his master, but this, as his biographers say, mattered the less seeing that his master was Nature. His second instructor became his warm admirer, his lifelong friend, and his father-in-law. In 1622, soon after his marriage, Velasquez visited Madrid, and there painted a portrait. The king he could not gain access to. Philip, having but recently ascended the throne, was still occupied in trying to reign.

Next year Velasquez came again to Madrid, and again painted a portrait. This, on the very evening of its completion, was by the instrumentality of Olivares, the prime minister, submitted to the king, and from that night the career of Velasquez was assured.

Philip, with the prevision of genius, had discerned that his own part in life was to be the model of Velasquez. He set the painter at once to work on a great equestrian picture of himself, and promised him that no other should ever limn his royal features. This promise he kept-almost: a trifle of five portraits by Rubens, about as many by various hands-what were they in the career of a monarch who was always having his portrait painted? It has been remarked of Philip that it was greatly to be desired that he should have kept his marriage vow with anything approaching the approximate adherence that he gave to his promise to Velasquez.

If it may be said of Velasquez that he was the greatest of portrait painters, equally may it be asserted of Philip that he was the greatest of sitters for portraits. That sphinx-like imperturbability, that pale enigmatical personality of his, of which we can hardly tell whether it fascinates or repels us most, were accompanied with a motionlessness of demeanour that facilitated the labours of the pencil. The outward Philip resembled rather the portrait of a king than a king. At the Council table he would sit for hours, his eyes fixed, and moving no feature except those 'vermeil-tinctured lips' of his. He would sit through entire comedies awake, and yet without the slightest perceptible motion, a royal but depressing ornament to an auditorium.

Of this aspect of him there is a striking instance on record. In the year 1831 Olivares, on the occasion of a royal birthday, designed a singular spectacle to gratify the taste of his artistic monarch. The great square, the scene of many bull-fights, was, for once, to present the similitude of a Roman arena with its combats of strange and savage beasts: lion, tiger, and camel, an animal of every kind procurable. They were collected from the far places of the earth, were starved to fighting point, and, before a vast assemblage of spectators, were turned together into the ring. Cruel as the scene would seem to us, to the Spaniard of that day it was comparatively humane, since no human life was risked. It must be borne in mind that the bullfight of that day was not fought out by professional hirelings. The jeunesse dorée were at that time the heroes of the arena, and not unfrequently they met their death there.

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The distracted animals fought with desperation, and tore and roared and butted and bled to admiration. It was just being repeated from mouth to mouth that witty Quevedo had described the scene as the contents of Noah's ark mixed with Æsop's fables, when the whole assembly began to thrill with a strong and unanticipated sensation of interest.

One of the combatants is specially distinguishing himself—a bull of Xarama: a bull with gleaming wicked eye, with a mountain of a neck, clear-cut horns and little feet, as nimble as a stag's; the very type and symbol of Spanish sport-a perfect love of a bull. Bravo Toro! He bellows defiance and the tiger springs at him, his claws gripe the mighty shoulders. See! he is shaken off through and again through his vitals go the gleaming horns, and the tiger is thrown away quivering and clutching. Bravo Toro! Victory and pain intoxicate the bull; he gallops round the arena sparing nothing. He pashes the remnants of life out of the dying, he drives his horns angrily into the forlorn carcasses of the dead. Now he stops, and, breathing heavily, looks on all sides of him, his limbs quivering with excitement and wrath. His once velvet coat is shaggy with sweat and blood; the ivory white of his horns is deeply dyed with crimson. Bravo Toro! Bravo, bravo!

Philip gravely rises, a kingly thought within him. The bull has deserved well. The bull shall be royally rewarded.

Shall he lead a pampered life in royal park and stable, where the artist eye of the king may dwell from time to time on his sublime proportions? Better than that.

Shall he return to the meads of Xarama, exempt for ever from the summons to the fatal ring; to lie and chew the sweet meadow grass at his leisure, or plash shoulder deep in the cool river? Better even than that!

Philip speaks a word to a courtier, and a gun is brought to him, the long-barrelled weapon we know so well in the paintings of Velasquez. Philip puts it to his shoulder and shoots, with the accuracy of a Commodus-or a Ravenswood. The bull staggers, falls on his knees, and then rolls over stone dead.

All men saw the deed, and yet, it is related, so impassive was the aspect of the king that, when he had put the gun aside, it became impossible to believe that it was he that had fired the shot.

Besides that of posing eternally for Velasquez, what purpose did this strangest of kings serve in the general scheme of things?

This there are types of character so dear to the fancy of man that Dame Nature has to gratify her child by realising them for him, and among these the artist king is one of the most fascinating.

Both before and since Nature has sketched the type; in Philip she realised it. Ludwig of Bavaria was not an important factor in European politics. King Renée with his handful of high-sounding

titular possessions, yet 'not so wealthy as an English yeoman,' held what he was permitted to hold on sufferance of his powerful neighbours. Had he left the lute and pencil and essayed to govern in earnest, he had not probably reigned so long. But when in 1621 the artist Philip ascended the throne, he was at the head of an all-powerful kingdom, and it was said of him: 'Truly to give the Spaniard his due, he is a mighty monarch, he hath dominions in all parts of the world, both in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (which he hath solely to himself). So the sun shines all the four and twenty hours of the natural day upon some part or other of his countries, for part of the Antipodes are subject to him.'

And Philip was artist to his slender white finger tips. He was a highly-skilled draughtsman and painter, occupying his royal pencil chiefly on religious subjects and landscape; once, as we shall see, he laid a brush on a painting by Velasquez.

He was an actor too, taking part in the then popular amusement of playing comedies, of which only the situations were settled beforehand, the performers supplying their own words. He wrote much, and in many kinds; piles of his manuscripts are still stored in the Royal Library of Madrid. His most important literary effort was a tragedy on the subject of Essex, the favourite of our Queen Elizabeth. He loved the society of poets, delighting in the swift exchange of thought with such men as Lope de Vega or the sublime Calderon. Nor were his accomplishments limited to the arts; our own Duke of Newcastle, that great authority on equitation, pronounced him to be the best horseman in Spain. He was also a skilful sportsman: indeed he seems to have done nothing ill except the governing of his kingdom, and that he rather neglected than misguided. Coming to the throne at the age of sixteen, it was natural that he should be in some measure dependent on his prime minister; and, as Philip's preference for art over statecraft increased, the government of the kingdom drifted more and more into the hands of the ambitious Olivares. Olivares had conceived the project of making of Philip's a monumental and historical reign; and, more than once, he tried to get him generally known by the surname of 'the great.' But, as battles were lost and provinces came to be alienated, the title was referred to only in an ironical sense. Philip the Great, it was remarked, was like a ditch a-digging, the more you took from him the greater he became. The intellectual side of Philip made a great impression on Rubens, who observed of him that his kingdom would be much better governed if he would take the trouble to govern it himself.

A deep vein of melancholy ran through the character of Philip, and, when this quality of him was in the ascendant, he was wont to retire to the great chapel in the Escurial where the kings of Spain are buried, and to his own allotted niche in it. There, sitting as

still as he would one day lie, he would listen to the solemn music of the Mass.

Amongst those who frequented the Court of Spain, whilst Velasquez was still busy over his first portrait of Philip, the English dress and the English accent were here and there conspicuous. England, unconscious of growing influences soon to trouble her own peace, was planning to secure the peace of the whole world by an alliance between her royal house and that of Spain.

One Friday night in March 1623, at the Earl of Bristol's house in Madrid, a message was brought to his lordship that two gentlemen from London, Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, desired to see him. Coming hastily out the Earl recognised in Mr. Thomas Smith, who stood in the hall with a portmantle in his hand, King James' favourite 'Steenie,' then Marquis of Buckingham. When too-curious eyes had been removed from the scene, and Mr. John Smith of London, who had stayed a while in the dark on the other side of the street, entered the house, the astonished Lord Bristol discovered him to be Charles, Prince of Wales. Every corner of Madrid buzzed next day with the news of a great man's being newly arrived from England (some maintained it was King James himself), and the closed coaches that passed to and fro between the palace and Lord Bristol's house raised expectation to the highest.

On Sunday following (writes James Howells to Sir Thomas Savage) the King in the afternoon came abroad to take the air with the Queen, bis two brothers, and the Infanta, who were all in one coach; but the Infanta sat in the boot with a blue riband about her arm, of purpose that the Prince might distinguish her. . . . And now it was publicly known amongst the vulgar, that it was the Prince of Wales who was come, and the confluence of people before my Lord of Bristol's house was so great and greedy to see the Prince, that to clear the way Sir Lewis Dives went out and took coach, and all the crowd of people went after him. So the Prince himself a little after took coach; wherein there were the Earl of Bristol, Sir Walter Ashton, and Count Gondamar, and so went to the Prado, a place hard by, of purpose to take the air, where they stayed till the King passed by; as soon as the Infanta saw the Prince her colour rose very high, which we hold to be an impression of love and affection, for the face is oftentimes a true index of the heart.

Howells, the prince of racy letter-writers, gives us a vivid picture of the Spanish Court at that juncture; in which we catch glimpses of Charles, whom the Spaniards declared to be so gallant a wooer that he deserved to have the Infanta thrown into his arms the first night he came, waiting for hours in a coach to see her pass by, or, Romeo-like, climbing an orchard wall to have private speech with her; of 'Archy,' King James' court fool, jesting with the Infanta and her ladies, or capping some allusion to Spanish victories with a bitter reference to the fate of the Armada; and again of Lope de Vega turning graceful verses on Carlos Estuardo.'

It is nearer to our subject to record that Charles entered the studio of Velasquez, and that the painter sketched in a portrait of the

prince, which, however, was never completed,' though Charles was so pleased with the painter that he made him a present of a hundred crowns. It is interesting to remember that in the same year with Velasquez was born Vandyke, who was to paint many portraits of Charles; curious to think that in the same year was born Oliver Cromwell, who also in the fulness of time was to have much to do with Charles.

Philip found in his proposed brother-in-law a prince after his own heart, for Charles' taste in art was as exquisite as his enthusiasm for it was keen. He was, even then, forming a gallery to which Philip, in a fit of fraternal enthusiasm, added three magnificent Titians. The matrimonial negotiations falling through, and Charles quitting Madrid with some suddenness, these were left behind. Probably the portrait by Velasquez remained incomplete owing to the same haste.

About a quarter of a century later we find the picture gallery of Charles causing Philip some heart searchings. The King of England had fallen on the scaffold at Whitehall, his exiled son had received sympathy from Philip, and Lord Clarendon was entertained as English Ambassador at the Court of Spain.

That there was little love between the English Commonwealth and the King of Spain we may gather from the following extracts from Cromwell's speeches:

Why, truly, your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He is naturally so; he is naturally so throughout, by reason of that enmity that is in him against whatsoever is of God.

That (Spain) is the party that brings all your enemies before you. It doth: for so it is now that Spain hath espoused that Interest which you have all along hitherto been conflicting with-Charles Stuart's Interest.

It must have been painful to the feelings of a Catholic Majesty to have dealings with regicides who regarded him as Anti-Christ personified, yet the Whitehall pictures were for sale! It cannot have been wholly pleasant to sympathise with an exiled prince, and at the same time to make arrangements to decorate your walls with the masterpieces of art which have been reft from his murdered father; yet pictures are pictures! To realise the artist king's temptations, we must remember that those gems of the Louvre Gallery, Titian's 'Entombment,' and 'Supper at Emmaus,' the exquisite 'Antiope' of Correggio, and the lovely Pastoral' by Giorgione, all came from the collection of Charles the First. Alonzo de Cardenas was accordingly sent as ambassador to the Commonwealth with direc

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1 In 1847 Mr. John Snare, of Reading, announced to the world that a picture in his possession was the portrait of Charles by Velasquez. Of how he tried to prove this, and of the famous Velasquez Cause,' wherein the disputed work was valued by experts at various sums from 57. to 10,000l., all may be read at length in the numerous pamphlets Mr. Snare produced on the subject.