THE accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some "sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous and deleterious, -from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva, from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and thence to Naples, the English 66 my lord," with his bearleader, was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by, generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again, the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances, rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever belonged to "Europe's middle night," that the descendants of Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter, so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land-its weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown to English gardens-remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was that, with rare

exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers. Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands, exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends, on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian, or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,-emulating the deeds of Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves into the actual life, and studying the historic manners of Spain, like Carnarvon and Ford. Still, though soldier and statesman, philosopher and littérateur, had put forth their best powers in writing of the country that so worthily interested them, a void was ever left for some new comer to fill; and right well, in his three handsome, elaborate, and most agreeable volumes, has Mr Stirling filled that void. Not one of the goodly band of Spanish painters now lacks a "sacred poet" to inscribe his name in the temple of fame. With indefatigable research, most discriminating taste, and happiest success, has Mr Stirling pursued and completed his pleasant labour of love, and presented to the world "Annals of the Artists of Spain" worthy-can we say more? -of recording the triumphs of El Mudo and El Greco, Murillo and Velasquez.

At least a century and a half

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before Holbein was limning the burly frame and gorgeous dress of bluff King Hal, and creating at once a school and an appreciation of art in England, were the early painters of Spain enriching their magnificent cathedrals, and religious houses, with pictures displaying as correct knowledge of art, and as rich a tone of colour, as the works of that great master. There is something singular and mysterious in the contrast afforded by the early history of painting in the two countries. While in poetry, in painting on glass, in science, in manufactures, in architecture, England appears to have kept pace with other countries, in painting and in sculpture she appears always to have lagged far behind. Gower, Chaucer, Friar Bacon, William of Wyckham, Waynfleete, the unknown builders of ten thousand churches and convents, the manufacturers of the glass that still charms our eyes, and baffles the rivalry of our Willements and Wailes, at York and elsewhere-the illuminators of the missals and religious books, whose delicate fancy and lustrous tints are even now teaching our highborn ladies that long-forgotten art―yielded the palm to none of their brethren in Europe; but where and who were our contemporaneous painters and sculptors? In the luxurious and graceful court of Edward IV., who represented that art which Dello and Juan de Castro, under royal and ecclesiastical patronage, had carried to such perfection in Spain? That no English painters of any note flourished at that time, is evident from the silence of all historical documents; nor does it appear that foreign artists were induced, by the hope of gain or fame, to instruct our countrymen in the art to which the discoveries of the Van Eycks had imparted such a lustre. It is true that the desolating Wars of the Roses left scant time and means to the sovereigns and nobility of England for fostering the arts of peace; but still great progress was being made in nearly all those arts, save those of which we speak; and, if we remember rightly, Mr Pugin assigns the triumph of English architecture to this troublous epoch. Nor, although Juan I., Pedro the Cruel, and Juan II.,

were admirers and patrons of painting, was it to royal or noble favour that Spanish art owed its chiefest obligations. The church-which, after the great iconoclastic struggle of the eighth century, had steadily acted on the Horatian maxim,

"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus " in Spain embraced the young and diffident art with an ardour and a munificence which, in its palmiest and most prosperous days, that art never forgot, and was never wearied of requiting. Was it so in England? and do we owe our lack of ancient English pictures to the reforming zeal of our iconoclastic reformers? Did the religious pictures of our Rincons, our Nuñez, and our Borgoñas, share the fate of the libraries that were ruthlessly destroyed by the ignorant myrmidons of royal rapacity? If so, it is almost certain that the records which bewail and denounce the fate of books and manuscripts, would not pass over the destruction of pictures; while it is still more certain that the monarch and his courtiers would have appropriated to themselves the pictured saints, no less than the holy vessels, of monastery and convent. It cannot, therefore, be said that the English Reformation deprived our national school of painting of its most munificent patrons, and most ennobling and purest subjects, in the destruction of the monasteries, and the spoliation of churches. That the Church of England, had she remained unreformed, might, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have emulated her Spanish or Italian sister in her patronage of, and beneficial influence upon, the arts of painting and sculpture, it is needless either to deny or assert; we fear there is no room for contending that, since the Reformation, she has in any way fostered, guided, or exalted either of those religious arts.

In Spain, on the contrary, as Mr Stirling well points out, it was under the august shadow of the church that painting first raised her head, gained her first triumphs, executed her most glorious works, and is even now prolonging her miserable existence.

The venerable cathedral of Toledo was, in effect, the cradle of Spanish

painting. Founded in 1226 by St Ferdinand, it remained, to quote Mr Stirling's words, "for four hundred years a nucleus and gathering-place for genius, where artists swarmed and laboured like bees, and where splendid prelates-the popes of the Peninsula-lavished their princely revenues to make fair and glorious the temple of God intrusted to their care." Here Dolfin introduced, in 1418, painting on glass; here the brothers Rodrigues displayed their forceful skill as sculptors, in figures which still surmount the great portal of that magnificent cathedral; and here Rincon, the first Spanish painter who quitted the stiff medieval style, loved best to execute his graceful works. Nor when, with the house of Austria, the genius of Spanish art quitted the Bourbon-governed land, did the custodians of this august temple forget to stimulate and reward the detestable conceits, and burlesque sublimities, of such artists as the depraved taste of the eighteenth century delighted to honour. Thus, in 1721, Narciso Tome erected at the back of the choir an immense marble altarpiece, called the Trasparente, by order of Archbishop Diego de Astorgo, for which he received two hundred thousand ducats; and thus, fifty years later, Bayeu and Maella were employed to paint in fresco the cloisters that had once gloried in the venerable paintings of Juan de Borgoña. At Toledo, then, under the auspices of the great Castilian queen, Isabella, may be said to have risen the Castilian school of art. The other great schools of Spanish painting were those of Andalusia, of Valencia, and that of Arragon and Catalonia; but, for the mass of English readers, the main interest lies in the two first, the schools that produced or acquired El Mudo and El Greco, Velasquez and Murillo. The works of the two last-mentioned artists are now so well known, and so highly appreciated in England, that we are tempted to postpone for the present any notice of that most delightful part of Mr Stirling's book which treats of them, and invite our readers to trace the course of art in that stern old city to which we have already referred, Toledo.

Before the grave had closed upon the cold remains of Rincon, Juan de

VOL. LXV.-NO. CCCXCIX.

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Borgoña had proved himself worthy of wielding the Castilian pencil, and, under the patronage of the great Toledan archbishop, Ximenes de Cisneros, produced works which still adorn the winter chapter-room of that cathedral. These are interesting not only as specimens of art, but as manifestations of the religious eos of Spain at the commencement of the sixteenth century: let Mr Stirling describe one of the most remarkable of these early paintings:-"The lower end of the finely-proportioned, but badly-lighted room, is occupied by the Last Judgment,' a large and remarkable composition. Immediately beneath the figure of our Lord, a hideous fiend, in the shape of a boar, roots a fair and reluctant woman out of her grave with his snout, as if she were a trufle, twining his tusks in her long amber locks. To the left are drawn up in a line a party of the wicked, each figure being the incarnation of a sin, of which the name is written on a label above in Gothic letters, as 'Soberbia,' and the like. On their shoulders sit little malicious imps, in the likeness of monkeys, and round their lower limbs, flames climb and curl. The forms of the good and faithful, on the right, display far less vigour of fancy." So the good characters in modern works of fiction are more feebly drawn, and excite less interest, than the Rob Roys and Dirk Hattericks, the Conrads and the Manfreds. Nor was Toledo at this time wanting in the sister art of sculpture: while the Rincons, and Berruguete, and Borgoña, were enriching the cathedral with their pictures and their frescoes, Vigarny was elaborating the famous high altar of marble, and the stalls on the epistle side. In concluding his notice of Vigarny, "the first great Castilian sculptor," Mr Stirling gives a sketch of the style of sculpture popular in Spain. Like nearly all the "Cosas d' Espana," it is peculiar, and owes its peculiarity to the same cause that has impressed so marked a character on Spanish painting and Spanish pharmacopeia-religion.

Let not the English lover of the fine arts, invited to view the masterpieces of Spanish sculpture, imagine that his eyes are to be feasted on the

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nude, though hardly indecent forms of Venuses and Apollos, Ganymedes and Andromedas.

Beautiful, and breathing, and full of imagination, indeed, those Spanish statues are "idols," as our author generally terms them; but the idolatry they represent or evoke is heavenly, not earthly-spiritual, not sensuous. Chiselled out of a block of cedar or lime-wood, with the most reverential care, the image of the Queen of Heaven enjoyed the most exquisite and delicate services of the rival sister arts, and, "copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers sweetly smiling, and gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold." But we doubt whether any Englishman who has not seen can understand the marvellous beauty of these painted wooden images. Thus Berruguete, who combined both arts in perfection, executed in 1539 the archbishop's throne at Toledo, over which hovers an airy and graceful figure, carved in dark walnut, representing our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, and remarkable for its fine and floating drapery."

Continuing our list of Toledan artists, "whose whole lives and labours lay within the shadow of that great Toledan church, whose genius was spent in its service, and whose names were hardly known beyond its walls," (vol. i. p. 150,) we come to T. Comontes, who, among other works for that munificent Alma Mater, executed from the designs of Vigarny the retablo (reredos) for the chapel "de los Reyes Nuevos," in 1533. It was at Toledo that El Mudo, the Spanish Titian, died, and at Toledo that Blas del Prado was born. When in 1593 the Emperor of Morocco asked that the best painter of Spain might be sent to his court, Philip II. appointed Blas del Prado to fulfil the Mussulman's artistic desires: previous to this, the chapter of Toledo had named him their second painter, and he had painted a large altar-piece, and other pictures, for their cathedral. But perhaps the Toledan annals of art contain no loftier name than that of El Greco. Domemis Theotocopuli,who, born, it is surmised, at Venice in 1548, is found in 1577 painting at Toledo, for the cathedral, his famous picture of

The Parting of our Lord's Garment, on which he bestowed the labour of a decade, and of which we give Mr Stirling's picturesque description.

"The august figure of the Saviour, arrayed in a red robe, occupies the centre of the canvass; the head, with its long dark locks, is superb; and the noble and beautiful countenance seems to mourn for the madness of them who 'knew not what they did;' his right arm is folded on his bosom, seemingly unconscious of the rope which encircles his wrist, and is violently dragged downwards by two executioners in front. Around and behind him appears a throng of priests and warriors, amongst whom the Greek himself figures as the centurion, in black armour. In drawing and composition, this picture is truly admirable, and the colouring is, on the whole, rich and effective-although it is here and there laid on in that spotted streaky manner, which afterwards became the great and prominent defect of El Greco's style."

Summoned from the cathedral to the court, El Greco painted, by royal command, a large altar-piece, for the church at the Escurial, on the martyrdom of St Maurice; "little less extravagant and atrocious," says our lively author," than the massacre it recorded." Neither king nor court painters could praise this performance, and the effect of his failure at the Escurial appears to have been his return to Toledo. Here, in 1584, he painted, by order of the Archbishop Quiroga, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz," a picture then and now esteemed as his master-piece, and still to be seen in the church of Santo Tomé. Warm is the encomium, and eloquently expressed, which Mr Stirling bestows upon this gem of Toledan art. "The artist, or lover of art, who has once beheld it, will never, as he rambles among the winding streets of the ancient city, pass the pretty brick belfry of that church-full of horseshoe niches and Moorish reticulations,

without turning aside to gaze upon its superb picture once more. It hangs to your left, on the wall opposite to the high altar. Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz, head of a house famous in romance, rebuilt the fabric of the church, and was in all respects so religious and gracious a grandee, that,

when he was buried in 1828, within these very walls, St Stephen and St Augustine came down from heaven, and laid his body in the tomb with their own holy hands an incident which forms the subject of the picture. St Stephen, a dark-haired youth of noble countenance, and St Augustine, a hoary old man wearing a mitre, both of them arrayed in rich pontifical vestments of golden tissue, support the dead Count in their arms, and gently lower him into the grave, shrouded like a baron of Roslin in his iron panoply.' Nothing can be finer than the execution and the contrast of these three heads; never was the image of the peaceful death of the just man' more happily conveyed, than in the placid face and powerless form of the warrior: nor did Giorgione or Titian ever excel the splendid colouring of his black armour, rich with gold damascening. To the right of the picture, behind St Stephen, kneels a fair boy in a dark dress, perhaps the son of the Count; beyond rises the stately form of a gray friar; to the left, near St Augustine, stand two priests in gorgeous vestments, holding, the one a book, and the other a taper. Behind this principal group appear the noble company of mourners, hidalgos and old Christians all, with olive faces and beards of formal cut, looking on with true Castilian gravity and phlegm, as if the transaction were an every-day occurrence. As they are mostly portraits, perhaps some of the originals did actually stand, a few years later, with the like awe in their hearts and calm on their cheeks, in the royal presence-chamber, when the news came to court that the proud Armada of Spain had been vanquished by the galleys of Howard, and cast away on the rocks of the Hebrides." We make no apology for thus freely quoting from Mr Stirling's pages his description of this picture; the extract brings vividly before our readers at once the merits of the old Toledan painter, and his accomplished biographer and critic. After embellishing his adopted city, not only with pictures such as this, but with works of sculpture and architecture, and vindicating his graceful profession from the unsparing exactions of the tax-gatherers-a class who appear to

have waged an unrelenting though intermittent war against the fine arts in Spain-he died there at a green old age in 1625, and was buried in the church of St Bartolemé. Even the painters most employed at the munificent and art-loving court of the second and third Philips, found time to paint for the venerable cathedral. Thus, in 1615, Vincencio Carducho, the Florentine, painted, with Eugenio Caxes, a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Sagrario; and thus Eugenio Caxes, leaving the works at the Pardo and Madrid, painted for the cathedral of Toledo the Adoration of the Magi, and other independent pictures.

Meanwhile the school of El Greco was producing worthy fruit; from it, in the infancy of the seventeenth century, came forth Luis Tristan, an artist even now almost unknown in London and Edinburgh, but whose style Velasquez did not disdain to imitate, and whose praises he was never tired of sounding. "Born, bred, and sped" in Toledo, or its neighbourhood, as Morales was emphatically the painter of Badajoz, so may Tristan be termed the painter of Toledo. No foreign graces, no classical models, adorned or vitiated his stern Spanish style; yet, in his portrait of Archbishop Sandoval, he is said by Mr Stirling to have united the elaborate execution of Sanchez Coello with much of the spirit of Titian. And of him is the pleasant story recorded, that having, while yet a stripling, painted for the Jeronymite convent at Toledo a Last Supper, for which he asked two hundred ducats, and being denied payment by the frugal friars, he appealed with them to the arbitration of his old master, El Greco, who, having viewed the picture, called the young painter a rogue and a novice, for asking only two for a painting worth five hundred ducats. In the same Toledan church that contains the ashes of his great master, lies the Murcian Pedro Orrente, called by our author "the Bassano, or the Roos - the great sheep and cattle master of Spain:" he too was employed by the art-encouraging chapter, and the cathedral possessed several of his finest pictures. But with Tristan and Orrente the glories of Toledan art paled and waned; and, trusting that our