ant
companions; and when the Princess Margaret was christened, the elder
sister stood as godmother with great dignity. A pretty story is related
that on the way to the chapel for the christening, Maria Theresa let
slip from her finger a costly ring, which a poor woman picked up to
return to her. "Keep it," said the little princess, with true royal
tact; "God has sent it to you."

The Princess Margaret became the darling of the court, and her blonde
beauty is immortalized in many portraits by Velasquez. The most famous
of these is the picture called "Las Meninas," or The Maids of Honor, in
which the young princess is the central figure of a group of devoted
attendants. The composition is a veritable masterpiece, representing
with perfect naturalness a daily scene in the palace. The princess rules
with a sweet, complacent smile, and one can well imagine what an object
of admiration her fair hair and blue eyes must have been among the
swarthy, dark-eyed Spaniards.

[Illustration: PRINCESS MARGARET.--VELASQUEZ.]

Another celebrated painting of the same child is in the Louvre at Paris,
where it is a centre of attraction for art lovers and copyists, on
account of the exquisite delicacy of its technique. It is a half-length
portrait, showing a winning face, with wide, earnest eyes, and a
demure little mouth. The fair hair is parted at one side, where it is
caught back with a ribbon bow,--a style which the princess is said to
have retained even after her marriage with the Emperor Leopold.

From an artist's point of view, the beauty of the Velasquez child
portraits is greatly injured by the grotesque fashions of the times. A
long stiff corset and an immense oval hoop entirely precluded any
possibility of grace in the attitude of the little princesses, while a
ridiculously artificial style of dressing the hair completed the
absurdity of a costume which was the laughing-stock of Europe.

Van Dyck was in this respect far more fortunate in his surroundings, and
the full, lustrous folds of satin in which the English royal children
were arrayed, gave him ample scope for an exquisite disposition of light
and shade.

Independently of purely artistic principles, we should be sorry to
lose from the pictures of either artist that element of interest and
fascination which the costumes of an earlier epoch always arouse. The
Princess Maria Theresa would be less interesting without her big hoop,
and the Princess Mary less dignified with