VITAL FORCE, or THE RHODIAN GENIUS. 



The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Poecile, 

 where representations of gods and heroes, the works of 

 Grecian and Italian art, adorned the richly decorated halls 

 of the Portico. Incessantly the people streamed thither; the 

 young warrior to feast his eyes upon the deeds of his fore- 

 fathers, the artist to contemplate the works of the great 

 masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active 

 enterprise of the Syracusans had collected from the mother 

 country, there was but one which for full a century had con- 

 tinued to attract the attention of every visitor. Even when 

 the Olympian Jupiter, Cecrops, the founder of cities, and 

 the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, failed to 

 attract admirers, a dense crowd still pressed round this one 

 picture. Whence this preference ? Was the painting a 

 rescued work of Apelles, or did it bear the impress of the 

 school of Callimachus ? No ! although it possessed both grace 

 and beauty, yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in 

 the character and style of its composition, could it be com- 

 pared with many other paintings in the Poecile. 



The crowd — and how numerous are the classes included in 

 this denomination — ever admires and wonders at what it does 

 not understand ! For more than a century had that painting 

 been publicly exhibited, and yet, although Syracuse contained 

 within its narrow limits more artistic genius than all the 



* A Tortico in Athens containing a picture gallery painted chiefly by 

 Polygnotus, with the assistance of Micon and Pansenus. Zeno taught 

 his doctrines there, and was in consequence called the Stoic, from stoa, 

 a portico, and his school the Stoic-school. — Ed. 



