Murillo went to Cadiz to paint the great picture of the Espousals of St. Catharine, in the church of the Capuchin Convent there, and whilst at work fell from a scaffold: he never recovered from the effects of this accident, and expired in April, 1682, in the arms of his friend and pupil, Nuñez de Villa

vicencio.

Had Murillo ever visited Italy, it is very doubtful to us if art would have benefited or his reputation been augmented. On the one hand, it must be owned that his works are often deficient in ideal beauty, or, to leave the jargon of art, a careful study of the fine forms of the antique had not taught him to select and adhere only to the very best models. In this view, then, a residence at Rome might have been advantageous to him; but, on the other side, would not his simplicity and unaffected grace have run the risk of contamination, by the mannerism and mechanical dexterity of those degenerate days? What, we would ask, could such a man hope to gain from the luscious affectation or the conventional forms of Carlo Dolce, Pietro di Cortona, or Cignani?

One of the most wonderful points about Murillo's execution is that feathery lightness of touch which distinguishes most of the productions of his best time. The brush seems to have swept over the canvass unrestrained, and to have left the flakes of colour hardly adhering to the ground. There results from this a peculiar richness and lightness, of which Murillo well knew how to avail himself, by contrasting it with a harder and more substantial style of painting. Thus, in some of his pictures, the heavenly figures seem of a totally different texture from the solid earthliness of the unglorified beings below. As a colourist, he was equally marvellous; the cold grey tone of his back grounds gives immense value to the mellow tints of the principal figures. Sir Joshua Reynolds has said, "that none but great colourists can venture to paint fine white linen near flesh." Few artists hazarded this contrast oftener than Murillo, and none more successfully, whether we look at the general effect of the whole picture, or the manner in which the flesh and the linen are respectively executed.

An enormous exportation of the works of this master, real and reputed, has taken place at different periods from Spain, but principally in the reign of Philip V. The greater part of his large works were devotional subjects, painted for churches and convents, and the proprietors of which, therefore, had in ordinary times neither the wish nor the power to alienate them. Thus, it is not surprising that he should be principally known to the rest of Europe by his beggar-boys, and his more familiar compositions. In Evelyn's Journal, as early as April, 21, 1693, we find that, at the sale of

VOL. XIII. NO. XXVI.

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Lord Melford's effects at Whitehall, "Lord Godolphin bought the picture of The Boys, by Morillio, the Spaniard, for eighty guineas. Deare enough." Many of those which then got into the market were no doubt works of his numerous pupils and imitators: pictures by him of these subjects are rare in Spain, but in the subordinate figures of some of his paintings, as, for instance, in the Santa Isabel, or Santo Tomas de Villanueva, in the Capuchins' at Seville, there is sufficient evidence of his power of treating low life with that admirable character and thoroughly Spanish feeling which many of them possess. Before we take leave of this great master, we ought to state, that his authentic portrait, painted by himself, as well as a very fine collection of his original drawings, are in the same cabinet to which it has been so often necessary for us to refer, namely, that of Mr. Williams of Seville. We might add, that this gentleman is one of the very few persons who possess an accurate knowledge of Murillo in every period. His three ablest pupils were Tobar, Menéses, and Nuñez de Villavicencio, who copied their master so accurately as to deceive even very good judges. The first of these three was by no means contemptible as an original artist. Menéses finished the Espousals of St. Catharine, as we have stated above, and there is a very good copy by him in a private house in Seville of a Murillo, which we believe to be in the possession of Mr. Baring. Villavicencio's merits can never be doubted by those who have seen his excellent picture of Boys playing in the Street, in the gallery at Madrid. This painting closely resembles in style many similar compositions attributed to Murillo, and we have heard it confidently ascribed to that artist; but as it is said to have been presented to Charles II. by Villavicencio himself, it can hardly be the work of any other master. Juan de Valdes Leal lived at the same time, and aspired to be the rival of Murillo, but his loose sketchy manner, and the manifest inferiority that probably fostered his jealousy of his great contemporary, would hardly tempt us to dwell on his works. Nor, indeed, shall we prolong our catalogue further, than just to mention Claudio Coello, immortalized by the beautiful picture of the Santa Forma, in the Escurial. The Santa Forma is a consecrated wafer, said to retain miraculous marks of the impious fury of the heretics of Gorcum, in Holland, which was in 1684, by the order of Charles II., removed from the reliquary, where it had hitherto lain, to the altar of the sacristy. The king was anxious to commemorate so pious a mark of respect on his part to this voucher for transubstantiation, and commissioned Francisco Rici (a painter whose style closely resembled that of Valdes) to execute a picture of the ceremony. Rici, however,

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died when the work was only sketched, and it was then entrusted to his pupil Claudio Coello. In the original design, the point of sight was placed too high, and Coello, therefore, abandoned the composition of his master, and successfully followed his own taste. The place destined to receive the picture when finished was very high in proportion to its width, and not well adapted for an historical composition; again, almost all the figures were to be actual portraits of persons about the court, and in a kneeling posture. Notwithstanding these difficulties, Coello has overcome the disagreeable uniformity of dress and position, as well as the awkwardness of the shape, and produced a work admirable for the way in which it is composed and for the

execution.

We have thus brought this slight sketch of the History of Spanish Painting up to the end of the 17th century, and of the reign of the last feeble monarch of the Austrian line, after whose death French ambition was destined to struggle to the crown of Spain, and French taste threatened to obliterate the nationality of her literature and art. It remains to say something of our authorities we have throughout followed the excellent work of Cean Bermudez; Palomino's gossipping folio stands in somewhat the same relation to this author in which Vasari does to Lanzi, but the inaccuracies of the Spanish writer are exceedingly gross and numerous. We need say less on this point, because the reader will have seen, in several instances, that he is at variance with the statements of Cean Bermudez, who, as much as possible, verified his facts by a reference to the archives and public documents of the churches and convents. His Dictionary contains an account of the sculptors and illuminators of his native country, as well as its painters. At the end are copious indexes, both chronological and geographical, so that the whole work is as convenient in its arrangement as it is interesting in its contents. The compendium of Quilliet draws all its matter from Cean Bermudez, and, besides being disfigured by gross dogmatism as to the separation of some of the schools, contains in the preface a most entertaining estimate of the merits of a good many Spanish masters, by a comparison of them with others better known. Who but a Frenchman, bigoted to the glory of France, and the "Siècle de Louis XIV.," would have ventured to name Lebrun as equivalent to Velasquez, or discern in their styles one of those " rapprochemens inouis, que l'on trouve dans tels et tels artistes qui, sans s'être jamais vus, sans s'être rien communiqué, vivant à de grandes distances, produisaient à même tems des chefs-d'œuvres qui paraissent sortir du même pinceau ou de la même école?"

ART. II.-1. Sur la Mortalité Proportionelle de quelques - popu lations, considérée comme mesure de leur aisance et de leur civilisation. Par Sir Francis D'Ivernois. Genève, Imp. de la Bibliothèque Universelle. 1832. 8vo.

دارد

2. Sur la Mortalité Proportionelle des populations Normandes, considérée, &c. Par le même. Genève. 1833. 8vo. 1

THESE interesting papers-which recently appeared in the Bibliothèque Universelle of Geneva-are composed from materials collected by Sir Francis D'Ivernois for a great work on which he has been several years engaged, on European Statistics; and the idea of their detached publication in that excellent periodical appears to have been suggested by a ridiculous blunder of Moreau de Jonnès, concerning that fertile source of modern panic, the supposed perils of Europe from its Slavonic populations. That a publicist of some respectability should, in the face of all principle, allow terror to persuade him, that Russia in less than fifty years will, within her present boundaries, number one hundred millions of inhabitants, is certainly a choice illustration as to how far an irritated fancy will derange the grave march of calculation; and we apprehend that his further statement of the insignificance of the united progress of Great Britain and France, in comparison with the progress of the Barbarian empire, is not suited to blunt the edge of Adam Smith's sarcasm concerning the pliability of political arithmetic, or to show that the mere figuring statistician has very notable pretensions to the name and honours of the statesman.

Overturning the erections of M. de Jonnès by a few easy efforts, M. D'Ivernois fixes attention upon an element, without which the parade of population-lists can never conduct the inquirer either to the relative strength of an empire, or to the solution of the important problem of its comparative progress or decline. That element is the mean duration of life. For of what are we informed by the mere numbers representing the populations of two states, and the rate of their annual increase? It is not possible to infer, from the unaccompanied announcement, one circumstance regarding either the moral or physical health of the two empires. Although the rate of increase in the one be comparatively rapid, its rate of mortality may at the same time be sufficiently appalling to prevent its generations from passing greatly beyond the age of maturity; while in the other each individual may reach upon the average a considerably advanced age, and thereby furnish a comparatively long life of usefulness to the State. Nor, without marking the mean duration of life, in regard to the same population at different epochs, will it be possible to

discern whether the recorded movement of that population betokens advance or virtual retrogression..

* Suppose" says M. D'Ivernois, " that at the beginning of this century Russia possessed only thirty millions of Russo-Greeks, and that she has now thirty-three; if the newly arrived masses do not count among them a greater number of years than those reckoned by the thirty millions, who preceded them, it will be evident that, notwithstanding the numerical increase, there has been no increase of human productive force; and the existing generation will have to waste itself in supporting a greater number of infants, without thence obtaining a greater number of adults."

ཛཱ ད གས

The point alluded to deserves more definite illustration. The useful or productive life commences with the date when the individual becomes capable of providing his own subsistence, a date which, for the sake of brevity, we shall term the age of maturity. The productive or useful period will evidently be the interval between this date and the average close of life; an interval which, if multiplied by the number of persons, will yield a product representing the comparative gross physical strength or momentum of a society. The representations of a hypothetical table will perhaps bring out more clearly the results at which we aim :—"

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Mark how rapidly the proportionate productive interval increases as the mean duration of life is prolonged! A society

This illustration can no where be intimately applied; but a general illustration is not to be objected to because of minute inapplicabilities, provided no inferences are drawn by means of its inapplicable points. Scarcely are there two countries where the age of maturity is the same. It varies with climate and usage, so that it is not a fixed element, as stated above. The hypothesis of a mean life too, is taken upon the supposition of the surplus lives of those who go beyond it, compensating, and nothing "more, the deficit in those who sink before reaching it. But the years of a mature man are more valuable than those years of a child, and hence the necessity of other corrections when we desire to be minute. Independently of this, however, there are clearly two circumstances by which the comparative population of States must be judged if we would arrive at their comparative strengths:

1. The moral condition. This regulates in general the mean duration of life, and when favourable gives as above an increased productive interval, or physical momen

tum.

2. The intellectual condition', or the wealth of the society. This informs us how great a quantity of that productive interval is employed in the production of necessaries and the sustenance of children. It is only the remainder which is disposable, or which constitutes the external power of the state.

Barbarism can thus seldom contend with civilization; and M. de Jonnès may be pacified.