in his The Art of Velasquez, “in this part of the canvas would have destroyed the pattern. It would have introducted a point of great interest to which the eye would have been irresistibly attracted, exactly where it is not wanted. . . . So far as handling goes the picture is the broadest and freest ever painted by Velasquez. The figure is modelled with long sweeps of the brush, travelling with extraordinary audacity and precision over wide planes, and establishing the form in despite, as it were, of probability."

After telling us that Velasquez was out of touch with the medieval spirit, that he was more interested in atmosphere than in saints' haloes, in God's green grass than in babes' heads with wings, in human character than in the torturings of saints, MacFall, in his History of Painting, continues," His heart and his art were as uncritical as a child's, accepting life with a profound wonder. Generous, unjealous, friendly, and without spites, he walked the earth like the gentleman he was; and wrought his art with the majesty and simplicity of the very great. . . . Of the frank joy in life the Spanish Court knew nothing,

and Velasquez recorded nothing. Of these ecstasies of jocund youth, glad to be alive, that can only be uttered in phrase of joyous blithe color, Velasquez at that somber Court could and did see nothing. And what Velasquez did not see he did not utter. He was not a great colorist; he was the most subtle colorist of the sixteen-hundreds. The life he lived was limited; his sense of life was limited; and there is no getting away from it, his art is thereby limited. But within those limits he wrought an art that is the wonder of the wide world."

ROSA BONHEUR

Who more perfectly than Rosa Bonheur has written the true psalm of life — of that eternal pulse which throbs within the heart of every being, no matter what position it may hold in the scale of creation! Is there a single touch of her pencil, a single stroke of her brush, which has not the exaltation of nature for its object?

L. ROGER-MILÈS.