hasise the fact that man is of no
account, ephemeral as the leaves of summer. But in those bold aisles, by
the pillars rising with such a confident pride towards heaven, it is
almost impossible not to feel that man indeed is god-like, lord of the
earth; and that the great array of nature is builded for his purpose.

Typically Spanish also is the decoration, and very rich. The
choir-stalls are of carved wood, florid and exuberant like the Spanish
imagination; the altars gleam with gold; pictures of saints are framed
by golden pillars carved with huge bunches of grapes and fruit and
fantastic leaves. I was astounded at the opulence of the treasure; there
were gorgeous altars of precious metal, great saints of silver, caskets
of gold, monstrances studded with rare stones, crosses and crucifixes.
The vestments were of unimaginable splendour: there were two hundred
copes of all ages and of every variety, fifty of each colour, white for
Christmas and Easter, red for Corpus Christi, blue for the Immaculate
Conception, violet for Holy Week; there were the special copes of the
Primate, copes for officiating bishops, copes for dignitaries from other
countries and dioceses. They were of the richest velvet and satin,
heavily embroidered with gold, many with saints worked in silk, so
heavy that it seemed hardly possible for a man to bear them.

In the Baptistery, filling it with warm light, is the _San Antonio_ of
Murillo, than which no picture gives more intensely the religious
emotion. The saint, tall and meagre, beautiful of face, looks at the
Divine Child hovering in a golden mist with an ecstasy that is no longer
human.

It is interesting to consider whether an artist need feel the sentiment
he desires to convey. Certainly many pictures have been painted under
the influence of profound feeling which leave the spectator entirely
cold, and it is probable enough that the early Italians felt few of the
emotions which their pictures call forth. We know that the masterpieces
of Perugino, so moving, so instinct with religious tenderness, were very
much a matter of pounds, shillings and pence. But Luis de Vargas, on the
other hand, daily humbled himself by scourging and by wearing a hair
shirt, and Vicente Joanes prepared himself for a new picture by
communion and confession; so that it is impossible to wonder at the rude
and savage ardour of their work. And the impression that may be gathered
of Murillo from his pictures is borne ou