enty; the fatigue of the morning's toil vanishes in the
evening's frolic; even the wounds of a cruel blow are readily healed by
a friendly word. Unconscious of any disparity between himself and
others, he is equally contented with his lot, whether his clothing be
velvet or rags, whether his play-ground be a royal park or the streets
of a great city.

The artistic possibilities of street material lay long undiscovered
through the first centuries of the Art Renaissance, when the subjects
were chiefly religious and mythological. It is then to Murillo and his
matchless pictures of the beggar boys of Seville that we may attribute
the real origin of this department of _genre_ painting. Murillo had
himself known something of poverty and homelessness. Left an orphan at
the age of eleven, he was thrown entirely upon his own resources at
nineteen, his equipment for life being a few years' apprenticeship in
the studio of his uncle, Juan del Castillo. In the years of hard work
that followed, he laid the foundations of a career destined to be one of
the most notable in the history of art.

[Illustration: BEGGAR BOYS.--MURILLO.]

There was held one day every week, in a large public square of Seville,
an open-air market called the _Feria_, at which meat and fish, fruit and
vegetables, old clothes and old iron, were heaped upon stalls or piled
upon the pavement for the examination of customers. Last but not least
of all the commodities here displayed were paintings, offered for sale
by the artists themselves, who were supplied with brushes and colors to
adapt the details to the purchasers' taste. It may be imagined that
these pictures of the _Feria_ were not works of high art, nor was there
much stimulus to artistic talent in their production. Nevertheless, it
was in this business that the young Murillo began his career; and it
was in this way, doubtless, that he came to observe closely, and to
store up in his artist's memory the picturesque effects among the
children who swarmed in the sunny square. Perfect types of glowing
health were these nut-brown sons and daughters of Andalusia, enjoying
life with the indolence and simple merriment characteristic of a
southern race. It was Murillo's delight to portray them in their
happiest moods. Sometimes they are playing games on the pavement, as in
the Dice Players; again, they are feasting upon the luscious native
fruits, as in the celebrated pictures of the Munich Gallery. With what
deli