Velasquez painted him. He wore a wide stiff linen collar over a black garment embroidered with silver. The ingenuous and amiable look of this boy, who was probably fortunate in dying too young to ascend the throne of a decadent state, is preserved for us by Velasquez with all that simplicity and rectitude for which he is famous. The prince's Austrian cousin, whom he was to have married, is represented in mourning dress, with silver ornaments, and wears one of those astonishing head-dresses, composed of her own hair arranged in ringlets and tied with red ribbon, a huge and unbecoming coiffure, which may be seen in several of the Velasquez portraits in Madrid.

Among the English pictures, the pair of large upright landscapes by John Constable are conspicuous. The Valley Farm, four and a half feet high by about four feet wide, is a replica of the picture in the National Gallery, London, with some insignificant differences in the details. The central object in the composition is the farmhouse known as Willy Lott's house, which stands on the bank of a stream called the Stour, very close to the water. Several cows are seen in the shallow part of the river, not far from the house, and at the right is a boat, in which are a man and a woman. A thick group of tall trees fills the right side of the foreground, and casts a deep shadow over the water. This subject was painted several times by Constable, whose father's mill was situated a short distance from the Valley Farm, on the Stour, near the village of East Bergholt. This modest stream has been immortalized by the pencil of Constable, who loved it as Daubigny loved the Oise. One of his early friends and his first patrons, Sir George Beaumont, who was in his day regarded as an authority on the fine arts, had a theory that "a good picture should be the color of a good fiddle, brown; " and, though Constable rightly refused to be guided by any such

inflexible dictum, it can be seen that he did not fail to appreciate the beauty of browns, for The Valley Farm is distinctly a brown picture. It reminds us also of an expression used by Constable in one of his letters: "I have done a good deal of skying" (making studies of skies). His conviction of the very great importance of the sky in a landscape needs no testimony apart from his paintings. The gray and moving sky which bends over the Valley Farm is the life of the picture, and is brushed in with amazing breadth and vigor. The foreground is roughly executed, and the whole composition has more rugged force than charm. It looks its best at some distance. Perhaps it is a bit disappointing at first, but it grows on the observer mightily, by its largeness and originality. Willy Lott, says Leslie, was born in this house, and " passed more than eighty years without having spent four whole days away from it." It must have been a great event for him when Constable set up his easel there. How placidly the years, like the silent Stour, must have glided by! There is an aspect of permanency and peace about this rustic abode; the very trees have an uncommonly solid, enduring, English look. We feel that the spot is one that we have always known; that it is rich in goodly human associations; that it is a home, and not a mere house. "Intimate" the French writers would call it. Constable's affection for the familiar stiles, stumps, and lanes of his native village, which he vowed he would never cease to paint so long as he could hold a brush, was one of the characteristics which made him the most national of English landscapists, and it explains why the French artists of his time were among the first to recognize his genius. Ruskin upbraided him for the lowness of his subjects, but Leslie, with a truer instinct, pronounces him the most genuine painter of English cultivated scenery.

The

The Lock on the Stour, the companion piece to The Valley Farm, is as like it in color and style as it is in size and form. On the right is a heavy mass of old trees, beneath whose limbs a stream passes across the composition. lock, an interesting object in a pictorial sense, is near the centre of the canvas, and two men are laboriously engaged in passing a boat through it. At the left we see a flat expanse of meadow land, and in the distance some low hills and the square tower of a village church. Both this painting and The Valley Farm were bought from Mr. Alfred Lucas, brother of the engraver who reproduced so many of Constable's works.

By whom is this delicious amber-toned landscape Number 12, so smooth, warm, fluent, complete, and harmonious, setting forth a subject of such extraordinary picturesque charm? Would not any one say that it must be by a Dutchman, at all events? For what painter outside of Holland could ever endow the blank brown walls of an old tavern with such fat and luminous color? A glance at the catalogue reveals our error : Number 12 turns out to be Saltash, by Joseph M. W. Turner. It was painted about 1812, when Turner was under forty. Saltash quaintly sits on the banks of the Tamar in Cornwall, and is a subject fit to warm an etcher's heart. In the foreground is the river's edge, with a barge at a dock on the left, and on the right a boat half drawn up on the shore. A long, rambling building, with weatherstained walls, fills the centre of the composition, extending completely across the canvas. In one place on it is a laconic sign, "Beer House," and among the half-obliterated inscriptions scrawled on

the outer walls by loafers are the words England expects every man to do his duty." Through a square gateway or passage cut through the building is seen a market-place and the streets beyond; and all about are figures of men and women and horses. This beautiful work was bought in 1886 by Mr. Marquand from a lady of Liverpool. Possibly it is not so well adapted to give to people unfamiliar with the National Gallery such a distinct notion of Turner's genius as some of his later works, in which his use of color and his treatment of light were more peculiar to himself; but, if less powerful, brilliant, and characteristic than the productions of his mature age, it is none the less a landscape of rare charm and of abiding in

terest.

Sir Joshua Reynolds's bust portrait of Lady Carew in a white dress is a fairly representative work, delicate, refined, and a little soft. A much more important example is the large painting of the Hon. Henry Fane and his guardians, Inigo Jones and Charles Blair, in the next room. This canvas, which comes from the Duke of Westmoreland's collection, having been presented to the museum by Mr. Junius S. Morgan in 1887, is as honestly and unaffectedly painted as any Reynolds in existence, and is in a good condition; the contrasts of color in the costumes are very effective. Gainsborough's Girl with a Cat hardly does him justice; in the Sea Coast, by Bonnington, there is little of the singular attractiveness of his personality which is felt in his best pictures; and the Hautbois Common of Old Crome looks like a finished example of Rousseau.

William Howe Downes.

XVII.

NICK'S little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the following day much as the old man enjoyed his being there, he would not have dreamed of asking for more of his time, now that it had such great public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking about it with him. Talk about it, however, was the next best thing, as, on the morrow, after breakfast, Mr. Carteret showed Nick that he considered. They sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table beside him, covered with the letters and newspapers that the post had brought. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on public affairs, and proud, in a manner, of the fact that he now dictated almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial point of view; remembering, on each occasion, only afterwards that though he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote for him till lunch-time. The young man had a holiday to-day, in honor of Nick's visita fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not particularly sincere speech about his being ready to write anything if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.

"Ah, but your own budget: what will become of that?" the old gentleman objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if he was rather surprised not to see them stuffed out with documents in split

envelopes. His visitor had to confess that he had not directed his letters to meet him at Beauclere: he should find them in town that afternoon. This led to a little homily from Mr. Carteret which made him feel rather guilty; there was such an implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, "You won't do them justice — you won't do them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting behind. It was his favorite doctrine that one should always be a little before; and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.

This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice as to the mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career; as to which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified and even a little irritated, by his talk: it was founded on the idea of observation, and yet Nick was unable to regard Mr. Carteret as an observer. "He does n't observe me," he said to himself; "if he did he would see, he would n't think ". And the end of this private cogitation was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for granted. He didn't see any of the things that Nick saw. Some of these latter were the light touches that the summer morning scattered through the sweet old garden. The time passed there a good deal as if it were sitting still, with a plaid under its feet, while Mr. Carteret distilled a little more of the wisdom that he had drawn from his fifty years. This immense term had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it were

"He takes a great interest in the theatre; I suppose you 'll say that may be serious too," Nick added, laughing.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Carteret, looking as if he scarcely understood. Then he continued, "Well, it can't hurt you." "It can't hurt me?'

"If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests."

"When a man's in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him."

"I'm very glad you 're happy," said Mr. Carteret. He rested his mild eyes on our young man, who had a sense of seeing in them, for a moment, the faint ghost of an old story, the dim revival of a sentiment that had become the memory of a memory. This glimmer of wonder and envy, the revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for an instant infinitely touching. Nick had always had a theory, suggested by a vague allusion. from his father, who had been discreet, that their benevolent friend had had, in his youth, an unhappy love-affair which had led him to forswear forever the commerce of woman. What remained in him of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. "It is good to marry, and I think it's right. I've not done right, I know it. If she's a good woman it's the best thing," Mr. Carteret went on. "It's what I've been hoping for you. Sometimes I have thought of speaking to you."

"She's a very good woman," said Nick.

"And I hope she's not poor." Mr. Carteret spoke with exactly the same blandness.

"No, indeed, she's rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a large fortune."

"And on what terms does she enjoy it?"

"I have n't the least idea," said Nick. Mr. Carteret was silent a moment. "I see.

need n't concern you," he added in a

moment.

Nick thought of his mother, at this, but he remarked, "I dare say she can do what she likes with her money." "So can I, my dear young friend," said Mr. Carteret.

Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance in the old man's face. He turned his own everywhere but towards it, thinking again of his mother. "That must be very pleasant, if one has any."

"I wish you had a little more."

"I don't particularly care," said Nick. "Your marriage will assist you; you can't help that," Mr. Carteret went on. "But I should like you to be under obligations not quite so heavy."

Cer

But

"That the rest does n't count? tainly it's nice of her to like you. why should n't she? Other people do." "Some of them make me feel as if I abused it," said Nick, looking at his host. "That is, they don't make me, but I feel it," he added, correcting himself.

"I have no son," said Mr. Carteret. "Sha'n't you be very kind to her?" he pursued. "You'll gratify her ambition." “Oh, she thinks me cleverer than I am."

"That's because she's in love," hinted the old gentleman, as if this were very subtle. "However, you must be as clever as we think you. If you don't prove so" And he paused, with his folded hands.

"Well, if I don't?" asked Nick. "Oh, it won't do - it won't do," said Mr. Carteret, in a tone his companion was destined to remember afterwards. "I say I have no son," he continued; "but if I had had one he should have risen high."

"It's well for me such a person does n't exist. I should n't easily have