is required to understand the meaning, the
subject of prose or verse; Virgil's lines pre-suppose no knowledge of
the story of Orpheus, they themselves give the knowledge of it. The
difference, then, between the poem and the bas-relief is that the story
is absolutely contained in the former, and not absolutely contained
in the latter; the story of Orpheus is part of the organic whole, of
the existence of the poem; the two are inseparable, since the one is
formed out of the other; whereas, the story of Orpheus is separate
from the organic existence of the bas-relief, it is arbitrarily connected
with it, and they need not co-exist. What then is the bas-relief? A
meaningless thing, to which we have wilfully attached a meaning which is
not part or parcel of it--a blank sheet of paper on which we write what
comes into our head, and which itself can tell us nothing.

As we look up perplexedly at the bas-relief, which, after having been as
confused, has now become well nigh as blank as our mind, we are startled
by hearing our name from a well-known voice behind us. A young painter
stands by our side, a creature knowing or thinking very little beyond
his pencils and brushes, serenely unconscious of literature and science
in his complete devotion to art. A few trivial sentences are exchanged,
during which we catch our friend's eye glancing at the bas-relief. "I
never noticed that before," he remarks, "Do you know, I like it better
than anything else in this room. Strange that I should not have noticed
it before."

"It is a very interesting work," we answer; adding, with purposely
feigned decision, "Of course you see that it represents Orpheus and
Eurydice, not Antiope and her sons."

The painter, whose instinctive impression on the point we have thus
tried to elicit, seems wholly unmoved by this remark; the fact literally
passes across his mind without in the least touching it.

"Does it? Ah, what a splendid mass of drapery! That grand, round fold
and those small, fine vertical ones. I should like to make a sketch of
that."

A sort of veil seems suddenly to fall off our mental eyes; these simple,
earnest words, this intense admiration seem to have shed new light into
our mind.

This fellow, who knows or cares apparently nothing whatever about either
Orpheus or Antiope, has not found the bas-relief a blank; it has spoken
for him, the clear, unmistakeable language of lines and curves, of light
and shade, a language needing