$200 THE ZooLoGist—SEPTEMBER, 1872. 
for ever, from our gaze. Alike as they are in the successful 
exhibition of the supposed control of animal forms by something 
akin to human intellect, the pervading sentiment of the two is 
widely different. The “ Crrce” supposes men, under the influence 
of drink, to take upon themselves the form of beasts, and very 
disgusting beasts too; but they are men still, though transmuted, 
so far as the body is concerned, to swine: under that form the 
higher, the purer attributes of man’s mind seem lost, or at any rate 
eclipsed, by the intoxicating draught; still the mere animal 
instincts of man are developed and increased. Drink has released 
them from the ordinary restraint of decency ; practically illustrating 
the axiom, zz vino veritas, they exhibit their innate sensuality 
without attempt at concealment. The moral intended by the poet 
is most ably enforced by the painter.* The “ Danie.” supposes 
beasts compelled to submit to restraints akin to those which reason 
and conscience impose on man; or rather supposes beasts of the 
most ferocious type—elevated and controlled by. the temporary 
indwelling of a power, which they can neither comprehend nor 
resist—raised by this inscrutable power to a knowledge of right 
and wrong, a knowledge that exacts unquestioning obedience. 
Reverting for a moment to “The Lion and the Lamb,” another 
contrast occurs to me: Landseer’s lion is a lion of the imagination, 
of poetry, of fiction; Breton Riviére’s lions are the lions of study, 
of prose, of fact, they are not even the free lions of Africa, arida 
nutrix leonum, but the lions of menageries, of zoological gardens, 
—beasts that one only sees through iron gratings: and it is thus 
that the painter must, perforce, have studied them; he had no 
choice. This is no reproach; all our knowledge of lions is from 
a like source; all is derived from captives, miserable captives, 
which visitors pay their sixpences or shillings to behold in their 
captivity. Nevertheless, the painter has introduced into these 
literal transcripts of imprisoned lions something more than this, 
something wonderful and supernatural: he represents them as 
controlled by a power greater than their own; an authority to 
which they yield unquestioning obedience ; an authority inscrutably 
connected with, or perhaps emanating from, the slim, feeble old 
* The teetotallers would do more good by reproducing this instructive fable than 
by blowing their trumpets and beating their drums in all the towns in the kingdom, 
even although decorating themselves with forester’s belts across their breasts, 
as on a late occasion at the Crystal Palace. 
