ining, so unearthly, so
ethereal! What a full heart must the inspired painter have had as in his
mind's eye he purely shadowed forth this most perfect conception of one
of those who hold companionship with God! It was made up of all the
rarest traits of beauty, yet its loveliness was not of the world: the
veriest dullard looking on it would have paused in admiration; the most
brutal have gazed into those pure eyes, untainted by one earthly
feeling, one sinful thought, or impure desire. On my mind the effect was
thrilling: I have pictured to myself angels as poets have described
them, and have often before looked upon them such as they have been
conceived by Angelo, Correggio, and other master-spirits amongst men,
and have seen faces of theirs on which I could have looked unsatiated
again and again, and forms I could have loved with all my heart; but
never beheld an emanation of the Spirit of God, a thing only to be gazed
on holily and worshipped humbly, until I met with this angel of
Murillo's.

Were I Pope, the painter should be canonized as one visibly inspired
from heaven, and on whose visions angels must have waited, since earth
never could have supplied from its fairest a model for such expression
as he has here given to the comforter of that heart-broken Christ. It is
worth living virtuously, to die in the hope of such companionship
hereafter, and for all eternity. After having been for two years
deprived of the pleasure an enthusiast derives from the painter's art,
the mere contemplation of such a picture elevates and refines one's
spirit; the world and worldly feelings are forgot, and for a moment the
soul breathes freely within its earthly prison.

Here were three pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds; one a group of the
Clive family, including the native Ayah holding a little girl on a
chair. This Indian nurse is painted to the life, graceful, animated, and
devoted; only for the difference of complexion, one might imagine the
delicate girl she looks on with such tender pride her own, and not the
offspring of the cold white woman whose eyes are fixed on you as she
stands _vis-a-vis_ to her stiff lord, who is dressed in a
rappee-coloured habit richly overlaid with gold.

This picture might very well be described as a fancy subject, and
designated Nature and Art. Opposite this fine picture of our English
master hung another group, by Rembrandt; making up in force and colour
what it lacked in delicacy and refinement.