of the Gospel, when she taught that God gave the Virgin all he could, and that he could give her all his own attributes, except the essence of the Godhead." The condemnation of Maria de Agreda's Life of the Virgin was not carried in the Sorbonne without the greatest opposition and tumult. The book was censured at Rome, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Spanish ambassador. The Spanish feeling, with reference to the Virgin, and more particularly to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, went far beyond the rest of Papal Europe; it was impossible for the Pope and the French Church to sanction at once the absurdities that Spain was quite ready to adopt. (See Sir Edmund Head's Hand-Book of the History of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting.)
A MELANCHOLY PICTURE OF THE STATE OF THE
FINE ARTS IN SPAIN.
A most interesting article on the present state of the
fine arts in Spain, may be found in the Appendix to
Sir Edmund Head's Hand-Book of the History of the
Spanish and French schools of Painting. On the
13th of June, 1844, a Royal ordinance was issued,
establishing a Central Commission "de Monumentos
Historicos y Artisticos del Reino," with local
or provincial commissions, to act in concert with the
former body. The chief object of the Commission
was, to report upon the condition of works of art, antiquities,
libraries, etc., contained in the numerous con-
