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Rh to Sir William Hamilton and A. Campbell Fraser (1856-60). In 1860 he was appointed to the chair of logic, metaphysics and rhetoric at St Andrews, and in 1864 to the corresponding chair at Glasgow. In philosophy an intuitionist, he dismissed the idealist arguments with some abruptness, and thereby lost much of the influence gained by the force of his personal character. He died on the 3rd of September 1894. He will be remembered chiefly for his work on Border literature and antiquities.

VEJÉR DE LA FRONTERA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Cadiz, on the right bank of the river Barbate and on the Cadiz-Tarifa railway. Pop. (1900) 11,298. Vejer de la Frontera occupies a low hill overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar and surrounded by orchards and orange groves. It contains several ancient churches and convents, and the architecture of many of its houses recalls the period of Moorish rule, which lasted from 711 until the town was captured by St Ferdinand of Castile in 1248. Agriculture and fruit-farming are the chief industries; fighting bulls are also bred in the neighbourhood.

VELARIUM, the curtain or awning extended above the auditorium of the Reman theatres and amphitheatres to protect the spectators from sun and rain.

VELAZQUEZ, DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA Y (1599–1660), the head of the Spanish school of painting and one of the greatest painters the world has known, was born in Seville early in June 1599, the year in which Van Dyck also first saw the light at Antwerp. His European fame is of comparatively recent origin, dating from the first quarter of the 19th century. Till then his pictures had lain immured in the palaces and museum of Madrid; and from want of popular appreciation they had to a large extent escaped the rapacity of the French marshals during the Peninsular War. In 1828 Sir David Wilkie wrote from Madrid that he felt himself in the presence of a new power in art as he looked at the works of Velazquez, and at the same time found a wonderful affinity between this master and the English school of portrait painters, being specially reminded of the firm, square touch of Raeburn. He was struck by the sense of modernness of impression, of direct contact with nature, and of vital force which pervaded ail the work of Velazquez, in landscape as well as in portraiture. Time and criticism have now fully established his reputation as one of the most consummate of painters, and accordingly Ruskin says of him that “everything Velazquez does may be taken as absolutely right by the student.” At the present day his marvellous technique and strong individuality have given him a power in European art such as is exercised by no other of the old masters. Although acquainted with all the Italian schools, and the friend of the foremost painters of his day, he was strong enough to withstand every external influence and to work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art. A realist of the realists, he painted only what he saw; consequently his imagination seems limited. His religious conceptions are of the earth earthy, although some of his works, such as the “Crucifixion” and the “Christ at the Column,” are characterized by an intensity of pathos in which he ranks second to no painter. His men and women seem to breathe, his horses are full of action and his dogs of life, so quick and close is his grasp of his subject. England was the first nation to recognize his extraordinary merit, and it owns by far the largest share of his works outside of Spain.

But Velazquez can only be seen in all his power in the gallery of the Prado at Madrid, where over sixty of his works are preserved, including historical, mythological and religious subjects, as well as landscapes and portraits. It is hardly creditable to the patriotism of Seville, his native town, that no example of his work is to be seen in the gallery of that city. Seville was then in the height of its prosperity, “the pearl of Spain,” carrying on a great trade with the New World, and was also a vigorous centre of literature and art. For more than a hundred years it had fostered a native school of painting which ranked high in the Peninsula, and it reckoned among its citizens many whose names are prominent in Spanish literature.

Velazquez was the son of Rodriguez de Silva, a lawyer in Seville, descended from a noble Portuguese family, and was baptized on the 6th of June 1599. Following a common Spanish usage, he is known by his mother’s name Velazquez. There has been considerable diversity of opinion as to his full name, but he was known to his contemporaries as Diego de Silva Velazquez, and signed his name thus. He was educated, says Palomino, by his parents in the fear of God, and was intended for a learned profession, for which he received a good training in languages and philosophy. But the bent of the boy was towards art, and he was placed under the elder Herrera, a vigorous painter who disregarded the Italian influence of the early Seville school. From his works in Seville we can see that Herrera was a bold and effective painter; but he was at the same time a man of unruly temper, and his pupils could seldom stay long with him. Velazquez remained but one year—long enough, however, to influence his life. It was probably from Herrera that he learned to use long brushes, or, as J. E. Hodgson, R.A., suggested, brushes with long bristles, by means of which his colours seem to be floated on the canvas by a light, fluent touch, the envy and despair of his successors. From Herrera’s studio Velazquez betook himself to a very different master, the learned and pedantic Pacheco, the author of a heavy book on painting, and, as we see by his ; works at Madrid, a dull, commonplace painter, though at times he could rise to a rare freedom of handling and to a simple, direct realism that is in direct contradiction to the cult of Raphael preached by him in his writing. A portrait by Pacheco, owned by Sir Frederick Cook, which shows this master’s full power, was exhibited at Burlington House in 1907. In Pacheco’s school Velazquez remained for five years, studying proportion and perspective, and seeing all that was best in the literary and artistic circles of Seville. Here also he fell in love with his master’s daughter Juana, whom he married in 1618 with the hearty approval of Pacheco, who praises his hand and heart, claiming at the same time all the credit of having been his master. The young painter set himself to copy the commonest things about him— earthenware jars of the country people, birds, fish> fruit and flowers of the market-place. To paint well and thoroughly what he saw, to model with his brush, and to colour under the influence of light and shape were for him the vital purpose, the first lesson, in his art. It was with deliberate purpose that Velazquez painted these bodegones (tavern-pieces), as they were called; for we are told that he said he would rather be the first painter of common things than the second in higher art. Carrying out this idea still further, Velazquez felt that to master the subtlety of the human face he must make, this a special study, and he accordingly engaged a peasant lad to be his servant and model, making innumerable studies in charcoal and chalk, and catching his every expression. We see this model, probably, in the laughing boy of the Hermitage “Breakfast,” or in the youngest of the “Musicians” acquired for the Berlin Museum in 1906. In such work as this, and in his studies by the wayside, Velazquez laid the foundation of his subsequent mastery of expression, of penetration into character, and of rendering the life of his sitter to the quick. He saw the world around him teeming with life and objects interesting to the painter, and he set himself to render these. His manner is as national as that of Cervantes. He lived and died racy of the soil. The position and reputation of Velazquez were now