The Zoologist — June, 1874. 4025 



stories, that of the parent Apollo, who was unquestionably the god 

 of music, and that of his son Orpheus by the muse Calliope, the 

 chief and queen of all the muses. It may be recollected that 

 mythological history represents Orpheus as playing on the lyre or 

 sistrura, as I think it is called, and by his music taming wild beasts : 

 he was, moreover, accompanied by a tamed lion, which, however, 

 is rather injudiciously identified with Eurydice, although the name 

 may be fairly translated a " tamed lion." All the accessories will 

 agree with either fable. Mr. Riviere elects to make the father the 

 principal actor, and has selected the time when the Carnivora 

 have settled into their "reserved seats" to enjoy the music at 

 their ease. 



The very excellencies of this picture have, I think, operated to 

 its disadvantage : they have induced the Council to hang it on 

 a level with the eye, almost in a corner, so that every one has 

 the opportunity of quietly admiring its beauties, but is compelled, 

 as it were, to magnify its defects ; there is scarcely a possibility of 

 getting to that moderate distance which a picture requires to 

 enable one to pass a fair judgment of its effect: if you approach 

 too near you lose the painter's intention ; if you withdraw but a 

 couple of steps a crowd intervenes and you see nothing. We are 

 compelled to take the former course, and then it is utterly im- 

 possible to conceal from oneself that sufficient time and pains have 

 not been bestowed on the details : it is true that we neither expect 

 nor wish to see the toes of a lioness worked out with that consum- 

 mate skill and elaborate care which Mr. Leighton has bestowed on 

 those of the human figure in No. 348, yet we do claim for the feet of 

 the quadruped rather more "making out" than is perceptible at this 

 near view. For the same reason, the goats are not quite satisfactory ; 

 they are streaky, and the touches of the brush are too obtrusively 

 prominent : this defect may probably be removed by distance, but 

 as I have already said this distance is difiicult to obtain : the 

 fallow deer are open to the objection of formality and stiffness; 

 they are represented as emerging in sober, sedate, wondering 

 phalanx, from their "pine-wood haunts;" and the very rabbits 

 are drawn from their burrows altogether unable to resist the 

 attraction : one has scarcely emerged from his burrow, another is 

 sitting erect, as rabbits are wont to sit when listening to any sound 

 to which they are unaccustomed and of which the meaning is for the 

 time incomprehensible. The Carnivora are subdued but not cowed. 



