ideration_. The fine collection
of pictures of the Spanish schools, purchased by Baron Taylor for LOUIS
PHILIPPE, and now exhibited in the LOUVRE, has contributed to the same
effect. It contains MURILLO'S Virgin de la Faxa, a perfect master-piece of
coloring, which cost one hundred and thirty thousand francs.

None of his great compositions are taken from profane history or
mythology. He was in a manner interdicted from using subjects derived from
those copious sources, by a decree of the Holy Inquisition of Andalusia,
which prohibited painters and sculptors, under the penalties of fine and
excommunication, from displaying in their works any lascivious or naked
images. His landscapes and flower-girls are painted in the highest style
of beauty; and his beggars have never been excelled in all the loathsome
attributes of misery and disease. The fact of his never having been out of
his native country, disposed critics to believe that his works must be
deficient in that highest order of merit which exclusively belongs to the
classic schools of Italy: they would not admit that species of excellence
which knew how to adapt the highest subjects of art to the unlearned. Yet
such was MURILLO'S influence over the human heart, that his genius enabled
him to embellish truth, and to present it with all its graces and
attractions to the understandings of all those who are endowed with an
innate love of the beautiful. His pictures, like Gray's Elegy in a Country
Church-yard, may with equal truth be said 'to abound in images which find
a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns
an echo.'

It is true that there is nothing academic to be found in his groups; no
mysterious allegory; no theatrical display of the passions; very little of
what is more talked of than understood, the beau-ideal. Nevertheless, he
is always original, and never vulgar; his drawing is nearly faultless; his
compositions are instantly felt and understood by all who have read the
Scriptures, because they convey to the mind more of the evangelical
character and attributes of Christianity than those of any other painter.
On this subject some very characteristic remarks are made by the late Sir
David Wilkie, in his letters from Jerusalem.[2]

[2] SEE letter to WILLIAM COLLINS, ESQ., Vol. 3., p. 424: ALLEN
CUNNINGHAM'S Life of Sir DAVID WILKIE.

'His Madonnas, his saints, and even his Saviours, have the Spanish cast;
all his fi