THE VITAL FORCE,

OR

THE RHODIAN GENIUS.

THE Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Pœcile, in which representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian art, adorned the halls, glowing with varied colours. The people resorted thither continually; the young warriors to contemplate the exploits of their ancestors, the artists to study the works of the great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active zeal of the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was one which, for a century past, had particularly attracted the attention of spectators. Sometimes the Olympian Jove, Cecrops the founder of cities, and the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, would want admirers, while men pressed in crowded ranks around the picture of which we speak. Whence this preference ? Was it a rescued work of Apelles, or of the school of Callimachus? No; it possessed indeed grace and beauty; but yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in the character and style of the entire picture, could it be compared with many other paintings in the Pœcile.

The multitude (comprehending therein many classes of

society), often regard with astonishment and admiration what they do not comprehend: this picture had occupied its place for a hundred years; but though Syracuse contained within the narrow limits enclosed by its walls more of the genius of art than the whole of the remainder of sea-surrounded Sicily, no one had yet divined the hidden meaning of the design. It was even uncertain to what temple the painting had originally belonged, for it had been rescued from a shipwrecked vessel, which was only conjectured from the merchandise it contained to have come from Rhodes.

On the foreground of the picture youths and maidens formed a closely crowded group. They were without clothing and well formed, but at the same time did not exhibit the more noble and graceful proportions admired in the statues of Praxiteles and Alcamenes. Their robust limbs, shewing the traces of laborious efforts, and the purely terrestrial expression of their desires and sorrows, seemed to take from them every thing of a diviner character, and to chain them exclusively to their earthly habitation. Their hair was simply ornamented with leaves and field-flowers. Their arms were outstretched towards each other, as if to indicate their desire of union, but their troubled looks were turned towards a Genius who, surrounded by bright light, hovered in the midst. A butterfly was placed on his shoulder, and in his hand he held on high a lighted torch. The contours of his form were soft and child-like, but his glance was animated by celestial fire: he looked down as a master upon the youths and maidens at his feet. Nothing else that was characteristic could be discovered in the pic

ture. Some persons thought they could make out at its foot the letters and s, from whence (as antiquaries were then no less bold in their conjectures than they now are), they took occasion to infer, in a somewhat forced manner, the name of Zenodorus; thus attributing the work to a painter of the same name as the artist who at a later period cast the Colossus of Rhodes.

The "Rhodian Genius," however, for such was the name given to the picture,-did not want for commentators and interpreters in Syracuse. Amateurs of the arts, and especially the younger amongst them, on returning from a short visit to Corinth or Athens, would have thought it equivalent to renouncing all pretensions to connoisseurship if they had not been provided with some new explanation. Some regarded the Genius as the personification of Spiritual Love, forbidding the enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others said it was the assertion of the empire of Reason over Desire : the wiser among the critics were silent, and presuming some high though yet undiscovered meaning, examined meanwhile with pleasure the simple composition of the picture.

Still, however, the question remained unsolved. The picture had been copied with various additions and sent to Greece, but not the least light had been thrown on its origin ; when at length, at the season of the early rising of the Pleiades, and soon after the reopening of the navigation of the Egean Sea, ships from Rhodes entered the port of Syracuse, bearing a precious collection of statues, altars, candelabras, and paintings, which Dionysius's love of art had caused to be brought together from different parts of Greece.

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Among the paintings was one which was immediately recognised as the companion or pendent of the Rhodian Genius the dimensions were the same, and the colouring similar, but in a better state of preservation: the Genius was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer on his shoulder; his head was drooping, and his torch extinguished and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing around him had met and embraced; their glance, no longer subdued or sad, announced, on the contrary, emancipation from restraint, and the fulfilment of long-cherished desires.

The Syracusan antiquaries were already seeking to modify the explanations they had previously proposed, so as to adapt them to the newly-arrived picture, when Dionysius commanded the latter to be carried to the house of Epicharmus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, who dwelt in a remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. Epicharmus rarely presented himself at the court of Dionysius, for although the latter was fond of calling around him the most distinguished men from all the Greek colonial cities, yet the philosopher found that the proximity of princes takes even from men of the greatest intellectual power part of their spirit and their freedom. He devoted himself unceasingly to the study of natural things, their forces or powers, the origin of animals and plants, and the harmonious laws in accordance with which the heavenly bodies, as well as the grains of hail and the flakes of snow, assume their distinctive forms. Oppressed with age, and unable to proceed far without assistance, he caused himself to be conducted daily to the Pocile, and thence to the entrance of the port, where,

as he said, his eyes received the image of the boundless and the infinite which his spirit ever strove in vain to apprehend. He lived honoured alike by the tyrant, whose presence he avoided, and by the lower classes of the people, whom he met gladly, and often with friendly help.

Exhausted with fatigue, he was reposing on his couch, when the newly-arrived picture was brought to him by the command of Dionysius. Care had been taken to bring, at the same time, a faithful copy of the "Rhodian Genius,” and the philosopher desired the two paintings to be placed side by side before him. After having remained for some time with his eyes fixed upon them, and absorbed in thought, he called his scholars together, and spoke to them in the following terms, in a voice which was not without emo

tion :

"Withdraw the curtain from the window, that I may enjoy once more the view of the fair earth animated with living beings. During sixty years I have reflected on the internal motive powers of nature, and on the differences of substances to-day for the first time the picture of the Rhodian Genius leads me to see more clearly that which I had before only obscurely divined. As living beings are impelled by natural desires to salutary and fruitful union, so the raw materials of inorganic nature are moved by similar impulses. Even in the reign of primeval night, in the darkness of chaos, elementary principles or substances sought or shunned each other in obedience to indwelling dispositions of amity or enmity. Thus the fire of heaven follows metal, iron obeys the attraction of the loadstone,