med, and
look at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all
the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the
sunlight will soon impair. In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice
two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of
Bacchus--powerless languor and victorious activity. The intended meaning
is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered. The ancients
never required commentators to make them understood. You comprehend
their idea and their subject at first glance. The most ignorant of men
and the least versed in Pagan lore, take their meaning with half a look
and give their works a title. In them we find no beating about the bush,
no circumlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter
expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without
exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene. His principal
personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, "Look
at me!" The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and
foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet. The coloring has
a brilliance and harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are
no useless effects in it. In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the
wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and
equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely
to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon
the wall. The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a
door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which
skilful pencils wrought for them. And what movement there was in all
those figures, what suppleness and what truth to nature![H]

[Illustration: Exedra of the House of Siricus (See p. 195).]

Nothing is distorted, nothing attitudinizes. Ariadne is really asleep,
and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl
floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops
without an effort; it is simple _reality_--the very reverse of
realism--nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold,
in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she
_is_ a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion. In a
word, these second-rate painters, poor daubers of walls as they were,
had, in the absence of scientific skill and correctness, the flash of
latent genius in obscurity, the i