nly and profoundly than he made
us feel it--we have his great work on our shelf, and as soon as we are
back at home, our mind still working on Orpheus and Eurydice, we take it
down and search for a reference to our bas-relief. We search all through
the index in vain; then turn over the pages where it may possibly be
mentioned, again in vain; no Orpheus and Eurydice. Ah! "A bas-relief
at the Villa Albani"--let us see what that may be. "A bas-relief," &c.,
&c.--horror beyond words! The bas-relief--our bas-relief--deliberately
set down as Antiope with Amphion and Zethus--set down as Antiope with
Amphion and Zethus, by Winckelmann himself!

Yes, and he gravely states his reasons for so doing. The situation is
evidently one of great hesitation; there is reluctance on the one hand,
persuasion on the other. Moreover, the female figure is that of a
mourner, of a supplicant, draped and half-veiled as it is; the figure
with the lyre, in the Thracian or Thessalian costume, must necessarily
be Amphion, while the other in the loose tunic of a shepherd, must as
evidently be his brother, Zethus; and if we put together these facts,
we cannot but conclude that the subject of the bas-relief is, as
previously stated, Antiope persuading Amphion and Zethus to avenge her
on Dirce.

The argument is a good one, there can be no denying it, although it
is very strange that Winckelmann should not have perceived that the
bas-relief represented Orpheus and Eurydice. But, after all, we ask
ourselves, as the confusion in our minds gradually clears up: how do
we know that this _is_ Orpheus and Eurydice, and not Antiope and her
sons? How! and the answer rises up indignantly, Because we see to the
contrary; because we know that it must be Orpheus and Eurydice because
we feel morally persuaded that it is. But a doubt creeps up. We are
morally convinced, but whence this conviction? Did we come to the
bas-relief not knowing what it was, and did we then cry out, overcome by
its internal evidence, that it must represent Orpheus and Eurydice? Did
we ourselves examine and weigh the evidence as Winckelmann did? And we
confess to ourselves that we did none of these things. But how, then,
explain this intense conviction, and the emotion awakened in us by
the bas-relief? Yet that emotion was genuine; and now we have, little
by little, to own that we had read in a book, by M. Charles Blanc,
that such and such a bas-relief at the Villa Albani represented
Orpheus a