pictures, to which I shall refer by and by, are
excellent, but the fate was kind which confined him largely to portrait
painting. It was brought as a reproach against Velasquez in his
lifetime, that he could paint a head and nothing else, to which he
replied with mingled spirit, sense, and good nature, that his detractors
flattered him, 'for he knew nobody of whom it could be said that he
painted a head thoroughly well.'

Sir W. Stirling Maxwell asserts of Velasquez's portrait painting, that
no artist 'ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his
cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar,
nor vulgarized the refined,' and goes on to quote this among other
criticism:--'his portraits baffle description and praise; he drew the
minds of men; they live, breathe, and are ready to walk out of the
frames.' Sir William winds up with the enthusiastic declaration, 'Such
pictures as these are real history; we know the persons of Philip IV,
and Olivares, as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo
with Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their
characters.'

I shall borrow still further from Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's graphic and
entertaining book, descriptions of two of Velasquez's _genre_ pictures,
'The Maids of Honour,' and the more celebrated 'Spinners,' both at
Madrid. 'The scene (of the first) is a long room in a quarter of the old
palace which was called the prince's quarter, and the subject, Velasquez
at work on a large picture of the royal family. To the extreme right of
the composition is seen the back of the easel and the canvas on which he
is engaged; and beyond it spalette, pausing to converse, and to observe
the effect of his performance. In the centre stands the little Infanta
Maria Margarita, taking a cup of water from a salver which Dona Maria
Augustina Sarmiento, maid of honour to the queen, presents kneeling. To
the left, Dona Isabel de Velasco, another menina, seems to be dropping a
courtesy; and the dwarfs, Maria Barbolo and Nicolas Pertusano, stand in
the foreground, the little man putting his foot on the quarters of a
great tawny hound, which despises the aggression, and continues in a
state of solemn repose. Some paces behind these figures, Dona Marcela de
Ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a _guardadimas,_ are seen
in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of
a staircase, up which Don Josef Nieto, qu