228 THE STONES OF VENICE III. NATURALISM

§ 60. And yet these are only the grosset manifestations of the tendency of the school. There are subtler, yet not less certain, signs of it in the works of men who stand high in the world’s list of sacred painters. I doubt not that the reader was surprised when I named Murillo among the men of this third rank. Yet, go into the Dulwich Gallery, and meditate for a little over that much celebrated picture of the two beggar boys, one eating, lying on the ground, the other standing beside him.¹ We have among our own painters one who cannot indeed be set beside Murillo as a painter of Madonnas, for he is a pure Naturalist, and, never having seen a Madonna, does not paint any; but who, as a painter of beggar or peasant boys, may be set beside Murillo, or any one else,-W. Hunt.² He loves peasant boys, because he finds them more roughly and picturesquely dressed, and more healthily coloured, than others. And he paints all that he sees in them fearlessly; all the health and humour, and freshness and vitality, together with such awkwardness and stupidity, and what else of negative or positive harm there may be in the creature; but yet so that on the whole we love it, and find it perhaps even beautiful, or if not, at least we see that there is capability of good in it, rather than of evil; and all is lighted up by a sunshine and sweet colour that makes the smock frock as precious as cloth of gold. But look at those two ragged and vicious vagrants that Murillo has gathered out of the street. You smile at first, because they are eating so naturally, and their roguery is so complete. But is there anything else than roguery there, or was it well for the painter to give his time to the painting of those repulsive and wicked children? Do you feel moved with any charity towards children as you look at them? Are we the least more likely to take any interest in ragged schools,or to help the next pauper child that comes in our way, because

¹ [The picture is No. 224 (formerly 286). Ruskin alludes to it again in Ariadne Florentina, § 143. For his attitude to Murillo generally, see note in Vol. III. p. 635.]

² [See Notes on Prout and Hunt, and compare Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. vii. § 7.]

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