pair of fat caives arrived from the archbishop of Zaragoza; the archbishop of Toledo and the Duchess of Frias were constant and magnificent in their gifts of venison, fruit, and preserves; and supplies of all kinds came at regular intervals from Seville, and from Portugal. Luis Quixada, who knew the emperor's habits and constitution well, beheld with dismay these long trains of mules laden, as it were, with gout and bile. He never acknowledged the receipt of the good things from Valladolid without adding some dismal forebodings of consequent mischief; and along with an order he sometimes conveyed a hint that it would be much better if no means were found of executing it. If the emperor made a hearty meal without being the worse for it. the mayordomo noted the fact with exultation: and he remarked with complacency his majesty's fondness for plovers, which he considered harmless. But his office of purveyor was more commonly exercised under protest; and he interposed between his master and an eel-pie as, in other days, he would have thrown himself between the imperial person and the point of a Moorish lance.

The retirement of the emperor took place on the 3d of February 1557. He carried with him to his cloister sixty attendants-not twelve, as stated by Robertson; and in his retreat at Yuste he wielded the royal power as firmly as he had done at Augsburg or Toledo. His regular life, hov ever, had something in it of monastic quiet-his time was measured out with punctual attention to his various employments; he fed his pet birds or sauntered among his trees and flowers, and joined earnestly in the religious observances of the monks. The subjoined scene is less strikingly painted than in Robertson's narrative, but is more correct:

The Emperor performs the Funeral Service for Himself.

About this time [August 1558], according to the historian of St. Jerome, his thoughts seemed to turn more than usual to religion and its rites. Whenever during his stay at Yuste any of his friends, of the degree of princes or knights of the fleece. had died, he had ever been punctual in doing honour to their memory, by causing their obsequies to be performed by the friars; and these lugubrious services may be said to have formed the festivals of the gloomy life of the cloister. The daily masses said for his own soul were always accompanied by others for the souls of his father, mother, and wife. But now he ordered further solemnities of the funeral kind to be performed in behalf of these relations, each on a different day, and attended them himself, preceded by a page bearing a taper, and joining in the chant, in a very devout and audible manner, out of a tattered prayer-book. These rights ended, he asked his confessor whether he might not now perform his own funeral, and so do for himself what would soon have to be done for him by others. Regla replied that his majesty, please God. might live many years, and that when his time came these services would be gratefully rendered, without his taking any thought about the matter. "But,' persisted Charles, would it not be good for my soul? The monk said, that certainly it would; pious works done during life being far more efficacious than when postponed till after death. Preparations were therefore at once set on foot: a catafa que, which had served before on similar occasions, was erected: and on the following day, the 30th of August, as the monkish historian relates, this celebrated service was actually performed. The high altar. the catafalque, and the whole church shone with a blaze of wax-lights; the friars were all in their places, at the altars, and in the choir, and the household of the emperor attended in deep mourn ing. The pious monarch himself was there, attired in sable weeds, and hearing a taper, to see himself interred and to celebrate his own obsequies.' While the soleinu mass for the dead was sung, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of the officiating priest in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his Maker. High above, over the kneeling throne and the gorgeous vestments, the flowers, the curling incense, and the glittering altar. the same idea shone forth in that splendid canvas whereon Titian had pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold of the heavenly mansions prepared for the blessed.

E.L.V.8-3

...

The funeral-rites ended, the emperor dined in his western alcove. He ate little, but he remained for a great part of the afternoon sitting in the open air, and bask ing in the sun, which, as it descended to the horizon, beat strongly upon the white walls. Feeling a violent pain in his head, he returned to his chamber and lay down. Mathisio, whom he had sent in the morning to Xarandrilla to attend the Count of Oropesa in his illness, found him when he returned still suffering considerably, and attributed the pain to his having remained too long in the hot sunshine, Next morning he was somewhat better, and was able to get up and go to mass, put still felt oppressed, and complained much of thirst. He told his confessor, however, that the service of the day before had done him good. The sunshine again tempted him into his open gallery. As he sat there, he sent for a portrait of the empress, and hung for some time, lost in thought, over the gentle face, which, with its blue eyes, auburn hair, and pensive beauty, somewhat resembled the noble countenance of that other Isabella, the great queen of Castile. He next called for a picture of Our Lord Praying in the Garden, and then for a sketch of the Last Judgment, by Titian Having looked his last upon the image of the wife of his youth, it seemed as if he were now bidding farewell, in the contemplation of his other favourite pictures, to the noble art which he had loved with a fove which cares, and years, and sickness could not quench, and that will ever be remembered with his better fame. Thus occupied, he remained so long abstracted and motionless, that Mathisio, who was on the watch, thought it right to awake him from his reverie. On being spoken to, he turned round and complained that he was ill. The doctor felt his pulse, and pronounced him in a fever. Again the afternoon sun was shining over the great walnut tree, full into the gallery. From this pleasant spot, filled with the fragrance of the garden and the murmur of the fountain, and bright with glimpses of the golden Vera, they carried him to the gloomy chamber of his sleepless nights, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise no more.

The emperor died in three weeks after this time-on the 21st of September 1558. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell's narrative, we need hardly add, is at once graceful and exact. Its author has written another Spanish memoir-Velasquez and his Works,' 1855. There was little to tell of the great Spanish painter, whose life was uniformly prosperous; but Sir William gives sketches of Philip IV. and his circle, and adds many critical remarks and illustrations. prefers Velasquez to Murillo or Rubens. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell succeeded to the baronetcy and estate of Pollok (Renfrewshire) in 1865. He was born at the paternal seat of Keir, in Perthshire, in 1818; is an M.A. of Cambridge University, and LL.D. of the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews.

Velasquez's Faithful Colour-grinder.

He

Juan de Pareja, one of the ablest, and better known to fame as the slave of Velasquez, was born at Seville in 1606 His parents belonged to the class of slaves then numerous in Andalusia, the descendants of negroes imported in large numbers into Spain by the Moriscos in the sixteenth century; and in the African hne and features of their son, there is evidence that they were mulattoes, or that one or other of them was a black. It is not known whether he came into the possession of Velasquez by purchase or by inheritance, but he was in his service as early as 1623, when he accompanied him to Madrid. Being employed to clean the brushes, grind the colours, prepare the palettes, and do the other menial work of the studio, and living amongst pictures and painters. he early acquired an acquaintance with the imple ments of art, and an ambition to use them He therefore watched the proceedings of his master, and privately copied his works with the eagerness of a lover and the secrecy of a conspirator. In the Italian journeys in which he accompanied Velasquez he scized every opportunity of improvement; and in the end he became an artist of no mean skill. But his nature was so reserved. and his candle so iealously concealed under its bushel, that he had returned from his second visit to Rome, and had reached

the mature ago of forty-five, before his master became aware that he could use the brushes which he washed. When at last he determined on laying aside the mask, he contrived that it should be removed by the hand of the king. Finishing a small picture with peculiar care, he deposited it in his master's studio, with its face turned to the wall. A picture so placed arouses curiosity, and is perhaps more certain to attract the eye of a loitering visitor than if it were hung up for the purpose of being seen. When Philip IV. visited Velasquez, he never failed to cause the daub or the masterpiece that happened to occupy such a position to be paraded for his inspection. He therefore fell at once into the trap, and being pleased with the work, asked for the author. Pareja, who took care to be at the royal elbow, immediately fell on his knees, owning his guilt, and praying for his majesty's protection. The good-natured king, turning to Velasquez, said: 'You see that a painter like this ought not to remain a slave.' Pareja, kissing the royal hand, rose from the ground a free man. His master gave him a formal deed of manumission, and received the colour-grinder as a scholar. The attached follower, however, remained with him till he died; and continued in the service of his daughter, the wife of Mazo Martinez, until his own death, in 1670.

G. H. LEWES.

MR. GEORGE HENRY LEWES, eminent as a philosophical essayist, citic and biographer, has written two novels- Ranthorpe,' 1847; and Rrose, Blanche, and Violet,' 1848. In the former, he traces the moral influence of genius on its possessor, and though there is little artistic power evinced in the plot of the tale, it is a suggestive and able work. In his second novel, which is longer and much more skilfully constructed, Mr. Lewes aims chiefly at the delineation of character. His three sisters, Rose, Blanche and Violet, are typical dfdifferent classes of character-the gay, the gentle and the decided; and as each of the ladies forms an attachment, we have other characters and contrasts, with various complicated incidents and lovepassages. The author, however, is more of a moral teacher than a story-teller, and he sets himself resolutely to demolish what he considers popular fallacies, and to satirise the follies and delusions prevalent in society. Here is one of his ethical positions:

Superiority of the Moral over the Intellectual Nature of Man.

Strength of Will is the quality most needing cultivation in mankind. Will is the central force which gives strength and greess to character. We overestimate the value of alent, because it dazzles us; and we are apt to underrate the importance of Will, because its works are less shining. Talent gracefully adorns life; but it is Will which carries us victoriously through the struggle. Intellect is the torch which lights us on our way; Will is the strong arm which rough-hews the path for us. The clever, weak man sees all the obstacles on his path; the very orch he carries, being brighter than that of most men, enables him, perhaps, to see hat the path before him may be directest, the best-yet it also enables him to see the crooked turnings by which he may, us he fancies, reach the goal without encountering difficulties. If. indeed, Intellect were a sun, instead of a torch-if it irraditated every corner and crevice-then would man see how, in spite of every obstacle, the direct path was the only safe one, and he would cut the way through by manful labour. But constituted as we are, it is the clever, weak men who stumble most-the strong men who are most virtuous and happy. In this world, there cannot be virtue without strong Will; the weak 'know the right, and yet the wrong pursue.'

No one, I suppose, wil! accuse me of deifying Obstinacy, or even mere brute Will; nor of depreciating Intellect. But we have had too many dithyrambs in honour of mere Intelligence; and the older I grow, the clearer I see that Intellect

is not the highest faculty in man, although the most brilliant. Knowledge, after all, is not the greatest thing in life; it is not the be-all and the end-all here.' Life is not Science. The light of Intellect is truly a precious light; but its aim and end is simply to shine. The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced--that without intelligence we should be brutes-but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice are worth all the talents in the world.

And in the following we have a sound, healthy doctrine which has also received the support of Thackeray:

Real Men of Genius resolute Workers.

There is, in the present day, an overplus of raving about genius, and its prescriptive rights of vagabondage, its irresponsibility, and its insubordination to all the laws of common sense. Common sense is so prosaic! Yet it appears from the history of art that the real men of genius did not rave about anything of the kind. They were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. They knew that their genius was not a frenzy, not a supernatural thing at all, but simply the colossal proportions of faculties which, in a lesser degree, the meanest of mankind shared with them. They knew that whatever it was, it would not enable them to accomplish with success the things they undertook, unless they devoted their whole energies to the task.

Would Michael Angelo have built St. Peter's, sculptured the Moses, and made the walls of the Vatican sacred with the presence of his gigantic pencil, had he awaited inspiration while his works were in progress? Would Rubens have dazzled all the galleries of Europe, had he allowed his brush to hesitate? would Beethoven and Mozart have poured out their souls into such abundant melodies? would Goethe have written the sixty volumes of his works-had they not often, very often, sat down like drudges to an unwilling task, and found themselves speedily engrossed with that to which they were so averse?

'Use the pen,' says the thoughtful and subtle author: 'there is no magic in it; but it keeps the mind from staggering about.' This is an aphorism which should be printed in letters of gold over the studio door of every artist. Use the pen or the brush; do not pause, do not trifle, have no misgivings; but keep your mind from staggering about by fixing it resolutely on the matter before you, and then all that you can do you will do; inspiration will not enable you to do more. Write or paint: act, do not hesitate. If what you have written or painted should turn out imperfect, you can correct it, and the correction will be more efficient than that correction which takes place in the shifting thoughts of hesitation. You will learn from your failures infinitely more than from the vague wandering reflections of a mind loosened from its moorings; because the failure is absolute, it is precise, it stands bodily before you, your eyes and judgment cannot be juggled with, you know whether a certain verse is harmonious, whether the rhyme is there or not there; but in the other case you not only can juggle with yourself, but do so, the very indeterminateness of your thoughts makes you do so; as long as the idea is not positively clothed in its artistic form. it is impossible accurately to say what it will be. The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one subject. Let your pen fall, begin to trifls with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task. Some men dally and dally, hesitate and trifle until the last possible moment, and when the printer's boy is knocking at the door, they begin; necessity goading them, they write with singular rapidity, and with singular success; they are astonished at themselves. What is the secret? Simply this; they have had no time to hesitate. Concentrating their powers upon the one object be fore them, they have done what they could do.

Impatient reader! if I am tedious, forgive me. These lines may meet the eyes of some to whom they are specially addressed, and may awaken thoughts in their minds not unimportant to their future career. Forgive me, if only because I have taken what is called the prosaic side! I have not flattered the shallow sophisms which would give a gloss to idleness and incapacity. I have not availed myself of the

My

splendid tirades, so easy to write, about the glorious privileges of genius. 'preaching' may be very ineffectual, but at anyrate it advocates the honest diguity of labour; let my cause excuse my tediousness.

Mr. Lewes is a native of London, born in 1817. He received his education partly abroad and partly from Dr. Burney at Greenwich. Being intended for a mercantile life, he was placed in the office of a Russian merchant, but soon abandoned it for the medical profession. From this he was driven, it is said, by a feeling of horror at witnessing surgical operations, and he took to literature as a profession. His principal works are a 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' four volumes, 1845; The Spanish Drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon,' 1846; Life of Maximilien Robespierre,' 1849; 'Exposition of the Principles of the Cours de Philosophie positif of Auguste Comte,' 1853; The Life and Works of Goethe,' two volumes, 1855; Sea-side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, the Scilly Isles, and Jersey,' 1857. In the Physiology of Common Life,' two volumes, 1870, Mr. Lewes has made a very readable and instructive compendium of information on subjects which come home to the business and bosoms of men-such as food and drink, mind and brain, feeling and thinking, life and health, sleep and dreams, &c. We quote a passage which may be said to be connected with biography:

Children of Great Men-Hereditary Tendencies.

If the father bestows the nervous system, how are we to explain the notorious inferiority of the children of great men? There is considerable exaggeration afloat on this matter, and able men have been called uullities because they have not manifested' the great talents of their fathers; but allowing for all over-statement, the palpable fact of the inferiority of some to their fathers is beyond dispute, and has helped to foster the idea of all great men owing their genius to their mothers; an idea which will not bear confrontation with the facts. Many men of genius have had remarkable mothers; and that one such instance could be cited is sufficient to prove the error both of the hypothesis which refers the nervous system to paternal influence, and of the hypothesis which only refers the preponderance to the paternal influence. If the male preponderates, how is it that Pericles, who carried the weapons of Zeus upon his tongue,' produced nothing better than a Paralus and a Xanthippus ? How came the infamous Lysimachs from the austere Aristides? How was the weighty intellect of Thucydides left to be represented by an idiotic Milesias and a stupid Stephanus? When was the great soul of Oliver Cromwell in his son Richard ? Who were the inheritors of Henry IV and Peter the Great? What were Shakspeare's children and Milton's daughters? What was Addison's only son [daughter]? an idiot. Unless the mother preponderated in these and similar instances, we are without an explanation; for it being proved as a law of heritage, that the individual does transmit his qualities to his offspring. it is only on the supposition of both individuas transmitting their organisations, and the one modifying the other, that such anomalies are conceivable. When the paternal influence is not counteracted, we see it transmitted. Hence the common remark, Talent runs in families.' The proverbial phrases, 'l'esprit des Mortemarts,' and the wit of the Sheridans,' imply this transmission from father to son. Bernardo Tasso was a considerable poet, and his son Torquato inherited his faculties, heightened by the influence of the mother. The two Herschels, the two Colmans, the Kemble family, and the Coleridges, will at once occur to the reader; but the most striking example known to us is that of the family which boasted Jean Sebastian Bach as the culminating illustration of a musical genius, which, more or less, was distributed over three hundred Bachs, the children of very various mothers. Here a sceptical reader may be tempted to ask how a man of genius is ever produced, if the child is always the repetition of the parents? How can two parents of